Matt Matthews, a co-pastor at Waldensian Presbyterian Church in Valdese, North Carolina, is “mindful and praying and pacing” about the possibility whether that “ICE will come to our little town of Valdese?” He wrote this story to share his concerns with members and friends of the American Waldensian Society.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been in Charlotte arresting people suspected of being illegally present in the USA and anyone who stands in their way. Those making the arrests travel in armed groups that resemble gangs. They are masked.
I am aghast this is happening in a land where the presumption of innocence was once the rule of the land.
Some of my regional minister colleagues, like Rev. Kate Murphey at the Grove Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, are reaching and speaking out. (Matt has shared her column below, as it appeared in the Charlotte Observer on November 19.)
Other pastor friends, like Dr. Josh Lail, pastor at First Baptist Church, Valdese, are doing what they can to support anxious parishioners. Hispanic members of his flock accompany each other to and from work sites to make sure they arrive and return safely. Church leaders have posted signs on their church property prohibiting ICE agents without a warrant signed by a judge.
Another minister friend went to Little Guatemala, a locally owned coffee shop in Morganton, and loaded up on coffee. (Our freezer is full of coffee bags for Christmas presents.) The Burke County Visitors Center estimates 20-percent of Morganton has Guatemalan roots.
Pastor Paul Carlson at Calvary Lutheran in Morganton and Ministry Coordinator of the Morganton Area Minister Association (MAMA) connected pastors to the North Carolina Council of Churches for guidance. NCCC hosted zoom meetings last week and is offering a toolkit for “supporting immigrants and welcoming strangers.”
The Black Mountain Presbyterian Church has beefed up campus security in fear of being breached by ICE officers without warrants. “We believe that true safety is rooted in a strong, compassionate community and a culture of caring.” Pastor Mary Katherine Robinson and Ross Verbrugge, the Black Mountain Presbyterian Church director of operations, wrote their flock announcing tweaks to their security policy. “Our goal is to make these changes so seamless that you notice only a continued sense of peace in worship.”
All my minister friends are mindful and praying. Some are pacing.
I take much hope from what I read about our Waldensian family in Italy. Their kin have wandered the world, so they know how important it is to welcome immigrants. Mediterranean Hope does just that, promoting immigrant advocacy at a national, European, and global level.
Our immigration system in the US urgently needs bipartisan reform. Eli Saslow, writing for the New York Times on November 23, tells the tragic story of US identities stolen and sold to illegal aliens desperate to become tax-paying contributors in local communities like ours.
Untangling ourselves from a system that’s so badly knotted will take a lot of work.
But ICE raids can’t be the answer. There is nothing moral, biblical, or humane about unidentified, masked men rounding up neighbors from playgrounds, groceries, and work sites. I’m so incredulous as to be paralyzed.
I’m waiting and watching, attempting to be ready. Which is to say, I’m doing very little except hoping this will just go away, as one hopes when having a bad dream. I fear some in my congregation and community will parse my actions and views as too liberal or too conservative. In fact, I’m just trying to be the Christian I was taught to be as a child: following the One who stretched out his arms on the cross as widely as he could to welcome everybody.
Here is the article by Kate Murphey, the pastor of the Grove Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina:
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells a large crowd a small story, ‘The Kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.’ This parable captures the tension of salvation. Finding the treasure of heaven sparks wild and everlasting joy. Procuring it costs us everything.
Greg Bovino, the head of the Federal Border Control Agency has announced that Charlotte will be the site of the next Immigration Enforcement Action. If Chicago is any indication of what is coming to us, we can expect chaos and cruelty on our streets. Anyone a CBP agent ‘reasonably guesses’ could be illegal can be snatched by masked men, thrown in cars, and imprisoned indefinitely. Prisoners in these holding centers will not receive sufficient food, medical care, or any semblance of due process. We will watch this happen on our streets and in the parking lots of grocery stores, schools, hospitals, and churches. It will happen to undocumented immigrants, and it will also happen to citizens, green card holders and those who have lived here legally for decades with Temporary Protected Status. Anyone who doesn’t ‘look American’ to agents is at risk of being abducted. In Chicago, peaceful protestors have been shot with rubber bullets and sprayed with chemical agents. The Trump administration has banned prayer inside and outside of the Broadview Immigration Processing Facility, so we must prepare for similar bans here as well. Clergy who gathered to pray for prisoners have been teargassed and shot with rubber bullets. Federal agents have rammed cars causing multi-vehicle accidents, shot pepper spray into vehicles containing children and invaded a preschool to arrest teachers in front of terrified toddlers.
The Bible is very clear about the obligation people of faith have towards foreigners and neighbors. The Hebrew Bible is full of commands to show justice and mercy to immigrants. In Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Exodus we find requirements that ‘The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself because you were foreigners in Egypt.’ In his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul writes that ‘the entire law is fulfilled in the keeping of this one commandment, love your neighbor as yourself.’ And in the gospel of Luke, a lawyer asks Jesus to clarify ‘who is my neighbor,’ no doubt hoping to precisely differentiate between people who must be loved and who can be regarded with cruelty or indifference. In response, Jesus tells a story of a Good Samaritan–a foreigner–who stops to show mercy to a stranger who’s been attacked and beaten on the street. The message is clear; we are good neighbors when we show mercy. And our neighbor is the least fortunate person we know.
In the coming weeks, many of us will find ourselves living out the parable of the Good Samaritan. Some of us will be ambushed and attacked. Some of us will cross to the other side of the street and carry on with our day pretending that the misery we witness has nothing to do with us. And some of us will take great risks and pay a heavy price to come to the aid of the vulnerable.
Preachers like me often preach about the joy of salvation, and those are faithful sermons. But sometimes we aren’t honest enough about the price we must pay. Salvation is free, yes. But it costs us everything. The man found the treasure, but then he had to sell all he had to buy the field before he could possess it. Federal agents are about to descend on our city to attack our neighbors, native and foreign born. Any preacher who tells you God doesn’t care if you intervene is lying to you.
We have a lot of churches in this city. Many of us profess to be ‘Bible believing’ Christians. We’re about to see who likes to talk about the Bible and who walks out its truths. It’s about to be judgment day in Charlotte. The inhumane cruelty we’ve been seeing on our screens is coming to our streets. We must pray for the moral courage to non-violently disrupt the persecution of our neighbors. Will we follow the example of the Good Samaritan and make sacrifices to care for the most vulnerable? Or will we make excuses? Will we be good neighbors? Or will we be bystanders?
tograph at the top of this report is of an arrest made a couple weeks ago in Charlotte by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
