immigration – Page 2 – Southwest Conference Blog

It’s Tough to be A Kid in This World

I always want to be careful to investigate emotional stories before I comment. As we now know all too well, fake news is easy to produce and propagate through social media and cable news, and unsurprisingly, it turns out that we can’t believe everything we see on TV and the Internet. I don’t want to spread misinformation, so I want to be cautious about the stories I comment on.

Immigration has always been a controversial issue in the United States, and the emotional energy around immigration has now peaked again. Personally, I believe in smart immigration laws that protect our border and also offer opportunity to those who, like my Scots-Irish ancestors, wanted to build a better life in America. I believe that sensible laws can accomplish both. I don’t believe anyone, conservative or liberal, believes that our current situation is sensible, and as is often the case, it appears that children are the ones who are suffering the most.

When I saw the recent stories about asylum seeking children in the United States being separated from their parents at the border and kept in federal custody, I wanted to believe that it was sensationalism. The most dramatic story so far was told by a mother detained in Texas who claimed that her baby was taken from her while she was breastfeeding. Once these stories were picked up by multiple reputable news agencies, however, I decided to email my senators and urge them to act. If there is even a chance this has been happening during any presidential administration, whether Republican or Democrat, people of conscience simply cannot stand for this treatment of human beings.

On the June 14 edition of CBN news, Franklin Graham, a staunch evangelical supporter of the current president, called the policy “disgraceful” and deemed it a result of politicians kicking the can down the road for decades. No one with any moral compass can pretend that treatment of families is acceptable. The psychological trauma of such an event could affect these children for decades.

Even a cautious treatment of the situation reveals how morally warped it is. The left-leaning Washington Post wrote conservatively about the scene described by Senator Jeff Merkley that he saw that migrant children being kept in fenced-in spaces in McAllen, Texas. The article anemically argued over the semantics of whether or not the wire barriers surrounding the children could be called cages. Those urging compassion toward these families cite that the families are fleeing gang violence in Central America and should be welcomed as asylum seekers, not as prisoners.

The Toledo Blade reported on the recent ICE (Immigrant and Customs Enforcement) raid in Ohio in which 114 immigrants were detained, leaving 60 young children without at least one parent. Catholic Bishop Daniel E. Thomas said local parishes are working to help families affected by what he called ‘this extreme action.’

The most common defense I’ve heard from the roughly 30% of Americans who support this practice is that the parents broke the law. Asylum seekers are not breaking any laws. Even if they were, locking children in metal enclosures with no adult family members to care for them is not justifiable for any reason. This is not foster care. It is taking children away from their guardians and locking the children up. The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Colleen Kraft flatly stated, “It is a form of child abuse.” Again, I believe that immigration should be governed by laws, but is separating screaming children from their crying parents and placenta them in cells the way a moral society should conduct itself?

Immigration is a complex issue, but these children are not the only ones who are suffering. In the United States, 21% of all children live below the poverty level. Depending on the source, between 400 million and 600 million children live in extreme poverty worldwide, lacking basic necessities for a healthy life. Approximately 150 million children in the world are victims of forced child labor. Roughly 25% of adults report being abused as children. The Christian relief organization Compassion International reported that, “Globally in 2014, 1 billion children aged 2–17 years experienced physical, sexual, emotional or multiple types of violence.”

When I am faced with the plight of children in our world, I am personally convinced that more forward-thinking Christians like myself need to revisit the doctrine of sin. A realistic view of evil would open our eyes to the reality of our world and its causes and solutions.

An honest view of sin would also provide further moral grounding and righteous fuel for justice work. Some of my progressive friends are moved by the injustice in our world but at the same time would rather believe that humans are basically good. I agree that we are created to be good, but I don’t ignore the fall and more importantly the daily reality of our world that Genesis chapter 3 attempts to explain.

As much as I would like to agree with them, I simply see too much suffering caused by human beings to believe such a claim. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his sermon “Man’s Sin and God’s Grace,” “There is something wrong with human nature, something basically and fundamentally wrong. A recognition of this fact stands as one of the basic assumptions of our Christian faith.”

Yes, many heart-warming good deeds go unreported by the nightly news, but when compared to the evil committed against the vulnerable of our world, they seem like a band-aid on a hemorrhaging wound. Helping an old lady cross the street is good and needed, but it does not address the hideousness of children being taken from their parents and kept in cages while they scream for their mommies and daddies.

Gandhi’s famous quote: “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members” is an indictment on the whole world. As illustrated by children being kept in cells near our southern border, an honest look at our world reveals that it is fundamentally unjust and evil, and every human being participating in this world bears responsibility.

Some of us deny that we have any role to play, while some of us feel excused by our own indifference. As the great rock band Rush point out in their song “Freewill, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” Living insulated lives in suburban America does not exempt us from seeing what is really happening to children on this planet.

Decrying the injustice he saw within his culture, the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed in Jeremiah 17:9-10:

The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?

“I the Lord search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.”

In a separatist religious culture that believed its food choices religiously defiled them, Jesus taught his disciples in Mark 7:21-23:

“’For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.’”

My sweet little two-year old son loves the Disney movie Moana and watches it over and over, so I’ve probably seen snippets of it at least 75 times. As Moana’s grandmother tells the children in the opening scene, the moment the demigod Maui stole the heart of the fiti, darkness began spreading throughout the world. This is a picture of how the evil within the human heart works its way throughout society, discoloring all human relationships- self-serving politics, economic inequality, racism, war, harassment and rape, child abuse, exploitation, and on and on.

Those of us who are Christians must ask ourselves, “What does Jesus think about the most vulnerable of our society being mistreated?”

Speaking specifically about evil committed against children, in Matthew 18:1:7, we have probably the most hard-hitting words spoken by Jesus in the Gospels:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!”

Tying a rock around someone’s neck and throwing him into the ocean sounds like a mob hit, and for those who mistreat children, Jesus says this would be preferable to facing God’s wrath in the age to come. He makes it crystal clear that God will deal severely with those who harm the most vulnerable in society. With the pain the children of this world are forced to endure, there are an awful lot of people who would be better off looking for millstones.

