Thread: Evangelical leaders urge quick action on DACA

Evangelical leaders urge quick action on DACA

by Tom Strode, posted Thursday, February 08, 2018 (14 hours ago)

WASHINGTON (BP) -- Southern Baptist and other evangelical Christian leaders and pastors joined United States senators Wednesday (Feb. 7) in urging Congress and President Trump to enact swiftly a remedy for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

The appeal in a Capitol Hill news conference came less than a month before the expiration of a program -- known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) -- that has given about 800,000 people relief from deportation. If no legislative resolution is achieved by March 5, an estimated 1,000 people a day will lose their protection from deportation.

President Obama established DACA by executive order in 2012 to protect undocumented immigrants who arrived in this country before their 16th birthday. The Trump administration announced Sept. 5 it would end DACA but also instituted a six-month delay for Congress to act.

The Southern Baptists and evangelicals who spoke to reporters Feb. 7 said they were not endorsing a specific bill but calling on and praying for Congress and the White House to act before the deadline on behalf of Dreamers, a label that stems from the name of a bill introduced to protect this category of immigrants.

"We're here today to speak to the consciences of our elected leaders to say, 'Do not make invisible our Dreamer neighbors and our refugee neighbors,'" said Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).

The Christian leaders are saying to elected officials, Moore told reporters, "Do not simply kick this down the road. Do not ignore these people created in the image of God."

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., a Southern Baptist, said at the news conference, "This is a unique moment that I think we're standing in -- that there's a deadline and a requirement to actually act on some issues related to" Dreamers.

He is encouraging fellow senators to "not stop the work," Lankford told reporters. "[F]or these families that are waiting for this moment, they need to know what is the decision, what direction are we actually going in the law."

Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated he would bring "a kind of bare-bones bill" to the floor next week that would initiate an amendment process that would hopefully result in passage and momentum going forward to the House of Representatives and president.

"We're not going to solve the whole [immigration] problem in the next week," King told reporters. "We're not going to solve all of the complicated -- and believe me, they are complicated -- issues involved in the immigration issue, but perhaps we can solve a piece of it, and we can do right by these young people who came here through no fault of their own ..."

Moore and other Southern Baptists explained to reporters the significance of Dreamers and refugees in congregations.

"Dreamers are not some abstract category for us," Moore said. "Dreamers are teaching Sunday school. Dreamers are leading door-to-door evangelism efforts in our communities. Dreamers are the ones who are baptizing, the ones who are teaching people to read in our communities. Dreamers are leading churches in the United States of America. And when we see Dreamers in jeopardy, we see all of us in jeopardy. What hurts one part of the body of Christ hurts all of the body of Christ."

Jesse Rincones, executive director of the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas, said, "For Hispanic Baptist churches, these issues are not theoretical or just statistics.

"These numbers represent people, who are integral parts of our congregations -- church members, Sunday school teachers, students, employees, community leaders and even seminary-trained pastors, who are facing very real fears for the future if Congress doesn't act," he said.

Thabiti Anyabwile, pastor of Anacostia River Church in Washington, D.C., shared about immigrants and refugees in the church and told reporters, "These are the folks that make up our churches. They're not just families out there. They are indeed our family. And many are in great need."

Eric Costanzo, senior pastor of South Tulsa Baptist Church, said the church is located in the most affluent section of Tulsa, Okla., but now has people from 30 different countries in its building weekly. "We have been blessed to engage refugees and Dreamers and to call them part of our church family," he said.

World Relief, an evangelical humanitarian aid and refugee resettlement organization, convened the news conference and also sponsored a full-page letter to Congress and Trump that appeared in the Feb. 7 edition of The Washington Post. The letter -- signed by Southern Baptist and other evangelical leaders and pastors -- requested government officials remember Dreamers, refugees, persecuted Christians and families seeking reunification as they work on legislation.

Among Southern Baptist signers of the letter in addition to Moore, Anyabwile and Costanzo were former SBC presidents James Merritt and Bryant Wright, Bible teacher Beth Moore, convention first vice president Walter Strickland, and pastors Matt Chandler, Micah Fries, Dean Inserra, Vance Pitman, Clint Pressley and Jay Wolf.

In early October, Moore brought together 51 evangelical leaders -- including four former SBC presidents -- in a statement endorsing "the underlying policy aim" of DACA "because we believe this is a special category of immigrants who are not legally culpable, who in most cases have no home other than the United States, and who are a blessing to their communities and to their churches."

