In the wake of the shootings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pettri by Federal immigration officers, Bishop Hughes sends a message about the moral call of the Gospel that supersedes politics, and our way forward as Christians in this time. (Time: 10:22.)
In her message, she urges us to read the January 24th Facebook message from Bishop Craig Loya of Minnesota and to support the Diocese of Minnesota’s Casa Maria ministry which is providing support to Minnesota’s immigrants.
Video Transcript
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark. I am on sabbatical right now and had not planned on sending any messages out to the diocese, but it is a snow day, and that sent me into the kitchen. And going into the kitchen is very often where I go to process things that are happening around me. My recipe books are full of quotes, sermon passages I’m working on, thoughts, ideas about something where ideas come to me as I’m cooking, not an unusual place for me to be.
It’s not just a snow day that brings me into the kitchen. It’s what has been going on in Minneapolis, which I have found very disturbing to the point where it has made me sleepless. I just have to get up at night sometimes and pray. Very much, Bishop Craig Loya has been on my mind. Not that everybody in Minneapolis is an Episcopalian, but when you’re the shepherd of a place, you’re shepherding all of God’s people, who are sometimes in a faith tradition that is your own, and sometimes in another faith tradition, and sometimes in no tradition at all. What I mean is I know how much he cares about the people that are living there and with what they have been going through.
I think we’re at a moment of reckoning as Christians. I’m aware that my clergy say to me very often, “Bishop, many of our parishes are purple. We’ve got a variety of people.” Well, there’s nothing new to that! We have a variety of people in all kinds of ways. Diocese of Newark is a diverse place. Diversity – we often talk about color, but it’s not just color, it’s gender, it’s sexual orientation, it’s economic status, it’s geography. We have people in cities, in suburbs and in rural areas. We have all kinds of folks, and we have folks that believe in different things politically.
Let me be clear, I’m not speaking into your politics. You can support whatever party you want to support. You can support whatever bill you want to support, whatever policy you want to support. What I’m here to talk about with you is your faith and about being a Christian at this time where we’re watching an issue of morality work itself out, being draped behind a cloak of politics. That the level of contempt with which people are being held right now in the midst of this operation to deport almost anybody and anything, and along the way to deporting them, to aggressively harass people. To treat people in contemptuous ways, to talk down to them, to talk about them, to, in essence, hunt them, regardless of who they are. And the peak that it has reached with these killings of American citizens – all along, we’ve had American citizens being detained.
The lack of discipline amongst those who are working in these Federal roles of enforcing immigration, but enforcing it along the way of talking to people and about people in dehumanizing ways. When you look at those two deaths, Renee Good and this last one that happened yesterday, Alex Pretti, in both cases, that the lack of rendering aid and the diminishing, dismissive language about them. These are not people to be talked badly about, to be called names. They’re people who were dying. People who were dying. That’s something that we treat with the utmost respect, where we want to make sure that they know that there is someone there, that someone has taken their last breaths on this earth, that someone cares about who they are and what is happening to them.
And for it to be in Minneapolis, of all places, we’ve just been here with George Floyd. I was really struck – it harkened back to George Floyd again – for him to have this weight on him, of a law enforcement officer on him, squeezing the life out of him with his body weight. Him saying I can’t breathe, calling for his mother. For Alex Pretti to be in that same situation, all of those people who had him subdued and then to somehow be shot. And the disrespect of anyone, particularly those who represent us in the government, to immediately call him names, to immediately label him without having an independent investigation happen. All of these are moral issues. These are not political issues.
As a Christian, you get to vote for who you want to vote for. You get to believe in the policy that you want to believe in. I have no qualm or question about that, because I do the same. But as a Christian, as one who follows Jesus, as one who knows God’s love, and particularly as Episcopalians, as those of us who take the Baptismal Covenant serious, this covenant that is so heavily based on the greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourselves.” That this is what we’re called to do. We’re called to love our neighbors, and right now, our neighbors are under attack.
So part of what we have to do as Christians is think about how we support them, and thoughts and prayers are not enough. Standing behind your politics is not enough. We must all take a look at who we are and where we’ve been. I’ve heard a lot of people liken this to Gestapo tactics, and I would say, know your history. Know your American history. This reminds me more of what happened in the American South than anything. If you know your history, you know about slave patrols. Some people call them the patty-rollers. These were the people who, before the Civil War and the good 50 to 75 years lead up to that, their one goal – and these were upstanding citizens, white men who, everybody knew them, they weren’t hiding, they didn’t have masks on – but their one goal is to make sure that enslaved people stayed enslaved. And if they thought somebody had run away or somebody wasn’t where they were supposed to be, they would hunt them, and they would use any kind of force necessary to bring them home, up to and including death. We have been here before, that’s in our DNA, this kind of aggressive going after people and the racial profiling on top of it. We have been here before. This is not our first go-round with this.
So for us as Christians, we’ve got to be asking ourselves, what do we do? So Craig Loya has published something, I’ll make sure that it’s linked to this, asking for our help and our support. First, it’s some of the stuff we’re already doing. Some of the things like protesting, some of the things like being in touch with our representatives in Washington and our state representatives, being loud and assertive and coming back again and again and again, saying, “This has got to stop. This has got to change.” We’ve got to help people find their courage. The people who are our representatives have to find their courage to stand up and speak in the midst of all of this.
I would say this also, I’m keenly aware that the people involved in all of this, whatever the forces are that are on the ground, but even more, the forces behind them, the forces doing the planning – they don’t seem to be motivated or influenced by protests. They don’t seem to be motivated or influenced by hurting people, diminishing people, dehumanizing them. None of that bothers them. But if you hold people in contempt, why would it bother you? What does bother them is economic impact. And we’re going to have to spend some time thinking about that as individuals, as parishes, as diocese, as communities, as the faith community, and all the people beyond us. That we are going to have to be more organized about where our money goes, because the folks who plan these things, if you watch them, pay attention when the stock market swings away from something that they think is important, they change their minds.
I don’t know that they’ll ever have respect for the people of the United States. I don’t know that they will ever see the source of God and other people. I don’t know that they will ever do anything but dehumanize other people. There are people who that’s the way they live, and they enjoy it and they’re proud of it. But we, we who follow Jesus, have a different call, and that is to be God’s love in all of this.
So I invite you and implore you to read what Bishop Loya has put out. Give your support and your prayers. We’re not going to give up on our prayers to Minneapolis and to any other place where this is happening. And be prepared that it may happen here too. That the forces that are doing this seem to be relentless. But the one thing I know for sure, as Desmond Tutu said, “I have read to the end of the book, and God’s side always wins.” Remember this. We will follow Jesus, we will love God with all our hearts, minds, souls, and we will love our neighbors as ourselves. I think that’s what those who are in charge have underestimated, is how much we will love our neighbors, and we’ve only just begun doing that.
