They Are Us: Lutherans and Immigration

By Stephen Bouman, Ralston Deffenbaugh and Martin E. Marty

Although written from a Lutheran religious tradition, the invitation and reach of They Are Us: Lutherans and Immigration, Second Edition is broad and inclusive. It includes all who are in touch with their own immigrant forebears and who share deeply spiritual hopes for our communal life. Authors Stephen Bouman and Ralston Deffenbaugh observe that ten years after they wrote the first edition of this book, immigration is an even more contentious issue in society and the church, and immigrants are much more vulnerable, mistreated, and blamed than ever before.

They Are Us encourages congregations to engage in the public space with grace and to offer hospitality in an often-alien world. The authors propose that the church, at every level, from local to national to global, work to transform our present polarization and fear and lead to real change. They envision a community that offers a haven for every refugee, a job for every migrant, a home for every immigrant--a vision that is profoundly biblical and deeply faithful.

Through stories of crisis and hope, They Are Us helps Christian communities understand themselves and their ministries as part of God's narrative of love and hospitality for the little, the lost, the last, and the least. These stories show there is no greater power to unite our divided, angry, and fearful church and society than the presence of the crucified and risen Christ among us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: Nov 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781506464220

Book preview

Marty

Introduction: What Rough Beast Slouching from Ground Zero?

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,

and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;

for I am gentle and humble in heart,

and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

–Jesus, Matthew 11:28–30

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

–Emma Lazarus, Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty

New York, 2006

A freezing rain whipped in on the wind from New York Harbor as we gathered at the Battery in lower Manhattan. Through bone-chilling sleet we could see the lady in the harbor, an enduring iconic presence holding aloft the welcoming torch. It was the day after President Bush’s State of the Union Address in 2006, and New York’s religious leaders and immigration advocates were holding a press conference to urge the president and Congress to enact humane immigration reform and to reject current legislation pending in Congress that would criminalize anyone offering help to undocumented neighbors.

Just a few blocks away, on a beautiful September day five years earlier, the Twin Towers had come tumbling down, destroying the lives of thousands. For a brief moment afterwards, the world’s attention and our own was focused on what mattered most: our shared humanity, our communal compassion, global solidarity, our deepest spiritual longings and hope. But, too soon, all that changed. In the ripple effects of September 11, 2001, something ugly emerged, slouching from Ground Zero: a hardening of the heart toward the immigrant stranger among us.

We became fearful, and in our fear, we came to believe that our security can only be achieved through power, enforcement, a closing of the ranks, and a sealing of the borders. On this cold, rainy day, representatives from many religious traditions gathered to refute that belief and to give voice to a shared spiritual conviction that our mutual security is tied not to power and isolation, but to the well-being and dignity of every child of God. We were gathered to ask our president, our leaders, and our fellow citizens: What kind of community is emerging from Ground Zero? What kind of communal future are we building together?

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity . . .

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

—William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming[1]

What kind of a world has come to birth in the changed communal landscape following September 11? A world where the rough beast of fearful exclusion slouches across the landscape both here and abroad? If so, that is a world that must be resisted.

On that chilly day at the Battery with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop, a vision was shared for the kind of community we hoped the future would hold. A community where all people, united in faith and in the memory of our immigrant grandparents, work together for the good of all Americans. A vision sharing these modest hopes:

An opportunity for our hard-working neighbors —who are already contributing to this country —to emerge from the shadows and pursue an option to become fellow residents and even citizens.

Reforms that keep families together, not bust them apart.

Legal ways for people who want to work and need to feed their families to enter our country in an orderly way with their rights protected.

Border policies that are not an extension of vigilante fear of the stranger, but that keep out those who mean to harm us while treating all with respect and dignity.

As Stephen said on that cold, wet, windy day in Battery Park in 2006:

In particular, today I want our senators to know that they have allies here—red and blue state people whose faith unites them and whose grateful memories of their grandparents make them ready to be partners in a new vision for all of us to emerge from Ground Zero.[2]

In the introduction to the first edition of this book, we characterized the situation in 2009 with a sense of hopefulness that the church would respond to the issue of immigration in positive ways.

What manner of community do we envision emerging from a landscape that changed dramatically after September 11, 2001? We envision a community that offers a haven for every refugee, a job for every migrant, a home for every immigrant, a vision that is profoundly biblical and deeply faithful. . . .

This book calls for a better world. It advocates for a future in which how we welcome and regard the stranger among us will be the primary issue that determines what kind of America ultimately emerges from the ashes of Ground Zero. How we welcome and regard the stranger among us is of primary importance for the church as well and one for which we believe our beloved Lutheran tradition has a ready answer. We are Lutheran and we are pro-immigrant.