To “become like little children,” in Jesus’ words, probably means to humble ourselves and embrace learning and news ways of seeing the world, namely God’s way. As a dad, I am painfully aware that children are like little sponges. Their developing brains absorb every word and action they see in their parents, whether we want them to or not. Like a little child, we can choose to absorb God’s concern scriptural concern for justice and righteousness.

Jesus’ instruction to become like little children was given in the context of His disciples wondering who would be greatest in the coming age of God’s kingdom. They wanted status, power, and position. In contrast, Jesus urges them to humble themselves, learn, understand, and serve others instead of jockeying for a superior position.

Jesus’ teaching here is the beginning of addressing the evil in our world. What is required is a change within the human heart, that, like restoring the heart of te fiti, works its way throughout society, shining light where there was darkness and giving life where there was decay. That humbleness and willingness to serve is the only way that the most vulnerable in our world can be relieved of the evil treatment they suffer now.

The more we all become like little children, the easier it will become to be a kid.

Letting Go

guest post by Rev. Dr. Don Longbottom, South Central Conference Minister

The clock reads a little past 5am and I am sitting on the aisle seat of a Southwest flight to one more meeting. As I await take off, I am aware that one of my 4 children, Joshua, is in a 25’ sailboat that he has completely rebuilt over the past year. Josh is, at this moment, crossing the Yucatan Channel that runs between western Cuba and Cancun, Mexico.

The memory of Josh in Superman “underoos” and a cape his mother sewed for him remains crystal clear. Shortly thereafter, carried away by his imagination, he jumped off the top of a first story balcony. Already a tough kid at five, he was fine, but 35 years later, not much has changed.

Maybe 2 years ago, Josh took a leave of absence from the UCC Kansas Oklahoma Conference, and decided, post-divorce, to take a little sail boat and navigate from Kansas down the Mississippi and out into the Gulf of Mexico. Eventually, hugging the coastline because the little sailboat belonged only on a lake, he made his way to Pensacola, Florida. “Dad” was not sanguine concerning this “boondoggle.” Having lost one son to SIDS in 1980, I do not live with the luxury of denial. Awful things can and do happen to good people, people that I love.

Call it “kismet,” “God’s providential care,” or even luck, Josh met some characters in Pensacola who make their way in life refurbishing people’s high dollar sailing boats. Several of these were also “blue water” sailors, free spirits to be sure, who travel the world on the wind, “the breath of God.” Over the last 18 months they helped Josh to learn the mysterious ways of blue water sailing and sailboats. It was during this period that he acquired an almost derelict Bayliner 25 he named “Tish.” As good friends do, and with beer in hand, they gave guidance as he poured himself into the Herculean mission of re-furbishing this vessel.

Continuing his journey, the first big test is crossing from Key West 90 miles to Cuba. This is a far more challenging task than one may realize. Between Florida and Cuba flows a river of water named the Gulf Stream, which is powerful and unforgiving. If you’re not competent you can become caught in the current and find yourself swept away from Cuba and out into the Caribbean where not everyone or everywhere is safe. Weather as well can spoil your crossing as wind and wave can conflict, and when this occurs, 25 feet is not a lot of boat. There is an inherent risk in sailing, especially small boat solo sailing.

My self-serving gift to Josh was a marine equipped Garmin, plus a subscription service that utilizes satellites. I am able to track my child…anywhere in the world. It also provides a limited texting platform as well.

Well as “luck” would have it, checking the tracker mid-voyage to Cuba…the track disappeared from the screen. Dad’s “worst case scenario” mindset immediately kicked in. I imagined a 600-foot tanker plowing through my son and his boat. I have a great imagination. My emergency text to Josh was soon answered, “Calm down Dad, I am fine.” It was a tech glitch and Garmin provided a fix.

The moral of this extended narrative is that your five-year-old in “Underoos” is still that same child in your heart no matter their age. I have tried to teach my children to take a big bite out of life, question authority, chart your own course, fear no man and live your life to the fullest. But, I must admit that it is hard to let go! I am blessed by strong-willed, fiercely independent children who are good human beings and I would not change a thing. But it is hard to let go! The love of a parent (biological or otherwise) for their children is as strong a current as there is anywhere anytime.

Here, at last, is my point. I do not care what party or President. I do not care be it an Obama, a Bush, a Clinton, or a Trump. Any government that would take a child from its mother or father’s arms, (save for abuse) is morally reprehensible. Jesus said, “Let the children come unto me.” He also noted that anyone harming one of these would be better off to have a millstone tied around their neck and thrown into the sea.

Jesus Christ taught us to turn the cheek when struck and I for one believe that he meant what he preached. I believe as well that Jesus practiced non-violence, not as a tactic but as a way of life. Anyone attempting to take my child from me would be the greatest test of faith that I could imagine. Jesus taught us to be non-violent but he did not teach us to be silent. It is time to stand up and to speak out!

As I write these final words, Josh is within easy distance of Las Mujeres. He has done well and is safe. One of his friends from back in Pensacola, Leroy, a true veteran of the sea, watches over Josh’s progress and keeps me aware that all is well.

Thanks be to God for good friends and fair winds.

Not Your Kids

by Abigail Conley

A story flashes across my screen. Philando Castile. Charleena Lyles.

“Not your kids,” a voice says from somewhere inside.

It’s the voice of relief, a promise really, “not your kids.”

June is Pride Month, so there’s an array of rainbow everything on that same screen.

Pictures of happy couples, of families with moms or dads, of chestfeeding and breastfeeding, of pronoun etiquette and label etiquette. Amid those happy pictures, happy shares of stories, there are stories of rejection intermingled.

“Not your kids,” says the same voice from deep inside. I rest assured that my LGBTQ+ kids know they’re safe at church, if nowhere else.

I know the hijabs the little girls wear set them apart from their friends and neighbors. I know the color of their skin does, too. Their families are from Pakistan. I cannot imagine what many of them have been through in their lives. These Muslim children joyfully welcome their Christian neighbors, snuggling up to the adults who are more familiar. I wonder how often they are not safe outside these walls.

