CHURCHES RALLY AGAINST RACISM
Christian leaders band together to decry anti-immigration flyers
Sixteen Richmond Christian leaders have banded together to issue an open letter calling for unity against the anti-immigration message in racist flyers distributed to households in the city over the past two weeks. The churches are asking members to join a Friday noon rally at the main Richmond Public Library against the flyers, which invoke the so-called “alt-right” white supremacist message that gained traction in the U.S. with the election of Donald Trump as that country’s next president.
“I thought the alt-right reference (in the letter) was necessary because the flyers use that language and invite people to join the alt-right movement,” said Richmond Presbyterian Church Rev. Victor Kim, who penned the open letter with input from his fellow pastors.
The term alt-right was coined by white supremacists in the U.S. as a more palatable euphemism for their movement. Kim said the wide distribution of such flyers in Richmond and elsewhere in the Lower Mainland show Canada isn’t immune from the anti-outsider tide currently dominating U.S. political discourse.
“I don’t think we can take the high road all the time and say, well, the Americans are like this and we’re not, when clearly we have our own issues as well,” Kim said.
“We’re living in some tenuous times where people feel like they’ve been given some license that they haven’t always had,” he said. “We have the example of someone who seems rather filterless, and people have responded by electing him president. I think it’s given some encouragement to people who may have been kept in the shadows.”
Kim, himself an anglophone Canadian of Korean heritage, served a congregation in Calgary for 22 years before coming to Richmond a year ago. He said the proliferation of non-English business signs in Richmond aimed at Chinese residents was something new to him.
“As an Asian but someone who’s not Chinese it’s a strange place to be as well,” he said. “Most Asians in Richmond are kind of assumed to be Chinese.”
He said the flyers’ anti-Chinese message “resonates with me in a different way, to read something about how the Chinese are taking over. But as someone who’s a visible minority it still speaks to me.”
Kim, who serves a mostly-white congregation at his Richmond church, had given a sermon last summer relating the rise of Trump and Britain’s Brexit vote to the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. He started talking to other Christian ministers about the issue when the flyers began circulating in mid-November.
He and the others — a spectrum of liberal and evangelical Christians — resolved to pen the letter when a new round of flyers came out at the end of November. “It seemed to be growing. I emailed my colleagues saying we should do something as faith leaders.”
Richmond RCMP have said they are investigating the circulation of the flyers, and have consulted with the B.C. hate crime team. Police say the flyers were distributed by anti-immigration group Immigration Watch Canada.
Friday’s rally will feature speakers and music, Kim said. “We’re also inviting other faith traditions in the Richmond community. Invitations have gone out to people from the Buddhist, the Muslim, the Jewish, Sikh and other communities.
“This is a time where how we respond to things like these flyers will be a good example to set for the Lower Mainland and all of Canada.”