It was a time set aside for mourning, remembrance and moral clarity as hundreds of pastors gathered in Minneapolis Jan. 8 for a clergy press conference one day after an ICE agent shot and killed a woman protesting their actions.
“It is a day where Minnesotans have come together yet again to mourn, to grieve, to lament, to express righteous anger and rage, but to demand justice and to demand peace,” said minister JaNae Bates Imari, co-executive director of a nonprofit called ISAIAH.
Renee Good
“Renee was 37 years old, a mother, a U.S. citizen, a Minnesotan, a legal observer, a woman who believed that her neighbors deserved dignity, safety.” Imari said of Renee Nicole Good who was shot and killed by an ICE agent the previous day. “She was not armed. She was not a threat. She was standing for freedom. And the federal government answered her courage with a bullet.”
Then she stated, “Let the record be clear that that was not an accident. It was murder.”
Imari added, “In the Holy Scriptures, in the Bible, it says, ‘Woe to those who decree unjust laws.’ Today that woe belongs to DHS, to ICE and to those in Congress who refuse to hold them accountable.”
Then she named three demands the gathered clergy are making of the federal government.
- “The ICE officer who shot Renee Good must be arrested, charged and prosecuted.”
- “ICE must immediately cease its surge in operations in the state of Minnesota.”
- “We call on Minnesota’s congressional delegation and the United States Congress … (to) step in and investigate, hold DHS Secretary Kristi Noem accountable so that we don’t lose another life.”
Additional clergy who spoke included:
- Martha Bardwell, lead pastor, Our Savior’s Lutheran Church
- Mowlid Ali, imam, Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center
- Tamar Magill-Grimm, rabbi, Beth Jacob Congregation
- Charvez Russell, senior pastor, Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church
- Dale Korogi, pastor, Ascension Catholic Church
- Regina Hassanally, bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Martha Bardwell
Bardwell sat down for an interview with Baptist News Global for Episode 90 of “Highest Power: Church + State.”
During the press conference, Bardwell said: “Every time we gather as a community around the baptismal font, I as pastor get to address the congregation and I say to them, ‘Do you renounce evil and the forces that defy God?’ And the congregation with one voice responds, ‘We renounce them.’”
Then she led the press conference attendees in the renunciation: “We renounce this evil. We reject government terror and government lies. We reject the violent tactics of this federal surge of ICE presence that’s already led to the loss of life.”
“We reject any dehumanization of any person in this city, in this state, or anywhere in our nation,” Ali added. “This is a time we show compassion and mercy to one another.”
“My tradition teaches that human life is so sacred, so valuable that preserving life takes precedence over all of the other laws in the Torah,” said Grimm, the rabbi. “What we witnessed yesterday — an absolutely senseless and tragic murder of a wife, a mother, a caring neighbor, Renee Nicole Good, who should have been tucking her son into his bed last night just like I was tucking in my two kids.”
Grimm also called for the FBI to “release evidence to Minnesota law enforcement.” The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is claiming the FBI will not include them in the investigation, which has led to Gov. Tim Walz saying, “Minnesota must be part of this investigation.”
“I need you and you need me,” Russell preached. “And God has intentionally braided us together for his purpose and his will, to drive out and turn over the tables of injustice, and turn over the tables of division and tables of hate, and the tables of untruth, tables that endanger our families and our communities, and our futures, and replace them with tables of justice, tables of righteousness, tables of collaboration and peace and love and unity.”
Speaking of the immigrants in his church, Korogi said, “These are really good people, the best people I know.” He concluded, “In the memory of Renee Good and in the name of God, this cruelty must stop.”
Then Bishop Hassanally reminded everyone: “Fear is a tool of the oppressor. But hope is the anecdote to fear.” She shared how the Christian tradition finds hope in Jesus, which means “hope comes in the flesh.” But rather than waiting for hope in the future, she said, “hope comes this day.”
Hassanally ended the press conference by reminding everyone: “All people bear God’s own image. As followers of Jesus, we strive to be neighbors who regard those around us as the bearers of God’s image that they actually are. So we show up in our flesh on this day because our hope propels us to say we are for justice, we are for peace, we are for courage, we are for integrity, we are for truth, we are for process, we are for a commitment to common humanity and dignity for all of God’s people.”