Churches across Chicago braced for Trump’s threat of a National Guard deployment and apocalyptic force, even as Chicago’s rates of violent crime have dropped substantially in recent years as part of a national trend.
At Delaney Hall, the East Coast’s largest immigrant detention facility, families and volunteers say harsh conditions and shifting rules have urged the need for spiritual care.
A group of leaders representing multiple religious traditions came together to call on Gov. Mike DeWine to intervene in the detention and possible deportation of Ayman Soliman, a beloved chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
Empathy is usually regarded as a virtue, a key to human decency and kindness. And yet, with increasing momentum, voices on the Christian right are preaching that it has become a vice.
‘I never thought I had one day to cancel Sunday worship because it is not safe for our Latino siblings to come to church. But here we are … ,’ wrote one pastor on Facebook.
Clergy are accompanying immigrants to court appointments to provide comfort and information and, in cases where their worst fears are realized, to pick up the pieces of a shattered American dream.
Mara Richards Bim, the new Justice and Advocacy Fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas, spoke about how to bridge what we talk about in church and political action.
‘A president with a true Christian agenda would be most concerned with uplifting those in our country who have been cast aside,’ said Rev. Shannon Fleck of Faithful America. ‘The most vulnerable among us are not billionaires. Those most vulnerable among us are not these