“Not your kids,” comes the same voice.

This is the echo of privilege. The fears that accompany so many people do not accompany my kids—the ones from my church, the ones of my own I may have some day.

Children seem to be the great equalizer among people. Children are easier to play with and easier to talk to. They seem to more easily embrace any adult willing to play with them. They worry less about language barriers. My Spanish is even perfect for hanging out with preschool kids, where I can quiz them on colors and shapes.

I remember a plea made in my own denomination that stopped some of the fighting about LGBTQ+ welcome: our kids are dying.

Even the naysayers realized that’s the worst sort of pain.

The voice comes often, “Not your kids.”

If it’s not your kids, it’s easy to forget the sort of desperation that comes with it is your kids. It’s the kind of desperation that dragged Jairus from his home to find a man he’d only heard about. It’s the kind of desperation that made him pull Jesus along with him through the city streets, to a house where mourning had already begun. It’s the desperation that will do anything to save a child’s life.

“Not your kids,” will echo, again. Our privilege will remind us of the fears we don’t have for our children. I wonder, can we learn the answer, “But they’re somebody’s kids”?

The Silence in the Shattered Glass

guest post by Andria Davis, Acting Senior Minister at Church of the Beatitudes in Phoenix, Arizona

In order to enter the main buildings of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, a visitor must walk down the Avenue of the Righteous Among Nations.

Situated in the middle of a large garden, this tree-lined walkway and the surrounding landscape commemorates those many non-Jews who risked their lives and their livelihoods in order to save Jews from the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.

As you walk down the Avenue and stroll reflectively through the winding paths that weave through the surrounding garden, you may become overwhelmed with awe as you realize that each of the more then 2,000 trees that line the paths were planted to commemorate a unique person, and that each tree represents the life of one who worked diligently and under great threat to save the lives of countless others.

And as you walk through the garden, you may become overwhelmed with awe as you learn the stories of some of the thousands of names engraved on the stone walls that form the many coves and inlets, and when you hear the many stories of the ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

If you are like me, you may become overwhelmed with awe as you look around you, and you cannot see through the trees and benches and the signs and engravings, through those more than 25,000 markers commemorating those who worked diligently, ceaselessly to save the Jews from certain extermination.

I imagine that of many who walk down the Avenue of the Righteous Among Nations or who take time to sit with names that fill the garden walls, that they are as much overwhelmed by the stories of those remembered there, as they are by their own answers to the question: in the same situation, would I have done the same?

Would I have opened my door to that frantic knock in the middle of the night? Would I have opened that hidden passage in my house? Would I have secretly employed those fleeing for their lives and would I have arranged for their escape? Would I have said yes when the call came, or would I have said no?

A few years ago, as I sat in that Garden, I wanted to so badly to say that I too would have been counted among these who risked their lives to choose good instead of evil.

I wanted so badly to know that when faced with an impossible decision between my life and the lives of many others, the pursuit of safety for the many would have been the only pursuit I could follow.

I so badly wanted to be assured that when faced with the decision between what is right and what is wrong, I would always choose the hard path of righteousness and integrity over the easy path of complacency and status quo.

Above all, I wanted to know with conviction that when the world goes to pieces and all goodness, and all peace, and all love seems gone, that I would follow unwaveringly in the way of Christ, who said as he did in today’s passage from the Gospel of Mark, that it is better to sacrifice yourself in the name of justice, than to sacrifice another in the pursuit unreflective, unjust harmony.

In today’s passage, Jesus offers us a black and white way of living. He offers us a stark reminder of the obligations of one who calls him or herself a Christian.

Hear his words:

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where the worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.” – Mark 9:38-50

For the faithful who strive to follow in the way of Christ, this is a black and white edict that comes to us who live in a much greyer world.

It comes to us in a world where right and wrong do not always appear so cut and dry and where our convictions sometimes have unintended consequences.

It comes to us in world where the small and individual injustice can build like a cancer, growing within us without our notice, that then spreads into the very blood and bones of our societal, religious and civic systems, unable to be amputated from us as we would a sick limb.

As you sit in the Garden of the Righteous Among Nations, among the trees and plaque commemorating the 25,000 brave souls who risked it all, life and limb, to save others, it’s hard to grapple with the thought that we ourselves might not have been so brave.

On the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, there is a quote from a named Martin Niemoller, who was a Lutheran minister in Germany during the Holocaust.

As a young man, he distinguished himself in the Navy as an officer and commander of a German U-Boat during World War 1. He was proud of his country and his service, but after Germany’s defeat in the first world war, he found himself at political odds with Weimar government.

Forced to give up his U-Boat and his office, he, like many Germans, felt like the changing government had abandoned him and all he stood for.

Disenfranchised, he sympathized with and supported the rising Nazi government.

Niemoller went on to pursue seminary and found himself in a prominent church in Berlin, where he was widely supported and his anti-Semitic sermons were well attended.

Quickly, however, Niemoller’s support for the Nazi government began to wane.

But It wasn’t the dangerous and xenophobic policies that were being solidified under the Nazi regime that ignited in him the spark of resistance, it was, instead, the Nazi interference in the life of the church and the removal rights of Christian of Jewish decent that caused him to take action.

It short, it was only when his own rights began to be infringed upon, that he spoke up.

Regardless of his motivations, his actions against the Nazi government were impactful and led to his arrest, apparently under orders from Hitler himself. Niemoller the spent the rest of the war imprisoned in concentration camps.

Unlike millions of others, Martin Niemoller survived the war imprisoned by the Nazis. His survival allowed him to live on into late life as an ardent anti-war activist, who spoke with ferocity about the importance of not remaining silent in the face of injustice.

His most famous quote, which is known in a few different forms, is inscribed on the Holocaust memorial in Boston. It reads as follows:

“They came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time, no one was left to speak up.”

I saw this quote shared widely this past Wednesday.

Among other things, it was the 78^th anniversary of one of the defining moments of the Second World War, an event that is widely understood to be the beginning of the Holocaust as we know it.

