Are we really welcoming?

Spirituality includes breaking things

This past week, the Fayetteville City Council unanimously approved the Welcoming Fayetteville Plan. This is worth celebrating. It’s taken lots of great planning and leadership from city officials, as well as insights from nonprofits like Arkansas United Community Coalition, Northwest Arkansas Council and Canopy NWA to make it a reality.

What’s the center of the plan? It’s focused on the inclusion and integration of new Americans in our community, so that we can help break down barriers and make everyday life easier for those who are new to our country and our community.

It’s not easy to break down barriers to inclusion. Saying everyone is welcome is actually really easy. Just put a sign up and say everybody is welcome. But to actually create welcome, lots of barriers have to be broken down, and the population for whom the barriers are being broken needs to be the crucial voice in articulating what needs to change.

I was especially taken by something Mireya Reith of Arkansas United Community Coalition said at the meeting Tuesday night. “We’re really proud that Fayetteville looks to be the first city in the state to open up it’s process, so there can be more diversity contributing to city government,” said Reith.

Reith also said, that although this plan is a good step, it all boils down to implementation. That’s so true. As a pastor, thinking about the spirituality of welcome and sanctuary, I realize, that although I can idealize welcome or assume that I or we are being welcoming, it takes a lot of attention — and sometimes really difficult decisions — to be truly welcoming.

Examples in the church space include: If you welcome people into the building, but then exclude them from leadership, are you really being welcoming? If you call your sanctuary a sanctuary, but you won’t offer sanctuary to undocumented people, is it really a sanctuary?

Examples in the Arkansas space include: If you welcome people to your community, but won’t go to bat for DREAMers when they are ignored by our congress and used as a political pawn by our president, are you really welcoming? If you can’t call our city a sanctuary city for fear of political repercussions, are you really welcoming? If your city is situated in a county with a racist voluntary policy, 287(g) — making our county sheriff’s office an extension of ICE — in place, do you have some work to do on implementation?

The answer is yes. There’s a lot of work to do. And I’m operating on the assumption that, like in church, like in the city, if you make a plan that is designed to break down barriers, part of the spirituality of welcome is actually going to include breaking things.