Best-known religious-freedom advocates remain silent as ICE inhibits worship
Catholics, along with others, claim rule change is keeping people of faith away
U.S. churches are facing the biggest new threat to freedom of worship in decades, yet the most vocal advocates of religious freedom have remained silent.
And the irony that his administration is responsible for that threat appears to be lost on President Donald Trump, who earlier today proposed the creation of a task force to counter alleged government persecution of Christians.
Instead, the task of fighting the attack on religious freedom has fallen to Democracy Forward, a small public-interest advocacy group that is representing a group of Quakers who fear that new federal policies related to the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies will prevent them from worshiping freely and from freely inviting people to their gatherings.
The new policy is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s repeal of its “sensitive locations” rule that generally prevented ICE from conducting its enforcement operations at places such as schools, medical offices and places of worship. ICE has long limited its operations at sensitive locations, although such a policy wasn’t formalized until 2011 through a directive by ICE’s director at the time, John Morton. The policy was revoked on Jan. 21, the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The old policy did not prohibit ICE activity on church grounds, but it did require enforcement activities to have supervisory approval for compelling public-safety reasons. As a result, ICE activities at religious sites, as well at schools and medical offices, have been very limited. The new policy allows agents to enter such sites based only on their own undefined common sense not subject to supervisory oversight. ICE raids at churches were reported in news media within days of the policy change.
Church as sanctuary has long history
ICE’s longtime recognition of churches as a partial sanctuary is an outgrowth of a tradition that began even before the birth of Christianity: Greek and Roman temples offered protection to fugitives. A few centuries later, Christian churches offered a similar sanctuary, an arrangement that became part of Roman law. The Catholic Church asserted its right to offer sanctuary for centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, and that practice continued within Protestantism and became part of common law in some countries.
Although the right of religious groups to offer sanctuary never has been recognized as a constitutional right in the United States, various Christian churches have continued the tradition, often with government tolerance. Many churches offered sanctuary to runaway slaves before the Civil War, for example, and others did the same for draft evaders during the Vietnam War. In recent years, some churches have offered sanctuary to immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally; in a case that received national attention, a Presbyterian church in Tucson, Ariz., provided sanctuary for months in 2014 to an immigrant who was fighting a deportation order. (He was able to leave the church after being granted a stay.)
Among those who have spoken out against the loss of the “sensitive areas” policy is the United States of Conference of Catholic Bishops, which issued a statement that included this:
We recognize the need for just immigration enforcement and affirm the government’s obligation to carry it out in a targeted, proportional, and humane way. However, non-emergency immigration enforcement in schools, places of worship, social service agencies, healthcare facilities, or other sensitive settings where people receive essential services would be contrary to the common good. With the mere rescission of the protected areas guidance, we are already witnessing reticence among immigrants to engage in daily life, including sending children to school and attending religious services.
The larger mainline Protestant churches have expressed similar concerns; the Episcopal Church, for example, has said on its website that it opposes “anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions, including race-based targeting, vigilantism and violence, family division, and detention and deportation without charges or convictions.”
And some of the criticism is coming from theological conservatives. Most notably, the National Association of Evangelicals, which includes independent churches and a few dozen denominations, most of them fairly small, said:
The administration’s announced campaign of mass deportations threatens to disrupt the lives of many peaceful, productive members of our churches and communities. The withdrawal of guidance protecting houses of worship, schools and health facilities from immigration enforcement is troubling. Even the announcement of this policy has caused fear, deterring some from attending church. Likewise, if immigrants are deterred from attending school or seeking medical care, the whole community suffers.
The NAE was supported in its statement by the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public-policy arm of the denomination that has come under fire from more conservative members.
In comments to the Baptist Press, Brent Leatherwood, president of the ERLC, also cited the possibility that the lack of restrictions in the new policy will keep people away from churches:
No church that I’m aware of harbors criminal actors, whether they’re here legally or illegally, and no church leader wants that. President Trump is right to fix our broken immigration system — something we’ve long called for — but it must be done without turning churches into wards of the state or expecting pastors to ask for papers of people coming through their doors. The unintended impact of this change will be that many law-abiding immigrants will be fearful to attend our churches, and our central mission of gospel proclamation and Biblical formation will be inhibited.
In other words, Christian leaders from across the theological spectrum recognize the danger that the new policy poses to the ability of congregants to meet.
And from key conservatives: Silence
But all this apparently doesn’t matter to those entities, sometimes identified as Christian nationalist or hard-right in nature, that have been most involved in court fights and other calls for religious freedom. Among such groups that have fought for religious rights— especially as it pertains to issues such as LGTBQ discrimination, parental rights, employment decisions, school curriculum and alleged squelches on freedom of speech— those that have so far remained silent in opposing the Trump administration in this instance include the American Center for Law and Justice, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Becket law firm, and Liberty Counsel. All of them have updated their websites since Jan. 21 with current news about their religious-liberty efforts without mentioning the ICE policy.
And the conservative news sites from which many supporters of Christian nationalism learn about supposed threats to religious liberty have been silent as well. Most notably, the widely popular Christian Post, which leans conservative but often gives neutral and sometimes even positive coverage of Christians outside the conservative fold, has seen fit to ignore the ICE policy among the issues it considers important to religious freedom, such as transgender concerns and abortion. Its updated index shows only one article about the ICE policy; it is about a Hispanic evangelical pastor aiming to “assure the Latino community that they have nothing to fear from the Trump administration’s new immigration policies.”
Quakers see potential ICE actions as anathema
The lawsuit against the policy change was filed by five groups of Quakers1 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
Founded by George Fox in the mid-1600s, the Quaker religion originated from the Christian tradition and is known for its social-justice values. Although many Quakers today identify themselves as Christian, not all do. The Quaker mode of worship is to gather together in silence while participants listen for messages from God, which may be shared with the group.
Among other problems with the new policy, the lawsuit notes:
Allowing armed government agents wearing ICE-emblazoned jackets to park outside a religious service and monitor who enters or to interrupt the service and drag a congregant out during the middle of worship is anathema to Quaker religious exercise. The very threat of that enforcement deters congregants from attending services, especially members of immigrant communities. Losing congregants is a substantial burden on Plaintiffs’ religious exercise, especially when those congregants would bring to worship different backgrounds and life experiences. And deterring worshippers from attending services chills Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights of association.
The lawsuit asks to court to call current policies illegal on three grounds:
Violation of the First Amendment right to associate freely for religious and other purposes.
Violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which requires the federal government to carry out its lawful activities in a way that is the least restrictive of religious freedom. RFRA, which has been used frequently by conservatives in recent years, offers greater protection to religious activities than does the First Amendment.
Violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires that certain processes, such as the seeking of public comment, be followed when changing administrative procedures.
Since the lawsuit was filed, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a theologically moderate denomination that broke away from the Southern Baptists, has joined as a plaintiff. The denomination said it did so in part because the “revocation of sensitive location status for houses of worship violates the religious liberty of congregations — an essential Baptist commitment — and hinders worship and ministry of our congregations.”
According to the Baptist Press, the Sikh Temple of Sacramento has also joined the lawsuit.
They are the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, the Adelphi (Md.) Friends Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, and the Richmond (Va.) Friends Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.