On November 9^th, 1938 Germans, fueled by anti-Jewish sentiment and supported by Nazi-issued propaganda, went on a rampage of terror that specifically targeted Jewish business, synagogue, and Jews themselves.

According to Nazi totals, 8,000 buildings across Germany were vandalized and defaced with anti-Jewish slogans and slurs. Nearly 100 Jews were murdered. Glass from widows strewn the streets, giving the event the name Kristallnacht – Crystal Night – the Night of Shattered Glass.

Two days later, on November 11, 30,000 thousand Jews were rounded up and deported to concentration camps at Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen.

This act brought to the surface the reign of terror that had already existed in Germany, and would soon be on the forefront of the minds of people across the world.

They say that hindsight is 20/20 – that when we know we now know, we can look back and feel confident about what we would have and could have and should have done.

That when we look back on that day, 78 years ago, we can proclaim boldly that had we known…

Had we known that this is what the future held,

We would have stood up.

We would have spoken up.

We would have put our bodies in between rocks and widows,

and used our selves as human shields.

We would have opened our homes and our safe spaces to our brothers and sisters and we would have gathered, arm in arm, linked in front of the rail cars, the tanks and the trucks to do everything in our power and anything at all, to reorient the world toward justice.

It is that 20/20 vision in hindsight tells that it would have been us, doing just what Jesus called on us to do:

That if we had been there, on that pivotal day 78 years ago, it would have been us giving up our hands and our feet and our eyes that our brothers and sisters might have a future in which they could continue feel and walk and see.

It would have been us.

We would have fought and screamed and risen up and joined together.

It would have been us.

We would not have stayed silent.

But two days later 30,000 Jews were rounded up and deported to concentration camps. Over the next six years, millions more would take that same journey. Millions would die.

Martin Niemoller was a Lutheran Minister who devoted his life to follow in the way of Christ. And yet even as a follower of Christ, an ordained minister, he felt sympathy for the ideologies of the Nazi government – ideologies that tended toward pointing a finger rather than lending a hand; ideologies that would exclude people who thought and acted and believed differently than the prevailing power; ideologies that said that ‘whoever is not with us is against us,’ rather than the ideology of Jesus who declares “whoever is not against us, is with us.”

It wasn’t until the communities of which he was a part and Niemoller himself came under attack by those ideologies, that he began to take action against them.

For his life following the war, Niemoller is said to have lived with the guilt of not taking a stand against those forces of evil until they came knocking on his door, when all the networks and systems that were designed protect him and those around him, had been stripped away.

“They came for the Communists,” he wrote, “and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time, no one was left to speak up.”

On Wednesday morning, I read Niemoller’s quote attached to an article depicting the events of Kristallnacht, 78 years ago. By Wednesday evening, I had read the poem more times than I could count, shared not in response to the historical past, but to the real and pressing present, shared in response to events that had happened that very day.

She was shopping in Walmart. A woman came up to her and ripped her Hijab off her head. “this is not allowed anymore, so go hang yourself with it around your neck not on your head.”

They came for my Muslim brothers and sisters,

but I did not speak out because I am not a Muslim

They woke up to a note on their car. “I can’t wait for your ‘marriage’ to be over turned. Gay families burn in hell.” Signed ‘#Godbless.

They came for my LGBTQ Brothers and Sisters

but I did not speak up because I am not LGBTQ

He came out to his car to find all four tires slashed.

She found hers covered in graffiti. “Go back to Africa you N word, you B word.”

A black baby doll was left in the gutter with a noose around its neck.

They came for our Black brothers and sisters

but I did not speak up because I am not black.

She was walking to math class at her high school

She was pumping gas

She was getting coffee

She was heading home

“Why aren’t you gone yet?”

“Build a wall”

“Grab her by the…”

“I should kill you right now, you’re just a waste of air.”

They came for our sisters, our mothers, our daughters, our wives.

But I didn’t speak up because I am not a woman.

I didn’t speak up, not for my Muslim brothers and sisters, not for my Black brothers and sister, not for LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

I did not speak up for my immigrant brothers and sisters or my disable brothers and sisters. I did not speak up when it mattered the most.

As Christians, we must remember: they also came for Christ.

It wasn’t because he expressed a theological doctrine or dogma that ruffled the feathers of the powers that be, but because he spoke out for his brothers and sisters:

For the tax collectors and widows,

The prostitutes and the impoverished.

They came for Christ because he dared to say, “you matter” to those that society had pushed aside.

They came for Christ, but by then, Christ knew it was too late.

Jesus gave himself to the cross that no others should have to live and die as he did – that in his sacrifice, he could offer up a different view of the world – one in which all of God’s beloved creation lives in peaceful harmony befitting the kingdom of God.

But in his sacrifice, he did not absolve us, his followers, of our God given purpose in life and faith, that which is our salt and our saltiness.

He did not absolve us of our call to build around us world in which silence in the face of injustice cannot and does not prevail, where the evils xenophobia, homophobia, racism, and sexism are finally and eternally amputated from who and what we are; and a world in which all people are showered with the grace and dignity that is required to be shown all children of God.

You are the salt of the earth, he says.

But if salt has lost its saltiness, what good is then, but to thrown on the ground and trampled under foot. What good is it, if we, as Christians, do not share with the world our Christ-given call to stand behind and fight for our convictions of justice and peace?

You are the light of the world, he says. But what good is it if we should hide our light under a basket so that the world cannot see it and be shrouded in darkness. What good is it, if we do not illuminate a path forward with visions of love and hope?

How will you share your light? How will you season the world with the saltiness of God’s love?

My friends, we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

We are the voices that ring out in the silence.

We are people who stand up to show the world that the Kingdom of God is real, and that peace and justice and hope and love are at its foundation.

It’s time to stand up. It’s time to speak out. It’s time to let our light shine. Amen.

Hope in Solving Border Issues

by Ron Cammel; a freelance writer and journalist. These are his reflections after participating in the Southwest Conference/United Church of Christ Border Immersion and Convergence events with his partner, Designated Conference Minister Bill Lyons.

