Episcopalians ‘protest faithfully’ against authoritarian abuses, bearing Christian witness

[Episcopal News Service] This month, after ICE’s killing of a 37-year-old Minnesota woman led to escalating clashes between protesters and federal immigration authorities, The Episcopal Church encouraged Episcopalians to review its “Protesting Faithfully” toolkit.

Some Episcopal clergy and lay leaders already were putting the church’s guidelines and resource recommendations into practice, and they are placing even greater emphasis now on protesting faithfully. For the Rev. Wendy Abrahamson, a priest in the Diocese of Iowa, that means rooting her public witness in the example and teachings of Jesus.

“If I’m involved in something, it’s important for me to really, truthfully make sure I’m doing it as someone who follows Jesus,” Abrahamson, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Grinnell, told Episcopal News Service. “He talks about caring for those who are suffering. … There’s a lot of suffering going on right now.”

In Stanton, Virginia, the Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett, associate rector at Trinity Episcopal Church, said she has felt called to public witness, including protests, because of her belief that the church should be “a welcoming and peaceful and loving presence.”

Modisett recently joined an anti-ICE protest almost by accident. She was coming home from an out-of-town trip and spotted the demonstrators in downtown Stanton, a small city about 100 miles northwest of Richmond. She dropped off her things at home, grabbed her clergy collar and went around the corner to join them — to listen, to talk and to just be with them.

For Christians, “I think it’s important for us to have a physical presence in the public space, especially where there is conflict,” she said.

At the same time, she and other Episcopalians are aware of the increasing physical risks of their advocacy, especially after Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, was shot and killed Jan. 7 by an ICE officer during a brief but volatile confrontation on a residential street in Minneapolis. Since then, the Department of Homeland Security has defended its actions while sending reinforcements to Minnesota. Nationwide, citizens are ramping up protests against the Trump administration for targeting both legal and illegal immigration with aggressive tactics that are also disrupting citizens’ lives.

MORE: Episcopal Church vigil laments violent immigration enforcement actions

“For a lot of folks, this is a turning point and hopefully a wake-up call, just in terms of how violent and cruel these practices are and how much faith communities really need to step up to protect each other and be a voice of moral courage,” the Rev. Anne Marie Witchger of the Diocese of New York told ENS.

Witchger chairs the diocese’s Task Force for Public Witness and serves as rector of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. Her church hosted a vigil for Good and other victims of ICE on Jan. 12 in partnership with three other churches in their Manhattan neighborhood. Attendees filled St. Mark’s nearly to capacity, and after the vigil they all processed out carrying candles in remembrance of people killed by federal immigration authorities or who died in detention.

Vigils and protests are “about support for migrants and immigrants, but it’s also about the kind of country we all want to live in and the future we all hope to have,” she said.

Church leaders have emphasized that the Christian faith teaches love and nonviolence, including in the face of hatred and persecution. The Episcopal Church’s Protesting Faithfully tool kit also underscores these central tenets of the faith in encouraging Episcopalians to engage in public witness.

“As Episcopalians, our faith calls us to stand in solidarity with vulnerable people, to proclaim justice and peace, and to love our neighbors,” the church says in introducing the resources, on topics that include protest organization, safety precautions, the spiritual foundations of protest and guidance on the civil rights of protesters.

It also invites clergy and lay leaders to train to become “protest chaplains.” Tammy Pallot, a lay leader in the Diocese of Atlanta, underwent that training a few years ago and now regularly serves as a chaplain at public events in her northern Georgia diocese. She identifies herself as a protest chaplain by wearing a clearly labeled yellow vest to the events she attends.

A critical part of her training taught her to recognize when tensions are escalating and to attempt to diffuse those tensions by being a voice of calm, peace and Christian love. She also has interacted with many protesters who are grateful for the church’s involvement.

“Every protest I have attended, and I have attended a lot in the last year, at least one person has come to me and either told me their faith story or cried … because they were so glad to finally see the church standing with the people,” Pallot told ENS.

MORE: Some Episcopal clergy invoke faith to counter ‘fascism’ after ICE killing

That message is particularly important at a time when a distorted, partisan version of Christianity has given rise to Christian nationalism, while  Episcopalians can offer a more loving Christian vision for the world. That counternarrative is also on the mind of Modisett when she attends protests in the Diocese of Southern Virginia.

Modisett affirmed that clergy should not take partisan positions — a good rule of thumb for all Episcopalians in their protesting. Even so, she thinks the protests against ICE abuses are “beyond partisan politics.”

“This is, who is being hurt right now? Who is vulnerable? Whose lives are being diminished and dismissed, and how can we say there is another way of living together?” she said.

Jesus was also a great model for putting faith into action, Abrahamson said. As an example, she gave the story of Palm Sunday. Jesus’ triumphant arrival in Jerusalem on a donkey could be seen as a “provocative act” toward the ruling authorities of the time. “He clearly knew it would draw some attention,” she said.

Abrahamson was planning to attend a rally on Jan. 20 in Iowa organized to “stand against fascism” after the first year of an increasingly authoritarian second Trump administration. She is known in the diocese as a leading Episcopal voice advocating for the church’s positions in the Iowa Statehouse in Des Moines, both by appealing directly to lawmakers and joining demonstrations there. It is important to her not to let hatred impair her Christian witness.

“I think it’s really important, in our bearing, to love,” Abrahamson said. “I don’t want to have animosity toward fellow citizens. We’re people — we have frustrations and anger, so it’s not easy. But I have to hit the reset button to loving others.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.