Although our religious tradition is Lutheran, the invitation and reach of this book is broad and inclusive. It includes all who are in touch with their own immigrant forebears and who share deeply spiritual hopes for our communal life together. Our Lutheran ancestors emigrated largely from northern Europe, many landing first in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, across the bay from the Battery in Lower Manhattan. This country welcomed them. Because of that welcome, today congregations in the ELCA Metropolitan New York Synod worship in twenty-five languages. The Nordic and Germanic languages of our early immigrant forebears have given way to other tongues—Spanish, Arabic, Swahili, Mandarin, Korean, and others. But regardless of the language spoken, the message is the same: Thank you. Thank you for welcoming us. Thank you for a new beginning.. . .

Welcoming the stranger can give birth to new hope and revive tired denominations. The strangers, our new neighbors, bring immense spiritual gifts with them. Max Weber’s thesis of disenchantment—that modern society will no longer need the palliative of religion in this new secular age—is turned on its head. Many of our new neighbors bring vibrant faith, love of Scripture, and deeply evangelical hearts. Immigration means spiritual reenchantment.

We encounter in our new neighbors a faith that blossoms in the midst of struggle and sometimes great danger and suffering. Migrants die in the Sonoran Desert. Desperate people from Chiapas, Central America, whose families have little to eat and even less hope, as they gather in church basements in Agua Prieta, Mexico, on the night before their attempt to cross the border. Those who survive the desperate journey mow our lawns, do construction work on our houses, wash our dishes, and harvest our food. Many of our new neighbors—often living lives of silent despair as we turn our backs on them and blame them—lean on deep spiritual traditions and call on the name of the Lord as we do. . . .

We want to thank you for your interest in and openness to this critical conversation on immigration. We approach this conversation from many viewpoints, which is to be expected in the great diversity and universal reach of Christ’s body. As we learn to welcome the stranger among us, we will be transformed into deeper community at the foot of the cross.[3]

They Are Us: Lutherans and Immigration, Second Edition

Now, ten years later, things have gotten worse, and immigration is an even more contentious issue in society and the church, and immigrants are much more vulnerable, mistreated, and blamed than ever before.

They are us once again. Pastor Betty Rendon Madrid was one of us, a member with her family of Stephen’s congregation, Immanuel Lutheran Church in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. In early May 2019 ICE agents stopped her daughter, Paula, as she was driving her daughter, Layla, to school. They arrested Paula and put her in the agent’s car. Another agent drove the daughter, frightened and crying, to Pastor Betty’s home, where she and her husband, Carlos, were arrested. Paula later said that the agents used bringing her daughter to the care of her grandmother as a ruse to find and arrest them. Later that night Paula returned to her parents’ home and confronted two intruders inside. The home had not been secured by the ICE agents, and several items had been stolen.

Though Paula was released a few hours later after proving she had legal protection through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), her parents remained in ICE custody. Betty was a student pastor who had studied at the Lutheran School of Theology and was serving a Latino congregation in Racine, Wisconsin. Although not ordained because of her immigration status, Betty Rendon was well known and loved wherever she served. The detention of Betty and Carlos galvanized the Lutheran, ecumenical, and Latinx communities of Chicagoland and Wisconsin. There were vigils and demonstrations. Thousands of letters were collected as part of a national appeal by the Immigrant Justice Center to block their deportation. Members of our congregation stood with the family, provided care for Layla, and accompanied them to the various rallies and hearings.

Betty came to America because she was afraid for her life. She had been teaching at a school in Colombia when she received death threats from guerilla groups. Her family fled to Miami in 2004. They applied for asylum in 2006, were denied by a judge in 2008, and lost their appeal. From Miami they moved to Chicago and lived exemplary lives as homeowners, workers, church members, servants in the church’s ministry, neighbors.

After they were apprehended, their appeal to block deportation was not granted. At the end of May 2019, they were moved to Louisiana and from there were deported back to Colombia. In the final days of their appeal before deportation, I was in the crowd holding vigil at the Chicago ICE offices in the Loop. At the vigil, Layla stood next to her mother Paula, wearing shoes sprinkled with glitter and holding a stuffed dog. Paula told us that whenever Layla sees a police car, she asks if she is going to be taken away. Later Layla softly told the crowd, I love my family, as she held a photo of her with both her grandparents. Paula is a single working mother whose parents were helping her raise her daughter. Later, when I saw them at a church service at Immanuel after the deportation, I wondered exactly how ripping this family apart, and deporting a minister of the gospel, served any higher purpose at all.

This is one small story in today’s America, where children are ripped from their families, put in cages, left to fend for themselves waiting south of the border, vilified, traumatized, blamed, and often deported back to the poverty, danger, and trauma from which they were seeking safety and an affirmation of their humanity. Even legal refugee resettlement numbers have been cut to almost nothing. The Rough Beast Slouching from Ground Zero has been born.

Today, more than ever, they are us.

What we wrote ten years ago in the introduction still holds true today.

We believe that we are having the wrong conversation in our country about immigration today. It is a conversation driven by fear and often manipulated cynically by our political leaders. Yes, security is important, but at what price? How much are we willing to pay for the illusion that we can be totally secure? How many walls can we build? Where is the moral, political, and religious leadership? It is far too easy to bypass legitimate concerns about the world we are building together and too quickly play the role of policy wonks, divided by this or that proposal or legislative agenda.