Last weekend I witnessed American citizens join with undocumented immigrants to demand humane treatment for migrants. I heard stories about migrants who tried to escape violence or extreme poverty and then were jailed in the U.S. and deported. I heard stories from tearful migrants who were trying to reunite with their fathers or husbands who were locked in detention centers unsure of their fate.

I haven’t paid enough attention to the issues of illegal migration, refuge, deportations and border security. Migration is probably the world’s largest humanitarian crisis right now. Arizona is a hot spot. Now that I have connected more faces and stories to what I casually followed in the news, I find myself questioning the conventional thinking about securing borders and controlling immigrant numbers.

Also affecting my thinking is a place: Nogales, Arizona, where a formidable wall divides the city from another part of the same community in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. A military-like presence of towers, huge lights and guards is nearly inescapable on the American side. It’s a lovely town in its own character-filled way, though not wealthy. The people seem friendly and cheerful. The tacos are awesome. The water, drinkable.

The day I visited, Mexican children stuck their smiling faces between the rusty steel beams of the wall, hoping for any reaction from those nearby. In the evening, young people sat on each side conversing. Traffic moved steadily through the one border crossing, a gateway between nations but a single road connecting an oddly divided community.

The wall continued forever in both directions through the desert, over the scrubby hills and down the grassy valleys.

I know some of the reasons for trying to “protect” the nation’s borders this way, but soon after I reached that wall I found myself praying for its destruction. It was like a subconscious reaction. The wall is so wrong, so anti-community, so anti-peace. I envisioned the city with a linear park, instead, along the border – a wavy pathway meandering both sides where children could run along and shout, “I’m in America! I’m in Mexico! I’m in America! I’m in Mexico!”

I envisioned the grey-green desert without its current blockade, where wildlife could move freely to maintain healthy ecosystems.

And I envisioned border residents moving more freely, as I assume they did before the wall went up. (I learned of ranchers unable to hunt now and homes stuck south of the wall but in the U.S.!)

Despite the wall’s imposition, it doesn’t work well. Yes, it does keep many people out. Illegal crossings are way down after many controls – sensors, more guards, more walls, etc. – were added in the past 10 years. But many people still make it to America. Drugs are transported. Human trafficking continues.

The wall fails to promote any American value, such as freedom, human dignity, equality, inalienable rights. We’ve spent $132 billion on securing the Mexican border the past decade to promote a rigid idea of security and have not addressed the reasons people are willing to leave their families and homes, risk arrest, risk dehydration and heat exhaustion and live in practical hiding in a foreign country. The security efforts have led to about 200 deaths per year in the desert. Others live in fear and are unable to reach their potential as a person because of the deportation risk.

Congress even waived 37 laws so contractors could extend the wall without pesky hindrances such as protecting water, respecting land rights and saving archaeological sites.

Could some of that $132 billion have been better spent to solve the root problems? Peace-making and true problem-solving require creative minds.

I learned last weekend about the sanctuary movement. Similar to the Underground Railroad from slavery days, it helps desperate people find work and shelter. Sometimes it helps them get to Canada, where they can live more freely. Churches, colleges and even entire cities take part. There is nothing illegal about these activities. We have come a long way from the Fugitive Slave Act.

I learned of other creative efforts to help our neighbors in need, or “the least of these.” These efforts contrast with actions like sending undocumented immigrants caught in domestic disputes to a land they barely know anymore, and taking young men caught in drug offenses to the border and ordering them to cross over where drug workers will seize upon their vulnerability. I learned of one deported man who didn’t even speak Spanish – his parents had failed to do the paperwork when he was little, and now a crime that would land a fine for most resulted in banishment from his homeland.

“Pax” and “esperanza,” someone painted on a wooden cross that activists tied to the wall. Peace and hope. There is much hope for change. Even when we can’t seem to get away from the word “illegals,” as if a human being can be reduced in such a way, a movement is stirring to preserve dignity and to challenge the powers that be to act more humanely and morally responsible.

Love Beyond Borders

by Tyler Connoley

Last week, I shared a Bible story that warns us what happens when we allow fear to drive our response to immigrants and strangers. Today, I’d like to share another story, this time of the ways our lives are enriched by welcoming refugees.

The book of Ruth begins with a famine in the town of Bethlehem in Judah. A woman named Naomi and her husband and two sons become economic refugees, fleeing to Moab to make a better life for themselves. Two Moabite women marry Naomi’s sons. Unfortunately, the sons die along with Naomi’s husband, so Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth find themselves once again fleeing — now economic refugees in Judah.

This is where the story gets interesting. Naomi is too old to work, and Ruth can’t find work because of her nationality. (Moabites in Judah were sort of like Mexicans in Texas.) However, there was a work-to-welfare program Ruth could take advantage of. Foreigners in Judah were allowed to go through the fields after the harvest, and collect any leftovers. There was a man named Boaz who was kind and honorable, and intentionally left some of the harvest for the poor and hungry. He also didn’t allow his workers to harass the people gleaning in the fields, not even beautiful Moabite women who all Judeans thought were sexually promiscuous.

Of course, its hard to live on welfare, and Naomi wanted to make a better life for herself and her daughter-in-law. Knowing Judean culture, Naomi had an idea how Ruth could marry the wealthy Boaz. She told Ruth to go to the place where the men threshed the wheat. After the harvest, the men partied. So, when Boaz was full of food and wine and had gone to sleep, Ruth was to sneak in, uncover his feet, and lie down next to him. (For this story to make any sense at all, you have to know that “feet” is a common euphemism in biblical Hebrew. Feet aren’t feet in this story.) When Boaz awoke, he would make assumptions about what happened after he drank too much, and being a kind and honorable man he would put a ring on it.

So, that’s what Ruth does. That’s what Boaz does. And they live happily ever after.

