ONE CHURCH FINDS ITS BACKBONE WITH TRUMP, SESSIONS
Perhaps there still is morality in our country. Outrage is building over images of immigrant children ripped from their parents’ arms and caged at our country’s Southern border.
And, bless his authoritarian small head, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions last week upped the ante when he chose to justify those barbaric actions with Scripture from the Bible.
On Monday, 640 members of Sessions’ denomination, the United Methodist Church, filed a “formal complaint” against him, condemning Sessions for the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant parents and children at the U.S. border. The document asks the clergy of Sessions’ home church, the Ashland Place United Methodist Church in Mobile, Ala., to counsel him.
The signers note in the letter that they accuse Sessions of child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination and dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of the doctrine of the United Methodist Church. The example used for doctrines is “the misuse of Romans 13.”
“While other individuals and areas of the federal government are implicated in each of these examples, Mr. Sessions — as a long-term United Methodist in a tremendously powerful, public position — is particularly accountable to us, his church,” the letter reads. “He is ours, and we are his. As his denomination, we have an ethical obligation to speak boldly when one of our members is engaged in causing significant harm in matters contrary to the Discipline on the global stage.”
The letter comes as President Trump and his administration face backlash over a new policy to separate migrant families, and it asks Sessions’ pastors to “dig deeply” into Sessions’ advocacy and actions “that have led to harm against thousands of vulnerable humans. … [W]e deeply hope for a reconciling process to help this long-time member … step back from his harmful actions and repair the damage he is currently causing to immigrants, particularly children and families.”
Sessions announced the “zero tolerance” policy earlier this year, saying the Department of Justice would criminally prosecute all adults attempting to illegally cross the Southern border into the U.S. As a result, families who crossed together would likely be separated, he said. The policy is a sharp departure from that of both the Obama and Bush administrations — though all three administrations have worked under the same law.
That hasn’t kept Trump from repeatedly blaming Democrats for the law and for his own policy.
Trump and his administration officials also are using the children and families as bargaining chips, asserting that “only Congress” can fix the issue by passing immigration reform — which, according to Trump, must include a border wall.
This is not a question of soft or tough policies on immigration. This is the immoral use of human beings and their suffering in an evil, unprincipled, unconscionable, corrupt and vile negotiation — one seemingly straight out of Donald Trump’s so-called art of the deal.
Some bipartisan members of Congress have introduced legislation to end the practice of separating families, while simultaneously urging Trump to unilaterally stop the separations. But where is all of Congress? Where are congressional leaders?
Kudos to the United Methodist Church, the third-largest religious denomination in the U.S., with more than 7 million lay members.
Now where are our other churches? Where is Trump’s and Sessions’ morality?
The rest of America needs to rise to force their change of heart.