It’s been an intense year so far for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s Advocacy ministry, Director Jennifer Hawks said.
“What a year it’s been for all of us,” she said during a breakfast at the CBF’s June General Assembly in St. Louis.
Some of it they saw coming, she explained. “We predicted CBF would join coalitions and be invited into advocacy opportunities. And this has been true. Not a week goes by that someone isn’t reaching out to us to ask us to join onto a letter about some important topic in the world.”
Jennifer Hawks
Hawks and her crew co-sponsored numerous social-justice events in Washington, D.C., and she was at the microphone for many of them. And the ministry successfully relaunched Advocacy in Action, a CBF resource for congregations, pastors and lay leaders desiring to become more involved in public advocacy.
But there also have been some surprises for CBF Advocacy in 2025, said Hawks, who was named director in late 2023 and oversaw opening the Fellowship’s first office in Washington, D.C., in October 2024.
“Something none of us predicted last year when this team was put together was that CBF would have an advocacy-through-litigation strategy so quickly. We are currently 2-and-0 in the court system.”
In February, CBF and Sikh groups joined a coalition of Quaker meetings in a Democracy Forward lawsuit against the Trump administration for rescinding the traditional exemption of churches, hospitals and schools from immigration enforcement raids.
A federal judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order in February protecting CBF and other plaintiffs in the suit from Immigration Customs and Enforcement raids as the litigation proceeds.
“We joined the lawsuit because the idea of agents entering our worship spaces to question, intimidate, harass or arrest our neighbors is a violation of CBFs religious freedom,” Hawks said. “What this means is that agents cannot enforce immigration law at your church unless they have a judicial warrant or there is an emergency circumstance.”
Concern for immigrants has been at the core of CBF identity since its inception.
Concern for immigrants has been at the core of CBF identity since its inception, she added. “This is not about politics for us, but rather it is a matter of embodying a faithful, biblical witness in this modern day and age. Immigrant neighbors belong at CBF.”
CBF and CBF Oklahoma in April joined the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in a brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to deny a religious charter school in Oklahoma from receiving state funds.
An equally divided court in May upheld a 2024 Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that granting taxpayer funds to St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would constitute a violation of the U.S. and state constitutions.
CBF Advocacy also has been busy rolling out new resources for congregations this year with expected release later this summer and fall.
One includes a three-part radio series to prepare congregations for visits by ICE agents and another enables churches to report immigration enforcements that violate the temporary injunction.
Such an incursion may have occurred in March when federal agents parked in the lot of a CBF North Carolina church that serves immigrants and refugees. One agent entered the church to say authorities were conducting a stakeout for a wanted criminal. It was not clear if the target of their search was an immigrant served by the church.
“CBF needs to know about any suspected or actual immigration enforcement that is currently at your churches so we can let Democracy Forward know about them and they can let the judge know,” Hawks said.