One of the lessons of this tale is that refugees become our families. When Naomi and her boys move to Moab, they join with Moabite families through marriage. When Ruth and Naomi move to Judah, they become part of Boaz’s family. The point is emphasized in the final verse of Ruth, when we’re told Ruth and Boaz’s son Obed was King David’s grandfather. While it’s tempting to think of immigrants only in terms of what economic benefits they can offer right now (and economic refugees rarely present an economic benefit in this equation), we never know who their grandchildren might be. This is certainly true in the Southwest Conference, where the Governor of New Mexico is the granddaughter of a migrant farm worker.

In our current political environment — when folks talk about “anchor babies” and immigrants on welfare — its also important to notice the ways in which Ruth needed the Judean culture of hospitality to survive. The biblical law that created the welfare system in Judah specifically names widows, orphans, and immigrants as people who need its benefits. This wasn’t a flaw in the system, but a feature. The same is true in our country. Sometimes economic refugees need a helping hand. And even if they’re an economic drain at first, they’re still our future family.

Finally, for Christians, the story of Ruth reminds us of God’s love that knows no borders. That’s because she’s named in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew. Whatever you think about the economics of welcoming refugees, or the ways immigrants sometimes have to use our own prejudices to get ahead (for example, Moabite women and “feet”), the importance of welcoming the stranger can’t be overemphasized. Literally, according to Matthew, without Ruth there would be no Jesus — and that’s the ultimate story of love beyond borders.

image credit: Tree of Life sculpture by Roman Boed

Are we Still the “Land of the Pilgrim’s Pride”?

by Ken McIntosh

I remember when I was a child and Thanksgiving was all about the Pilgrims. At school we watched “Mouse on the Mayflower” and grainy film reels with the Mayflower II sailing past Plymouth Rock. We made conical Pilgrim hats out of different colors of construction paper and big yellow paper buckles that went on our shoes. At home, Mom always made a ceremony of setting out a large wax sculpture Pilgrim couple—the centerpiece of our table.

Now it seems that Thanksgiving weekend is all about ‘Black Friday’ morning sales and college football. Pilgrims? The Mayflower? Meh…not so much (the exception this year being a pair of revisionist histories on TV).

On previous Thanksgivings I’ve thought that the eclipse of the Plymouth Plantation myth was probably good and merited. For Native people, it was another step toward the end of their relationship with the land. Already wracked by European disease, the treaty that Chief Massasoit made with the Pilgrims ended in the time of that chief’s son Philip; the ‘King Philip’s War’ resulted in over 5,000 deaths, and three-quarters of the slain were Natives.

A decade ago I had a strange experience while visiting Plymouth Plantation. Part of that historical recreation is a Native village staffed by Wampanoag tribespeople who dress in 17th century attire. A visitor to the village addressed one of the Native interpreters and said “You look like just like real Indians.” The man replied, with admirable lack of irritation in his voice “I am a member of the Wampanoag tribe, the original people of this land, who met with the European settlers.” And the tourist said, “Oh, I get it. You’re acting like a real Indian.” The Native interpreter continued to educate the man in a polite manner, but the whole exchange was painful to watch.

More recently, in Flagstaff, my wife was away for the Thanksgiving Holiday and I had to stay for a church function, so a Navajo friend invited me to his sister’s house for turkey dinner. I was the only white person at a large gathering of my host’s extended family, and thus the butt end of good-natured white-people jokes. The irony of it all was not lost on me.

So, considering the sad history of my ancestors’ conquest of this country, celebrating Pilgrim pride didn’t seem like such a brilliant idea. At the same time, it was hard to escape the influence of the Pilgrims once I became the pastor of a Congregational church. Of the 102 settlers who came from Holland on the Mayflower, 35 were members of the Puritan Separatist Church. They fled England where the State Church forbade their manner of worship for refuge in Holland where there was broad religious toleration. Fearing that they would lose their cultural ways, they then chose the risk-filled voyage to New England, a region chosen because they mistakenly believed it to be uninhabited.

Perhaps the most abiding aspect of Pilgrim heritage in the UCC today is part of Pastor John Robinson’s farewell message of 1620, in which he said “if God should reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I am very confident the Lord has more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy word.” He clarified by lamenting that Lutherans proscribed their beliefs to the writings of Luther and Calvinists to the writings of Calvin. Today, the UCC is characterized by the phrase “God is still speaking.”

This year, however, I’ve decide that I do want to re-appropriate the Pilgrim story. It has abiding value—or at least value for 2015 and the foreseeable future. I say this for two reasons. First, the story of the Pilgrims and First Nations people of that land cooperating for their mutual benefit is a true one—albeit short-lived. The Wampanoags showed Europeans how to grow crops and survive; Europeans in turn brought crops and technology that was helpful for the Natives.

That peace was short-lived. I think of it like the 1914 Christmas truce in the trenches of WWI. We know that was followed by the hells of Verdun and poison gas attacks, but at least for a brief time it happened and we can still be inspired by that glimmer of peace. Likewise, we have the example of the daring risk that this Native community took by welcoming strange and dubious-seeming people, and trying to seek a future of mutual benefit. At a time when America seems to be growing more xenophobic, this beginning attempt at mutual trust may still serve as a positive example. Their betrayal by our race can also be an abiding cautionary lesson.

But there’s another ‘Pilgrim lesson’ that I had drummed in during grade school, and I think that is the most important lesson of the Mayflower journey for America today. Countless schoolchildren were taught during the 1960s, ‘The Pilgrims came to these shores seeking religious freedom, and that is why we continue to value everyone’s religious freedom.’ That story can be historically critiqued—it may be that the Mayflower Separatists only valued Christian religious freedom, and we know that the Puritan groups who came in succeeding waves were intolerant of religious dissenters in their own ranks. Yet the elementary school lesson was as clear as it was succinct: our ancestors came here because they wanted to worship freely, and we should pass that privilege on to others.

So when, a few years later, I saw a group of men installing our neighbors’ swimming pool, and they all stopped their work at the same time and bowed down on mats and prayed, I was not shy to approach them afterward and ask “Why did you do that?” And when they told me they were Muslims and they prayed toward Mecca five times a day, I said “Neat!” Up to that point my experience of religious diversity was Methodists, Lutherans, Unitarians…and one Jew. But I was happy to see a new kind of religion in my town…part of an unfolding story of religious freedom that defined us as Americans.

