Ban challenges faith leaders
Some struggle to speak beliefs without alienating members
Dozens of people gathered at a Whitefish Bay church on a cold night this week to pray for the world’s refugees — and the officials who control their fates.
In an hourlong service, they were urged to open themselves to the beauty and gifts of people who are different from them, and to be the beacon for those who come here in search of a better life.
“I tell you, brothers and sisters, that you hold up the light in the darkness,” the Rev. Seth Dietrich, rector of Christ Church Episcopal, told the crowd.
Dietrich organized the service in response to President Donald Trump’s recent executive order barring refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries, some indefinitely. He stressed that it was not a political protest, and said his parish has members on all sides of the political schism over the ban.
Rather, he said, it was an effort to bring people together in prayer — “the oldest, most fundamental spiritual practice.”
“I think you can be on any part of the political spectrum and affirm that there are many people seeking asylum — many of them women and children — because they are oppressed and suffering,” he said.
That people of faith are divided over the ban should come as no surprise.
American faith communities have been at the forefront of resettling and serving immigrants and refugees from around the world — many of them fleeing persecution — for decades. And for many, care of the stranger is a central teaching embedded in their earliest texts. But religion and politics are often difficult to disentangle. For many, faith is a driving force in their lives
and political decisions. And people rarely check their political views at the door of their house of worship.
The result is that faith leaders across Wisconsin and the country — many of whose congregations are already strained by deep theological divides — are grappling with how to respond to the issue and offer some guidance without alienating faithful members who are on one side or the other.
It’s worth noting that Trump drew significant majorities of voters who identified as Catholic, evangelical, Protestant and Mormon, and particularly white Catholics and evangelicals, according to a preliminary report by the Pew Research Center.
The Rev. Tim Kitzke, who serves as Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki’s vicar general for urban ministry, said issues like the refugee ban, which may pit a pastor’s convictions against those of some in his flock, can be a challenge for clergy.
“That’s a hard thing for a person in religious leadership, deciding ... when do we sometimes have to take the risk and say this is what it is, or are we always backing off,” said Kitzke. “That’s something we as religious leaders have to do some soul searching about.”
‘Manifestly un-Christian’
A handful of Wisconsin bishops with the United Methodist Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have signed on to a national letter, with thousands of clergy from across the country, calling on Trump to lift the order.
Representatives of the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee and the local Jewish Community Relations Council have issued statements critical of the ban.
Bishop David Ricken of the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay issued a strong statement, likening the situation to Mary and Joseph arriving exhausted from their journey, “only to be turned away by officials and told to go back where they came from, to a place where King Herod was searching for the Christ Child in order to kill him.”
Other Catholic leaders pointed to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has issued statements critical of the ban and voiced solidarity with Muslims.
However, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki on Friday defended the ban, saying the president must balance the needs of refugees against the safety of Americans.
“There are two competing values,” said Listecki, who does not believe the ban targets Muslims.
“You’ve got to recognize the sovereignty of the nation, and the first responsibility of a leader is to protect his people,” he said. On the other side, there is the Christian heart that ... wants to welcome the stranger and embrace the immigrant.”
For Dietrich, the issue is also personal. His Jewish great-grandfather fled Russian pogroms in the early 1900s. At Mass last Sunday, he read from a letter by the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit Catholic priest and America magazine editor at-large, which called the ban and Trump’s vow to build a wall along the Mexican border “manifestly un-Christian and utterly contrary to the Gospel.”
Martin said he was prolife, and that means he is also pro-social justice.
“That means I support caring for the marginalized among us: the refugee, the migrant, the displaced person, the homeless, the unemployed, the person with disabilities, the single mother, women who are abused, minorities of every kind who are persecuted, and all those who feel left out, mocked, lonely, ignored or frightened.”
The Rev. John Yockey, a Catholic priest and ardent Trump supporter who retired from St. Jerome’s in Oconomowoc and still helps out there and at other churches, rejects the notion that the ban is inconsistent with Catholic teaching.
“That’s a very one-sided and a distorted reading of the Gospel,” said Yockey, who rejects the assertion by many Catholics that barring refugees contradicts the church’s description of itself as “pro-life.”
“On Sunday, I reminded folks of the consistent ethic of life that Catholics hold near and dear. But while all life issues are linked and inter-related, the right (of an embryo) to life is primary.”
Not mutually exclusive
One local leader who has become a national voice on the issue is the Rev. Scott Arbeiter, former lead pastor at Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, who now heads World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals.
Arbeiter has garnered much support, and opposition, for his criticism of the ban.
He defended that position Thursday, saying security and compassion are not mutually exclusive, and that World Relief has reached out to the Trump administration offering to help devise a system that accomplishes both.
“We believe we can be both pro-refugee and pro-security,” said Arbeiter.
“We are not naive. We don’t believe for a moment that there is no risk of a refugee being involved in an act of terrorism,” said Arbeiter. “But we don’t accept zero risk in any parts of our lives. We drive our cars . ... We fly in airplanes . ... But we have one chance in 3.64 billion, according to the (libertarian) Cato Institute, of being killed in a terrorist attack by a refugee.”
Kevin Carroll, dean of All Saints Episcopal Cathedral, didn’t intend to speak on the issue. But he went off-script in a sermon on the Beatitudes and Micah 6:8, in which Christians are called to “act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
In the end, he told them, “A moral and ethical country does not hold hostage women and children in wartorn parts of the world.”
“It was just something that sort of came to me at the end,” said Carroll, who is sure it frosted a few people, though he heard only positive feedback.
“I was trying to speak to the issues carefully in the sermon. But by the end, I just couldn’t pretend that this thing wasn’t happening.”