Dear Friends,
Thank you to the faith communities who filed a lawsuit this week against the US government. You have given us HOPE! We stand with you in solidarity and will support you in any way we are able. Join us this Sunday in worship as we celebrate this lawsuit and its articulation of our Biblical vision of caring for and welcoming immigrants, strangers and "the least of these." The lawsuit begins with these inspired words,
"Plaintiffs in this challenge are 12 national denominational bodies and representatives, 4 regional denominational bodies, and 11 denominational and interdenominational associations, all rooted in the Jewish and Christian faiths. Plaintiffs and their members are Baptist, Brethren, Conservative Jewish, Episcopalian, Evangelical, Mennonite, Quaker, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Reconstructionist Jewish, Reform Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, United Methodist, Zion Methodist, and more. They bring this suit unified on a fundamental belief: Every human being, regardless of birthplace, is a child of God worthy of dignity, care, and love.1 Welcoming the stranger, or immigrant, is thus a central precept of their faith practices. 2. The Torah lays out this tenet 36 times, more than any other teaching: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love them as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). In the Gospels, Jesus Christ not only echoes this command, but self-identifies with the stranger: “For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, I was a stranger, and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35). Plaintiffs’ religious scripture, teaching, and traditions offer clear, repeated, and irrefutable unanimity on their obligation to embrace, serve, and defend the refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants in their midst without regard to documentation or legal status. https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2025/02/Mennonite-Church-USA-v.-U.S.-Department-of-Homeland-Security-Complaint.pd
MORE GOOD NEWS! In a recent headline in The Catholic Reporter, Feb.11, 2025, by Christopher White, “Pope decries 'major crisis' of Trump's mass deportation plans, rejects Vance's theology” “ Pope Francis has written a sweeping letter to the U.S. bishops decrying the "major crisis" triggered by President Donald Trump's mass deportation plans and explicitly rejecting Vice President JD Vance's attempts to use Catholic theology to justify the administration's immigration crackdown.
"The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness," reads the pope's Feb. 11 letter.
Since taking office on Jan. 20, the Republican president has taken more than 20 executive actions aimed at overhauling the U.S. immigration system, including plans to ratchet up the deportations of undocumented migrants and halt the processing of asylum seekers.
The pope's letter, published by the Vatican in both English and Spanish, offered his solidarity with U.S. bishops who are engaged in migration advocacy and draws a parallel between Jesus' own experience as a migrant and the current geopolitical situation.
"Jesus Christ … did not live apart from the difficult experience of being expelled from his own land because of an imminent risk to his life, and from the experience of having to take refuge in a society and a culture foreign to his own," writes Francis…………The pontiff also goes on to clearly reject efforts to characterize the migrants as criminals, a frequent rhetorical device used by Trump administration officials