I have to wonder; all these people wanting to refuse new neighbors because they came from another culture and they might follow a different religion: were they not told the story of the Pilgrims? If they were told the same American legend that I received, they somehow missed the whole point.

“Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From ev’ry mountainside
Let freedom ring!”
…for everyone who wants to live in safety, and to worship as they please. Let it ring!

Photo is with permission of my publisher Anamchara Books

Living in Sodom

by Tyler Connoley

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how similar my country is to Sodom. However, not for the reasons you might think.

We remember Sodom as the town that hated strangers so much they almost raped and killed two angels who came to visit. They also threatened Lot, Abraham’s nephew and a recent immigrant. In the Biblical narrative, the Sodomites are the ultimate xenophobes, intent on secure borders, threatening monstrous acts against those they should have been welcoming.

(Note: If you think the story of Sodom has to do with gay sex, please go and read Genesis 19. You can also read the book I coauthored with Jeff Miner about homosexuality and the Bible.

What we forget is why the Sodomites might have been so afraid of strangers. For that story, you have to go back to Genesis 14. In that story, we’re told the kings of Sodom were convinced to join a coalition of the willing, including neighbor Gomorrah and three other cities, in an attack on the cities of the north. However, the battle was actually a wild goose chase (or maybe a trap?). When the kings were away, the northern armies swept into Sodom and Gomorrah, ransacked the cities, raped women and children and men, and carried everyone off as slaves. Since this is our sacred Scripture, we mostly remember this as the time our hero Abraham saved the day by rescuing his nephew Lot — along with all the other Sodomites who were captured — and all ended well.

The happy ending, hides the trauma that preceded it. All of the people of Sodom found themselves carried off and brutalized. Who knows how many died? Who knows what they suffered? Who knows how they continued to carry the trauma of that event for years after?

Genesis 14 is the story of Sodom’s 9/11.

Now, we understand why the people of Sodom would act the way they did in Genesis 19, when two strangers came to their city and ended up staying at the house of that newcomer Lot. When we read the story, we see two angels and our hero Abraham’s nephew. The people of Sodom saw a possible spy ring or a potential terrorist cell. Knowing that, we can see how they thought they were justified in the way they treated these threatening strangers.

This is why I compare the United States to Sodom. Living in this country, I’m well-acquainted with an atmosphere of fear and trauma that leads people to condone terrible acts. The story of Sodom is a warning to us when we slam our doors to refugees, or condone extra-judicial drone strikes, or cheer on war, or yawn at the thought of Guantanamo Bay, or accept any manner of evil because we’re afraid of another 9/11 and think our government needs to keep us safe.

The Sodomites were not monsters. They were people like you and me. I’m sure they had lovely houses, and above-average children, but that’s not what we remember them for. We remember that they let their fear and trauma get the best of them, and they did monstrous things as a result. Let’s learn from their lesson, and not be Sodomites.

Stop Operation Streamline

by Rev. Randy Mayer and Christian Ramirez

(originally published on thehill.com; reposted with permission)

The clank of chains resonates through the federal courtroom in Tucson, Arizona, as a group of 70 fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers shuffle along with shackles on their ankles linked to handcuffs on their wrists. This was just one of hundreds of draconian, rapid-fire mass trials of individuals, most of whom are only trying to reunite with their families in the U.S. or flee persecution in their home countries. This is the cruel and costly process of criminalizing migration, the most egregious form of which is known as Streamline.

While this version only happens in Tucson, brave people who make the decision to risk life and limb to provide for their families or find safe haven are now charged with illegal entry and illegal reentry nationwide. Nonetheless, the district of Arizona ranks second in the nation for immigration-related criminal convictions.

When lay leaders from the Good Shepherd United Church of Christ, a member- organization of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, first observed these proceedings a few years ago, they were sickened by what they witnessed. Since then, it has become our spiritual obligation to bring fellow people of faith and conscience to the courtroom to be a quiet presence of solidarity for the migrants who are corralled through this unjust process. Over the years, we have watched the proceedings become worse, with higher charges and longer sentences. Often the scene is unbearable as the hopes of 70 families being reunited or finding safety from persecution unravel with the word “Culpable” or “Guilty” muttered by the individuals to the Judge.

Migrants referred for these mass hearings meet with their court appointed lawyers for fewer than 10 minutes and make hasty, pressured decisions that impact their ability to reunite with their families and pursue new opportunities. By the glossy look in their eyes it is clear that most, if not all the people facing charges in the courtroom, have not had their rights properly explained and do not realize they are being subjected to a system of excessive punishment. Yet this is the purpose of Operation Streamline, to move so quickly that no one can object, to keep individuals in the dark, and to erode the 5th amendment of the U.S. Constitution which upholds due process as a fundamental American value.

These costly, unjust prosecutions for those hoping to be reunited with family or seeking safety are lauded as a successful deterrent strategy by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and other policymakers. If politicians took the time to visit border communities and meet eye-to-eye with these family members, as many of the humanitarian groups such as the Samaritans, Kino Border Initiative, and No More Deaths do on a daily basis, they would see how these proceedings violate our nation’s basic principles of fairness and justice. A 2013 study by University of Arizona students, In the Shadow of the Wall, found that people will face any hardship to reunite with their families. Love and family ties know no borders, and criminalizing the basic human right to reunite with loved ones is shameful.

A recent Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General Report on Streamline found that Border Patrol is unable to demonstrate that Streamline prosecutions deter unauthorized migration. The report also found that Border Patrol may be referring asylum seekers for criminal prosecution, a clear violation of the government’s obligations under both domestic and international law.

Operation Streamline has also drastically increased the profits of corporations that run both federal prisons and immigrant detention centers, some of which have recently started to jail mothers and children fleeing violence and persecution. These private prisons receive about $3 billion each year in revenue. Although the recent OIG report noted that government authorities do not know how many millions of taxpayers dollars are used to fund Streamline, estimates from the U.S. Marshals Service indicate that the incarceration costs in Tucson alone amount to $63 million per year.

