What Kristi Noem and DHS won’t admit about clergy-led protests

Last Thursday night, I had dinner at the home of Baptist pastor Michael Woolf, his wife, Anna Piela, and their young daughter. We ate lasagna that Woolf had cooked. The next morning, a Reuters photo of Woolf’s arrest at a clergy protest of ICE went viral.

I’ve gotten to know Woolf and other Chicago clergy who have held weekly services at the Broadview Detention Facility, epicenter of the ICE action in Chicago. Being with them at Broadview last Friday was a beautiful experience filled with liturgy, protest music and collective action.

Which is why the violence displayed by Cook County sheriffs and Illinois State Police on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security is so disturbing.

Equally disturbing is the social media response from the Department of Homeland Security and its leader Kristi Noem.

Dehumanizing rhetoric and memes are nothing new for this administration’s DHS. Neither are social media posts appropriating and misusing Bible verses as propaganda for the state. But the decision to paint clergy members leading the protest as violent imbecilic morons, and ignoring that their actual job descriptions include advocating for justice for those on the margins, ushers in a whole new level of cognitive dissonance.

Religious nationalism vs. religion

The worship service at Broadview was interreligious, with Mainline Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Hindu and Unitarian clergy leading. Each of these traditions stands in stark contrast to the religious traditions that have supported Donald Trump’s return to power.

One pernicious feature of Christian nationalism and Christian supremacy is the coopting of the symbols and rhetoric of conservative and fundamentalist Christianity. When the president established by executive order his Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, he was elevated a nationalist ideology dressed up as fundamentalist Christianity.

Christianity is the most prevalent religion in the U.S. It is laughable to suggest that “Anti-Christian bias” is a thing.

Now, as ICE and Border Patrol agents descend on Democrat-led cities to wage war, clergy from many faiths are coming out in protest.

DHS’ rhetoric and memes mocking religious leaders who condemn its terrorization of communities across the country is both unsurprising and revealing. And while leaders of all faiths should be speaking up, it is incumbent upon Christians to directly and forcefully refute the Christian nationalist ideology being espoused at the highest levels of government.

Every Mainline Protestant denomination has its own ordination vows which churches use to ordain individuals to ministry. While they vary across denominations, in each the ordinand is asked to commit his or her life to the emulation of the life of Jesus Christ, to the practice of loving our neighbors and to working for peace and reconciliation in the world.

The Christian clergy at Broadview and elsewhere who are protesting the government’s dehumanization and unlawful detention of people seeking asylum within our country are doing the job they were ordained to do. They are living out their ordination vows — a full-time job these days.

Liturgy, song and prayer as protest

The service at Broadview included a liturgy in which an altar was set up. Faith leaders from many religions placed items upon the altar before they processed to speak with the police chief of the Village of Broadview.

The ritual service included faith leaders introducing themselves and their faith traditions, then naming an injustice the detainees were facing as they were held inside the processing center.

For those unfamiliar with Broadview and other facilities like it, prior to the current administration these buildings were DHS offices where immigrants working their way through America’s labyrinthian immigration system went for scheduled meetings. They were not built and are not equipped to safely and humanely house masses of people for any length of time.

Faith traditions across space and time have demanded the humane treatment of the stranger and the oppressed. The service at Broadview pointed to some of these faith traditions as it called out the unsanitary, unsafe and deplorable conditions these immigrants — most of whom are legally in this country applying for asylum — have been facing inside the facility.

The faith leaders and the items they laid on the altar included:

• Pastor Nathan Perrin from Lombard Mennonite Church placed soap and a towel on the altar because detainees are not provided showers.
• Rabbi Brant Rosen from Tzedek Chicago placed a roll of toilet paper on the altar because detainees are not provided this basic hygienic necessity.
• Deacon Sarah Swagler from Luther Memorial Church laid a toothbrush and toothpaste on the altar because detainees are not provided these.
• Swamini Adityananda Saraswati of The Elijah Interfaith Institute laid a bottle of water on the altar because detainees are being denied clean water.
• Father Brendan Curran of The Resurrection Project laid a rosary on the altar because detainees are being denied access to chaplains and spiritual care. Even those who are taken off the streets and happen to have a Bible or rosary on them have those taken away.
• Ruth Goring of The United Methodist Church laid a telephone on the altar because detainees are being denied access to telephones to call attorneys and family members.
• Pastor Jonathan Grace of Urban Village Church placed bread on the altar because detainees are being denied three full meals a day.
• Will Esty of Northshore Unitarian Church laid a toilet seat on the altar because detainees have been subjected to overflowing toilets and regularly exposed to raw sewage.
• Pastor George of a local Episcopal Church laid a pillow and blanket on the altar because detainees have been held in overcrowded rooms without space to even lay on the floor to sleep.
• Rabbi Ike Serotta from Makom Solel Lakeside sounded the shofar to symbolize tearing down walls. He noted that even though some state-sponsored walls were coming down in Chicago, new ones were being erected in other cities.

The group then processed to speak with the police chief of Broadview, the city in which the federal facility is located. The group asked for access to the facility to provide spiritual and physical care to the detainees. They were, of course, denied access.

At that point, a separate group of clergy locked arms and began walking down the street. What unfolded next was a shocking display of violence by Illinois State Police and Cook County sheriffs.

Violence against clergy and faith leaders

This violence widely reported on Nov. 14 was perpetrated by officers with the Cook County sheriff and Illinois State Police on behalf of DHS, whom they have been ordered to “protect.”

In an effort to keep federalized National Guard troops out of Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has enlisted these officers to do what he doesn’t want ICE and Border Patrol doing to protesters. One has to ask: Why is the governor turning a blind eye to violence like this against peaceful protesters?

Police with batons pulled protesters from the crowd before throwing them down and cuffing them. Some they dragged from the crowd or down the street.

Any suggestion by outlets like Fox News or DHS that these protesters were violent is simply not true.

Some of those arrested included clergy and faith leaders. Others were artists, social workers, retirees, therapists and regular folk.

What is true, though — and what Kristi Noem, DHS and the president himself don’t want to admit — is that these clergy-led protests are exactly the kinds of religious witness our world needs. And the Christian clergy standing in solidarity with the least, last and lost are the true Christians of today.

These and other faith leaders and the faithful stand in a long line of protesters whose religious values compel them to protest the violence of the state. They also will tell you the violence they have experienced for months at Broadview pales in comparison to the violence being perpetrated on those unlawfully detained in mass sweeps by ICE and Border Patrol.

 

Mara Richards Bim serves as a Clemons Fellow with BNG and as the first Justice and Advocacy Fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas where she recently was ordained to the gospel ministry. She earned the master of divinity degree and a certificate in spiritual direction from Perkins School of Theology at SMU. She also is an award-winning theater artist and founder of the nationally acclaimed Cry Havoc Theater Company, which operated in Dallas from 2014 to 2023.