United Methodists lead witness for immigrants

Key points:

• More than 2,000 people of faith marched around the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 25 to witness to the Christian faith and to let immigrants know that they do not stand alone.
• Capitol Hill United Methodist Church served as host for the worship service, which reached standing-room-only within minutes of the doors being opened.
• At the end of the march, participants gathered at Senate Park, just north of the Capitol, and dozens spent time visiting lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

More than 2,000 people of faith gathered in and around three churches on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 25 to worship, sing and be spiritually prepared for a march around the Capitol to bring attention to the plight of immigrants in the United States.

“Faithful Resistance: A Public Witness for Immigrant Justice” included faith leaders from several traditions, including United Methodist bishops, clergy and laity, who came together to stand in solidarity with immigrants.

Capitol Hill United Methodist Church served as host for the worship service, which reached standing-room-only within minutes of the doors being opened. Ebenezer United Methodist Church and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church served as overflow locations where worshippers watched the livestream.

Retired Bishop Minerva Carcaño, who helped organize the event as chair of the United Methodist Immigration Task Force, said that the purpose of the Faithful Resistance was to witness to the Christian faith and to let immigrants know that they do not stand alone.

“It is a movement, a rising movement,” she said, “of people who stand for justice and who are wanting to express their faith in a very public way.”

Bishop Carcaño said the planning for the witness began last fall, with a team comprising ecumenical leaders from across the country, including staff of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society and Commission on Religion and Race.

“The vision,” she said, “has been to just show up in D.C. and give this public witness. Our hope is that immigrants across the country would feel our presence and know that we stand with them.”

Bishop Julius C. Trimble, top executive of Church and Society, also highlighted the support he hoped immigrants would feel from the witness.

“This is a gathering not only to march, but to demonstrate our support for immigrants,” he said. “It is also a faithful resistance to the detrimental actions that have been taken by the current administration to decrease civil and human rights.”

Trimble said that the church takes seriously the call of Christ to love our neighbor from Matthew 25.

“What we saw happening in Minneapolis and Chicago and Washington, D.C., is overreach; it’s time for the church to not only raise our voice but to also stand in solidarity with those whose lives have been lost,” he said. “Today, the church is saying that we’re taking seriously the commandment to love God and to love neighbor, and to welcome the stranger.”

Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling of the Baltimore-Washington and Peninsula-Delaware Area brought the sermon, preaching from Psalm 24.

“The earth is the Lord’s,” she said, quoting Psalm 24:1. “It all belongs to God. All,” she emphasized.

“It does not belong to empires or corporations,” she said. “Not to colonizers and patriarchs. Not even to the church. It is the Lord’s.”

The bishop said that many people today are practicing “theological malfeasance,” believing that they can own the world when, in fact, it’s not ours.

“We find ourselves here because we have succumbed to a heretical understanding of possession,” she said. “We have had, in much of Western Christianity, the miseducation of the baptized. We act as if we own creation. We have been taught that some are more entitled to land than others. That some are inherently entitled to freedom while others can only exist in a subservient posture.

“We have been taught that some countries are more noble than others. Our theological colonization shows up when we Christians defend immigration policies that privilege wealth, whiteness and Western passports while criminalizing black and brown bodies and the global South.”

Interrupted several times by applause, the bishop said that the current political system of injustice is “antithetical to the will of God.”

She reminded the congregation that Jesus was a migrant, and she lamented over what she has seen popping up in some churches: American flags in the sanctuary and some congregations reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

“The flag is not the symbol of our salvation,” she said, “nor of our redemption. The eagle never flies higher than the cross.”

Richard Church, a lay person from Covenant United Methodist Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland, attended the event as a member of the Committee on Native American Ministries of Northeast United Methodist Church. He helped bring the invocation for the worship service at Capitol Hill United Methodist.

“I’m here as part of the movement for equality,” he said. “This is all part and parcel of my faith, which drives me to serve my neighbor, and all people are my neighbor.”

Rabbi Marc Israel, who serves at Tikvat Israel in Rockville, Maryland, sat in the altar area to help demonstrate the interfaith nature of the witness.

“Standing up for the immigrant is the backbone, the heart, of what our faith is about,” he said, “Our founding story as Jews is the Exodus from Egypt where we are told that God brought us up out of Egypt so that we would know the heart of the stranger. We, therefore, must love the stranger, care for the stranger and protect the stranger.”

The Rev. Stephanie Vader, the host pastor at Capitol Hill United Methodist, said that the day was full of meaning for her and her church. Her church has been involved in migrant ministry since 2022 when they responded to a need: Thousands of immigrants were bussed to Sanctuary Cities, including Washington, and simply dropped off with no resources.

The Capitol Hill church sprang into action, providing temporary shelter, food and other resources.

“This is a really important part of who we are and what we do,” she said, “because Jesus was also an immigrant. He also migrated down from heaven to be with us.”

Vader said that more than 14,000 migrants have come through her church in the past four years. Today, the church hosts a free store — they call it a “tienda” — where people can come get supplies at no cost. They also deliver groceries to families who are afraid to leave their homes, and have hosted immigration clinics.

One of the many groups marching down East Capitol Street was a group of Episcopal priests and lay people from the Episcopal Diocese of the Great Lakes in Michigan. Each of them was wearing a red knit cap with tassels and black cassocks.

“The red hats were associated with the Norwegian resistance under the Nazis, and they caught on during the events in Minnesota,” said Matt from Alpena, Michigan, who would not give his last name. Feb. 26, 1942 — almost 84 years to the day — is the day the Nazis outlawed this form of resistance.

“We came all the way here to stand with our faith siblings against the immigration policies the U.S. has been imposing,” said the Rev. Jess Hart, pastor at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.

At the end of the march, participants gathered at Senate Park, just north of the Capitol, where faith leaders spoke alongside Democratic Reps. Shri Thanedar, Mary Gay Scanlon and Delia Ramirez.

Ramirez said she is a proud United Methodist and the daughter of María Elvira Ramírez, a Guatemalan immigrant.

“She helped me understand that my neighbors’ struggles are also mine, and that their liberation, our safety and our peace are interconnected.

“We know there are forces that seek to vilify, target and divide us,” she said. “In the face of those forces, I ask you to continue being instruments of peace. I need you to love where there is hate. I need you to forgive where there is injury. I need you to hope where there is doubt.”

After Senate Park, hundreds of United Methodists spent time visiting Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

The Rev. We Chang, director of Connectional Ministries for the New England Conference, said he wanted to be a part of Faithful Resistance “to live out a covenant we made with God and one another at our baptism to resist evil, injustice and oppression that has been being enforced by our own government against the immigrant and the people of color.”

The Rev. Chong James Kim, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Flushing, New York, also made the trip to Washington to show his support for his immigrant brothers and sisters.

“Policies that divide people through fear and exclusion and treat immigrants as criminals stand at odds with the spirit of the Gospel,” he said. “In this time, the church is called to respond not with fear but with love, not with exclusion but with hospitality, not with division but with justice and mercy.”

Alsgaard is a retired elder in the Baltimore-Washington Conference.

News media contact: Julie Dwyer, news editor, newdesk@umnews.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.