In July, more than 170 civil rights, human rights, and faith-based organizations urged U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to end this costly, ineffective, and immoral program that erodes due process, violates human rights standards, and contributes to the unethical practice of mass incarceration for a profit in this country. Communities in the border region and faith communities from around the country are united in saying that this program needs to end.

Mayer is pastor of The Good Shepherd Church of Christ in Sahuarita, Arizona. Ramirez is director of the Human Rights Program at the Alliance San Diego and staffs the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium and the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

What I Learned About Peace From an Imam

by Ryan Gear

The recent photo of two-year old Aylan Kurdi’s body washed up on the beach in Turkey shocked the world. Human beings with any sense of decency were cut to the heart at the loss of this little boy and the thousands of other children and adults he represents who ave been killed in recent Middle East conflict.

As European countries rightly welcome Muslim refugees from Syria, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant fervor is rearing it’s ugly head once again. A nationalist party in Britain released a fear-mongering anti-Muslim/antiimmigration video featuring wild math about birthrates and a ludicrous doomsday ending. Closer to home, we are witnessing a level of both anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim nationalism in our current presidential campaign that has never been higher.

With irresponsible and even dangerous rhetoric increasing, we cannot afford to remain silent any longer. It is past time for all peace-loving Christians to stand up and speak out loudly in favor of empathy and hospitality toward the immigrant and the Muslim. This is not simply a “liberal” cause. The need for Christians to speak out is based on this undeniable fact– the most vitriolic and xenophobic language in America is not coming from Muslims; it is coming from far right wing nationalists who claim to be Christians. The Muslims I know speak out for peace regularly but find it hard to gain media coverage.

This past May, I scheduled a series of sermons at One Church entitled Religions of the World. During that series, I invited a rabbi and an imam to speak on Judaism and Islam respectively. They both represented their faiths very well.

Prior to the series, I had been looking forward to having lunch with a local imam named Khalil. He speaks regularly at interfaith gatherings and flatly condemns all violence in the name of Islam. He is one of the moderate Muslims who is accused by right wing persons of not speaking out enough against terrorism. Like many American Muslim leaders, however, he speaks out against violence continually. It’s just that he has trouble getting his message into the news media.

I suspect that the cable news channels that complain that Muslim leaders do not speak out rarely invite Muslim leaders on air to speak out. After all, if you invite Muslim leaders on air to condemn violence, you can’t induce fear and rage in your viewers by claiming that Muslim leaders won’t speak out. Fear and rage drive up ratings, but what kind of ratings do calm, reasonable Muslim voices get you? Depending on the news outlet, inviting them to speak might drive away viewers.

Khalil and I had a very pleasant, thoroughly enjoyable conversation over a twoand-a-half hour lunch. We shared stories of how we entered the ministry and what our respective religion means to us. To him, Islam means peace. He beautifully articulated how Islam provides a holistic way of life, and I was struck by how similar it sounded to a Christian’s explanation of why she or he wants to follow Jesus. We joked about the common experiences that clergypersons have, regardless of their religion. As our server kept pouring fresh cups of coffee, we discovered that we have a great deal in common. I now consider Khalil a friend.

After our lunch, I drove home and saw the headlines that ISIS had burned Jordanian pilot Moaz alKasasbeh alive. ISIS commits revolting, brutal murders on video in order to recruit more terrorists and provoke endless conflict with the West. As you know, a war with the West is part of their fundamentalist, apocalyptic fantasy.

Curious to see all opinions, I typed foxnews.com into my browser and read an article titled “ISIS Burns Jordanian Pilot: Mr. Obama, when will you get angry about radical Islam?” In two sentences, the author called for vengeance and dehumanized the enemy. “America wants to know, when is President Obama going to get angry? When is he going to slam his fist on the desk, demand vengeance, put aside his incessant campaigning and call out the Islamic radicals of ISIS as the animals they are?”

I support thoughtful U.S. intervention on behalf of innocent people, but on a news outlet known for catering to conservative Christians, what does angry, dehumanizing vengeance have to do with the teaching of Jesus?

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45)

Just as famously, Paul (in Romans 12:19) referenced Deuteronomy 32:35: “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” The King James translation is still the best remembered, saying, “’Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ saith the Lord.”

I believe in protecting the innocent from terrorists like ISIS, but this opinion piece and much of the news coverage of Muslims is an example of violent, vengeful, dehumanizing war rhetoric that is diametrically opposed to the teaching of Jesus.

And do we even need to remind everyone of the recent dehumanizing statements toward Latino immigrants by a presidential candidate?

Progressive Christians speak out regularly in defense of peace-loving Muslims in our communities. Following the inflammatory anti-Muslim protest in Phoenix this past spring, we saw how beautiful solidarity can be between Christians and Muslims.

Progressive Christians also speak against xenophobia and urge immigration reform that welcomes immigrants into the United States as though we were welcoming Jesus, Himself (Matthew 25:35).

This, however, can no longer be only a progressive Christian cause. Now, I think it’s time to ask a different question:

When are moderate Christians going to stand up and condemn this kind of unChristian, vengeful rhetoric toward immigrants and Muslims?

Millions of Christians consume xenophobic and inflammatory “news” on a daily basis. When a prominent piece such as this one goes unchallenged by a large number of moderate Christians, I have to ask, where does their allegiance lie—with a cable news channel or with Jesus Christ?

The fact is, my lunch with an imam was far more peaceloving than the opinion piece I read afterward. Who has the inside track on making peace?

Ryan Gear is the founding pastor of One Church, a nondenominational progressive church in Chandler, Arizona. He is the founder of openmindedchurch.org, a growing national directory of churches willing to wrestle with questions and doubts. Ryan writes regularly for religion blogs such as OnFaith and Convergent Books and has been featured in Real Clear Religion. Ryan also serves as an initiator in Convergence U.S., a national movement bringing together forward-thinking Catholics, Evangelicals, and mainline Protestants, along with ethnic and peace churches and other willing colleagues.

Follow Ryan on Twitter at twitter.com/ryangear77.