The state of sanctuary cities across the United States is in flux, and the church continues to ask how it might show compassion to immigrants in need.
According to National Catholic Reporter, “Until recently, churches were considered ‘sensitive locations’ and immigration officers were restricted from taking action there. But on his first full day in office, President Trump rescinded these restrictions, making churches and other houses of worship susceptible to immigration enforcement.”
How are churches to respond to immigrants most in need of shelter and protection? What are clergy and lay people to do if immigration officers knock on a church door, particularly in protecting those who are at risk of deportation?
Throughout history, churches have provided places of sanctuary. More recently, when the Sanctuary movement started in the 1980s in the San Francisco Bay Area, more than 400 congregations across the country became involved. According to Church World Service, the number of sanctuary churches doubled after the 2016 election.
Joanne Furio of Berkeleyside recently told the story of college student Jose Artiga. In 1980, when he was 23 and two semesters shy of an engineering degree, Artiga heard that “far-right death squads were coming for him and four other college students in his hometown of San Martin, El Salvador.” He began to make his way north and eventually reached San Francisco.
Nearly two years later, in March 1982, four Salvadoran asylum seekers, including Artiga, found sanctuary through five local churches.
Furio adds: “[University Lutheran Chapel] and four other Berkeley churches—St. John’s Presbyterian, St. Joseph the Worker, St. Mark’s Episcopal, and Trinity Methodist—gathered in front of University Lutheran Chapel and announced their commitment to sanctuary and created East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, a grassroots collective, to coordinate their efforts to shelter, aid, and advocate for the refugees. Reading from their newly adopted covenant, which their congregations had to approve, the churches promised to ‘provide sanctuary—support, protection, and advocacy—to the El Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees who request safe haven out of fear and persecution upon return to their homeland.’”
Of the original five founding churches, four remain open today. Although Trinity Methodist has closed, former members “still meet on Zoom and continue to this day to make quilts to donate to East Bay Sanctuary Covenant,” Furio reported.
St. Joseph the Worker, a Catholic parish, and St. Mark’s Episcopal no longer offer immigrant services. But the Rev. Blake Sawicky, rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal, says his parish established itself as a place for the marginalized because of the early Sanctuary movement.
“Plenty of marginalized come to St Mark’s and we don’t ask about their citizenship,” Sawicky said. Instead, the church helps as it is able and remains committed to walking alongside the marginalized.
Paula Hawthorn, co-chair of the Social Justice Committee at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, spoke of how the Sanctuary movement has morphed and changed in the last 40 years, in response to the needs of immigrants and to changing policies.
“Sanctuary is a sacred tradition rooted in love, protection, and justice,” she said, and historically this has meant “sheltering freedom seekers through the Underground Railroad [and] supporting Central American refugees in the 1980s.” Now the movement is largely about “protecting mixed-status, undocumented, and immigrant families facing deportation,” detention, and family separation.
To Hawthorn and others, providing sanctuary no longer means sheltering immigrants inside a church building, but it does still mean being a place of hope and support for immigrants. It means standing in solidarity by offering “support, services, and advocacy—regardless of immigration status,” according to the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.
“At St. Paul’s, we will raise money for people who are being deported, who are in jail and have nothing. We give them a backpack with clean clothing, because otherwise they have nothing. That still brings tears to my eyes,” Hawthorn said.
The church also provides accompaniment teams in the courtroom, rallies to provide furniture and housing for asylum seekers, hosts Know Your Rights sessions, and participates in rallies and demonstrations for immigration reform.
St. Paul’s Episcopal, like other church communities, also seeks to partner with other organizations across ecumenical and interfaith spectrums.
According to the Very Rev. Eric Metoyer, Canon for Racial, Social, and Environmental Justice in the Diocese of California, Christians can no longer approach issues of justice as individuals. Instead, the whole body of Christ must address the problem together.
“We recognize we are more effective if we are working with fellow organizations who share the values of the Episcopal Church, not just ecumenically but across the spectrum,” Metoyer said. Regular partnerships with the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, Peninsula Solidarity Cohort, and the Marin Interfaith Council have strengthened Episcopalians’ collective work.
It’s not all that different for Sarah Lawton, senior warden at St. John the Evangelist Church in San Francisco and co-chair of the Immigration Task Force.
“There are folks all over the country working on this,” Lawton said. “But at St. John the Evangelist, we do three things: First, we pray every week, by name, for those who have been sent to El Salvador. We name the people we know, we uphold them in prayer and consciousness. Second, we hold Know Your Rights trainings and let people know what’s within their rights to refuse entry. And third, those of us who have citizenship privileges go to protests. We mobilize all over the diocese.”
Cara Meredith, a freelance writer and postulant for holy orders in the Diocese of California, lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