In 2001, members of Congress proposed for the first time the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act -- hence the name Dreamers for those in this category of undocumented immigrants. The measure gained reintroduction several times thereafter without passing before Obama acted in 2012.

The effort to provide a solution for Dreamers is only one of many issues involved in reforming America's immigration system. An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants are in the United States, but efforts to enact a comprehensive measure have failed.

Messengers to the 2011 SBC meeting in Phoenix approved a resolution on immigration reform that called for the advancement of the Gospel of Jesus while pursuing justice and compassion. The measure urged the government to make a priority of border security and hold businesses accountable in their hiring. It also requested public officials establish after securing the borders "a just and compassionate path to legal status, with appropriate restitutionary measures, for those undocumented immigrants already living in our country." It specified the resolution was not to be interpreted as supporting amnesty.

The resolution acknowledged immigration reform "has prompted often-rancorous debate in the American public square." Southern Baptists also have various views on how to address the immigration problem. During consideration of the resolution, an amendment to remove the paragraph regarding establishment of a "path to legal status" failed in a ballot vote of 51-48 percent.

Tom Strode is Washington bureau chief for Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention's news service. BP reports on missions, ministry and witness advanced through the Cooperative Program and on... [Expand Bio]

http://www.bpnews.net/50331

If you are a Southern Baptist and if you put money or checks in the plate on Sunday or send in donations of any kind to this church or any other church that supports illegal immigration, including the Southern Baptists, Mormons, Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, United Church of Christ, etc., etc., etc., then you are financing illegal immigration. The power of the pulpit over Republican members of Congress and even a President is very strong, and it's unfair political persuasion, that's why these churches are forbidden under US tax law from lobbying or using their power of the pulpit to influence public policy and legislation.

So to counteract that, you have to stop giving them your money to do the Devil's Work, which is what they are doing with your money when they support illegal aliens and illegal immigration.

Before the church was voting far right wing because it was against the same sex marriage , then the church change because the refugees who are suppose to be taken abroad US and Europe and far right wing refuse immigrants , now the church vote is for far left wing.

Ironic isn't it?

We're in our great Period of Ironies and Opposites. Churches who claim to support the rule of law in fact lobby for those who break the most important laws of a nation. Hypocrites galore. I pick on the Southern Baptists, because I am one. I'm so ashamed of our church and have been for about 10 years. Stopped going and stopped giving. I will not underwrite a religious lobbying organization that supports illegal aliens and by doing so finances illegal immigration. To plan and finance a National Prayer Breakfast to disguise their illegal lobbying in DC is disgusting.

I used to give to Holy Family Home, they treat cancer patients. Then I found out they send OUR money overseas! I stopped giving.

Let the Churches overseas help their people with their own money!

DEPORT EVERY REFUGEE, TPS, ILLEGAL ALIEN, ASYLUM LIAR OUT OF HERE!

THEY HAVE CHURCH ON THEIR SOIL...GO GET "SANCTUARY" THERE!

I'm telling you all, if you want to stop DACA, you stop wasting your money donating it to churches that support DACA DEAL, which is all of them.

BOYCOTT CHURCHES WHOSE PASTORS SUPPORT DACA.

Evangelicalism started a turnover with the coincidence of the Iraq invasion and a new generation (millenials) growing up in church but having to deal with serious issues and being exposed to a rapidly changing culture. Somewhat similar to what happened during the VietNam era. So a lot of them grew up in Republican influenced households, but then found themselves voting for Barack Obama and embracing many of the issues on the left. Another factor is that many of them go to college and major in some sort of social work or psychology, so then they have a career interest shaped by liberal values.

Of course, the more conservative elders don't want to lose the younger generation---especially if they have good jobs and can bring in good money. So they also will shift their views to try to hold on to the younger ones.

For the churches, it is all about holding on to members, growing members to grow the coffers. It's all about the money now. There is no honor, nobility or righteousness of any kind in selling out your citizens in favor of foreigners, legal or illegal. That is not what "welcoming the stranger" means. Welcoming the stranger means when a black citizen from Detroit shows up in your town looking for a job, you help them find one. It doesn't mean giving the black worker in Detroit's job to an illegal alien to save a few bucks or to avoid hiring black people in favor of Caucasian Hispanics from south of the border or India.

The churches are the greater enemies of our cause than even the DemoQuacks or the Corrupt Media.