Immigrants are facing unprecedented threats of mass deportation. These gut-wrenching policies are poised to shatter livelihoods, families, and communities in every corner of our nation.
Faith communities have a long history of supporting and uplifting migrants – and are well-positioned to continue this charge. So last week, Union Theological Seminary, Jewish Theological Seminary, Riverside Church, and the Interfaith Center of New York hosted a landmark event to provide faith communities with practical resources to protect migrant communities.
As Chloe Breyer, Executive Director at ICNY, put it, the event was created for “all faith leaders concerned about the safety of their soup kitchen clients, the sanctity of their religious freedoms, and the right of every child in NYC to attend school without the fear of finding their parents deported at the end of the day.”
At the event, faith communities heard from two esteemed panels. During the first panel, prominent faith leaders – Rt. Rev. Matt Heyd (Episcopal Bishop of New York), Imam Kabba (Masjid-ur-Rahmah), and Adama Bah (Afrikana) – discussed how allies and impacted faith communities are responding to deportation threats. In the second panel, legal experts Donna Leiberman (NYCLU), Alina Das (NYU Law School), and Harold Solis (Make the Road) highlighted strategies and tools to protect migrants.
Brennan Brink, Associate Director for Migrant Outreach at ICNY shared that the event equipped “faith leaders to stand against mass deportations, through faith-based reflection, legal expertise, and hands-on tools to protect those in need.” Importantly, these skills were learned in collaboration “so faith leaders can lean on one another to sustain life-giving services for not merely the next few years but for thousands of years to come.”
For Rev. Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary, it was particularly meaningful to host the event right before MLK Day. She explained, “Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. built an unprecedented social justice movement that fundamentally changed our nation and our world. His legacy offers a profound, powerful example of how faith leaders can drive progress. Today, as our nation faces mass deportation threats and other cataclysmic problems, it’s more important than ever to draw on the lessons of MLK’s life and equip faith leaders with the tools to create a better tomorrow.”
Historically, there are countless examples of revolutionary social justice movements with deep connections to faith. Dr. Jorge Rodríguez, Visiting Assistant Professor of Historical Studies at Union, highlighted a variety of examples, including a revolutionary charge to unionize farm workers, efforts by the Young Lords to occupy churches in order to provide basic community services, and the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s.
Rev. Fred Davie, Senior Executive Vice President for Public Theology and Civic Engagement at Union, explained, “There’s a deep, long history of faith institutions being on the frontlines in this work of welcoming immigrants to urban areas, and particularly New York City.” He also shared that back in the 1800s, Union helped start one of the largest settlement houses. It eventually spun off to be its own very large nonprofit – now providing a variety of different services in East Harlem.
Breyer, meanwhile, noted, “When buses from Texas began arriving in the summer of 2022, ICNY acted quickly to form a coalition of 90 congregations and faith-based organizations to meet the needs of those arriving. Through that coalition in the years since, ICNY has organized the faith sector’s response to migrant arrivals, networking otherwise siloed faith-based organizations together, and providing technical assistance to strengthen the services they provide asylum seekers.”
Today, there’s no question that faith leaders play an instrumental role in defending against mass deportation threats. Rev. Mira Sawlani-Joyner, Minister of Justice, Advocacy and Change at The Riverside Church in the City of New York shared, “Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 25 calls us to welcome the stranger as an act of faithfulness to God. As those who live on Turtle Island—land cared for and cultivated by Indigenous and First Nation peoples—we too were strangers, often extended a welcome we failed to honor. Faith leaders, rooted in the wisdom of our sacred traditions and the shared stories of exile and belonging, are called to stand in solidarity with vulnerable communities.”
Echoing this sentiment, Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay, associate dean of The Rabbinical School at Jewish Theological Seminary, explained, “The role of a faith leader is to help communities know and live out their religious principles. For Jews, remembering that we were slaves in Egypt who were freed in order to create a just world and serve God means that we must attend to issues of harm and injustice in society… Our tradition teaches that if one is not protesting injustices they witness, then it is as if they had perpetrated them themselves. So, if we believe that mass deportation is harmful to society and the individuals who are deported and their families, then it is our obligation to be part of preventing it.”
As faith leaders look to build movements to combat mass deportation and other gross injustices, Dr. Rodríguez offered some salient advice. First, “Movements are as much about our own personal psychology and self-care as they are about the collective… A social movement requires us to be attentive to our mental health and to the ways that we have tools for conflict when disagreements inevitably arise.”
Next, it’s important to recognize that “Every role within a movement is important, not just the ones that are directly protesting or opposing the police.” It’s essential to have support for every single facet of a movement.
And finally, effective social justice movements need a theory of change. We must imagine the better world we want to create and develop a strategy for getting there. Radical imagination of a world “otherwise” is the core of faith communities.
Rev. Davie summed up the role of faith leaders well: “King was fond of saying, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ We have to help it bend toward justice.”