The church too often is silent as politicians build public constituencies on communal fear of the stranger. Our church bodies pass public statements on immigration while we ignore opportunities for real grassroots conversation among us. We talk about them as if they were faceless, voiceless beings, forgetting—perhaps by choice—that they, too, are children of God. We cannot—or will not—[see their faces and truly hear their voices]. The global debate over immigration, economic migration, and a new emerging America is begging for Christian insight, faith, and courage. This book moves us into that more ambitious conversation.[4]

Now, in 2020, attitudes about immigration, race, people of other faiths, refugees have hardened to visceral, communal anger, which has come to define the discourse in the public square. And too often this anger flows into our churches, leaving us divided and afraid to engage one another. How does the grace of faithful people and institutions enter space so permeated with fear and anger? This book is a call to do just that, to reengage the soul of faith in the public arena, to encourage congregations to engage in the public space with the most graceful and irenic and communal commitments of our traditions. Religion is today sometimes being used to exclude, attack, judge, discriminate, dominate, denigrate. This book is a call, in the name of God, for congregations and other religious institutions to offer hospitality in an often-alien world, to accept invitations to tables we have not set.

It is a time to connect the dots. The communal anger and fear around issues of interfaith presence, immigration, refugees, war and peace, race, justice, and poverty are all related and can be faced only with grace and courage in nascent relationships, at new communal tables, by growing in understanding and mutual respect. We will propose in this book that the church, at every level, from local to national to global, engage these issues in relationship with those most affected by this harsh climate, by action that addresses human suffering and by conversation and listening that will transform our present polarization and fear and lead to real change. Faith can help frame and inspire these conversations, faith that goes public as we figure out how we must spend our energy, not only inviting in but learning how to be invited out, in spaces where immigrants and refugees live. Our faith must lead us out into the world where people who are hurting need our help.

We are sounding a practical call to the church to walk with and engage civil society with the gospel. How can pastors and the lay disciples in their congregations summon the courage to tackle uncomfortable conversations and confront difficult situations with the love and peace and faith we feel in God’s graceful presence? Can we learn that politeness and true peace are two different things? How do we step out into wider worlds as a church, seeking hospitality and offering hospitality to all, no matter what their religion, gender, ethnic background, economic circumstances, or sexual orientation? How do we build public spaces and set new tables where everyone’s gifts are needed and welcomed? What tools will help us ask the right questions and to prefer meaningful questions over pat answers? How can we escape the cycle of anger, fear, and scarcity thinking that ensnares us, and give way to the radical call of Jesus to love our neighbor?

Ten Years of Deepening Change and Crisis

This second edition of They Are Us: Lutherans and Immigration updates accounts of signs of crisis and hope in these past ten years. Some signs of crisis:

The Arab Spring and ongoing global conflicts have created a global crisis of forcibly displaced victims: asylum seekers, refugees, and internally displaced persons. Growing populism and natio-nalism are causing a hostile (and sometimes violent) response to this crisis in the receiving countries.

The migration of children and families through Mexico to the United States from the northern triangle of Central America has created an enormous crisis at the Mexican border.

Too often members of our churches have been among those offering a hostile reception not just to undocumented refugees and migrants, but also to legal resettlement. This response has included Islamophobia and suspicion of all immigrants.

The resolve to accomplish comprehensive immigration reform is weaker than ever before. Walls, deportations, Muslim travel bans all highlight a harsh political and enforcement climate in the United States.

In the past ten years the government’s goal for legal refugee resettlement has dwindled from a high of 110,000 to 18,000 today, with the stated resolve of the government to further limit arrivals.

Signs of hope:

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has responded to the border crisis of Central American migration with advocacy, programs, accompaniment, and humanitarian aid that links together the sending countries, the countries of passage, and the US border and other locales throughout the country. Called AMMPARO (which means refuge in Spanish and is an acronym for accompanying migrant minors with protection, advocacy, resources, and opportunity), this movement was endorsed and enacted by a 99 percent vote at the 2016 ELCA Churchwide Assembly. At the 2019 Churchwide Assembly, the ELCA, by an overwhelming vote, declared itself a sanctuary denomination. We will explore what that can mean for ELCA congregations, synods, and agencies.

For the past ten years the ELCA has kept its promise that at least half of new ministry starts would be in contexts of immigration and poverty. From the ground up, the ELCA is renewing as a church of immigrants.

The ELCA Global and Domestic Mission Units, which worked together to launch AMMPARO, also collaborated to help build a new Lutheran church in war-torn South Sudan. The missionaries are South Sudanese ELCA pastors from the lost boys generation.

The Southwest Texas Synod is mobilizing an immigration task force to oversee a robust response to the crisis at the Mexican border.

Congregations, institutions, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and ecumenical and interfaith partners are deeply engaged in