As I speak in local churches on the topic of immigration, challenging Christians to think about how our faith should inform the ways that they respond to the arrival of immigrants to our country, I never begin by talking about politics. Contrary to what some of my non-Christian friends presume based on media reports, […]Continue Reading →
What continues to astound me every day, though, is how powerful our God is, and how easily He can turn a top on the other side as it continues to spin. What many of the people I’ve worked with will never know is just how indebted I am to them. They will never know how much of a blessing they have been to me, to have known them and to have been welcomed into their lives.Continue Reading →
Guest Blog by Stephan Bauman Wide swaths of wheat and apple-laden branches lined the road as I travelled with a delegation of Christian leaders to visit the Broetje Orchards in Prescott, Washington on August 30th. The sky was vast and cloudless in southeastern Washington, the country’s largest producer of apples. Ralph and […]Continue Reading →
In the Old Testament, King David—the greatest of the kings of Israel and the only whom God called “a man after my own heart”—made an uncharacteristically bad decision that led him to commit adultery and then, in the wake of Bathsheba’s pregnancy, murder (2 Samuel 11). Despite such blatant offenses, though, David […]Continue Reading →
Guest Blog by Wendy Tarr Editor’s Note: Today’s guest blog is a video piece produced by CLUE (Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice) in Orange County, California, with a brief explanation of the video’s origins by CLUE Orange County Director Wendy Tarr: This video was created by Clergy and Laity […]Continue Reading →
Guest Blog by Natalie Burris American evangelical Christians are known for promoting family values. In fact, an entire evangelical organization, Focus on the Family, dedicates its multi-million-dollar yearly budget to supporting marriage and children, as well as sanctity-of-life issues, such as eliminating abortion. The current immigrant debate can play an important […]Continue Reading →
Today is Labor Day, which for the vast majority of Americans means little more than a three-day weekend and the end of summer. It seemed to me an appropriate occasion, though, to write about immigration. You see, most of immigration is explained by labor. While there are individuals who migrate because they are […]Continue Reading →
Guest Blog by Michelle Warren This week I read an article on CNN about an Alabama court’s decision on the constitutionality of their State’s new Arizona copycat law. This was of no surprise to me since numerous states have proposed legislation to attempt to address the undocumented population in America, and this is […]Continue Reading →
People have asked me why I am so taken with the undocumented immigrant. There are law-abiding people who need your help, they say.
Good point.
Why do the stories of the undocumented immigrants touch the deepest parts of my soul? Why do I remember their stories more vividly than all the others I have heard in my work at the Willow Creek Legal Aid Ministry? Why is it that I can still see the eyes of the undocumented immigrants when I close mine? Why do their stories, so different from mine, seem like part of my own story? After all, I grew up downtown Chicago in an upper-middle class white family. I have never gone without anything I need. I attended the best schools and enjoy any number of privileges. The undocumented immigrants I have met have experienced a very different kind of life, one with very little schooling, if any, and even less privilege. Continue Reading →
This weekend, my wife and I went to see the movie The Help. Based on a popular 2009 novel written by Kathryn Stockett, The Help tells the story of a Skeeter Phelan, an ambitious white woman fresh out of college in Jim Crow-era Mississippi, as she seeks to chronicle the lives of African-American maids. […]Continue Reading →
