From our friends at Faithful America:

The Trump administration is pursuing felony criminal charges against a volunteer with a church group that provides water, food, socks, blankets, and emergency first-aid treatments to migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Scott Warren volunteers with No More Deaths—a ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson—and he’s on trial for “harboring” two undocumented immigrants.

Warren’s legal team is arguing his actions should be protected under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. But while Jeff Sessions has no problem with religious freedom being invoked to excuse discrimination against LGBT people, DOJ lawyers are arguing that aiding migrants "is not required by his beliefs.”

The case is receiving national media attention, showing how a crackdown on church ministries to the most vulnerable is a genuine threat to religious freedom.
​
Sign the petition:
The Department of Justice must immediately drop all charges against Scott Warren and respect the right of No More Deaths volunteers to freely practice their faith by caring for migrants on the border.

​It is clear that this federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act is being used to condone the discriminatory behavior by right-wing religious groups, but was never intended to protect work for justice-seeking people faith.  Please sign this petition to support Scott Warren living out his faith commitments and to enable him and others to continue working to protect and aid asylum seekers.

Let our friends at CAIR help you at a Naturalization Fair!!

Can you help us spread the word to those in need (including your families, friends and neighbors) and bring in more volunteers? We want to serve as many people in need of naturalization/citizenship help as possible! 

We need interpreters, law clerks, pro-bono attorneys and more at the event.
If you can lend a hand, please email mzahriya@cair.com! 
If You Go
WHAT: CAIR-SV Naturalization Fair offering free legal help with U.S. citizenship.
WHEN: July 26; registration from 8:30-8:55 a.m., event from 9-4 p.m.
WHERE: CAIR Sacramento Valley headquarters, 1122 Del Paso Blvd.
MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER*: Call 916-441-6269; email mzahriya@cair.com; visit the event on our website.
* Advance registration is required. 

Dear Friends,
 
Do not mistreat the alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt
                                           (Exodus 22:21)
 
A brief history of American immigration:

• In 1834 Boston Protestants burned an Ursuline Convent in a riot against growing Catholicism and, to some extent, the presence of French Canadian nuns.
• Discrimination against if not outright barring of Irish Catholics was the norm from the mid 1830s to the “Know Nothing” era of the 1850s. 
• In 1882, although Chinese labor had been a critical part in building the nation’s cross-continental railroads, America imposed the Chinese Exclusion Act barring immigrants from that nation.
• In 1907 the US created the “Gentleman’s Agreement” protocol in which Japan would no longer issue passports to their citizens desiring to live in America.
• In 1923 a court decision barred immigrants from India and stripped naturalized Indians of their US citizenship
• During the Great Depression virtually all immigration was barred, and over half a million Mexican migrants were sent back to Mexico.
• Jewish immigration was also stopped, causing untold hardship to those fleeing fascism. The St Louis bound for New York with Jewish refugees was turned away consigning Jews to probable death.
• In 1942 propelled by fear and anger, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 directing all Japanese and Japanese-Americans to internment camps for the duration of the war.

 
And what can one add to the horror of forced migration since the 17th Century as Black African slavery.  No rights, no freedom, no citizenship for over 300 years, massive exploitation. 
 
All of this and more was done to people who we, as people of faith, consider to be the backbone of our complex society.  We make promises.  We don’t keep them.
 
Today’s Supreme Court Ruling upholding a Muslim ban – and make no mistake, that’s what it is – is a reversal of history and an appeal to the worst parts  of American history and to our worse natures. This ruling capitulates to fear not to reason, not to love, and not to the very principles we claim to honor as Christians.
 
Attorney General Jeff Sessions just called those of us opposed to this ban, “The lunatic fringe”.  No, we are speaking to our core Constitutional and faith values.
 
Despite our national commitment to Religious Freedom, religion is being used to bar thousands who are fleeing oppression and who now cannot come to America to seek refuge.  Mark you, if those seeking asylum and are Christians from the designated nations now barred entry, this ban will not be upheld.  This isn’t about national security. This is about religious discrimination of the worst order.
 
With the chaos of our Southern border and reversal of the existing laws about the treatment of refugees, the separation of families and internments of children, now we have barriers to Muslims from countries that have done no harm to us at all.
 
We are descending to rival our darkest actions, our most base nature.  History will not judge us well.
 
This decision cannot stand.  We must raise our voices everywhere against the retreat to fear and demonizing of our neighbors.  We are called to do this.  It must be our charge.

Thank you. 

I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness is a great book for folk wanting to know how to help “progressive” churches walk the walk when they are stuck just talking the talk.

From a powerful new voice on racial justice, an eye-opening account of growing up Black, Christian, and female in middle-class white America. 

Austin Channing Brown's first encounter with a racialized America came at age 7, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools, organizations, and churches, Austin writes, "I had to learn what it means to love blackness," a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America's racial divide as a writer, speaker and expert who helps organizations practice genuine inclusion.

In a time when nearly all institutions (schools, churches, universities, businesses) claim to value "diversity" in their mission statements, I'm Still Here is a powerful account of how and why our actions so often fall short of our words. Austin writes in breathtaking detail about her journey to self-worth and the pitfalls that kill our attempts at racial justice, in stories that bear witness to the complexity of America's social fabric--from Black Cleveland neighborhoods to private schools in the middle-class suburbs, from prison walls to the boardrooms at majority-white organizations. 

For readers who have engaged with America's legacy on race through the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michael Eric Dyson, I'm Still Here is an illuminating look at how white, middle-class, Evangelicalism has participated in an era of rising racial hostility, inviting the reader to confront apathy, recognize God's ongoing work in the world, and discover how blackness--if we let it--can save us all.

“Brown talked to Religion News Service about how the church is missing out when it doesn’t listen to black voices, how awkward even progressive spaces can be and how white people can be less exhausting.”  https://religionnews.com/2018/05/09/white-people-are-exhausting/

If you order this book from Amazon, please go to Amazon Smile and choose California Council of Churches as your designated charity!
https://smile.amazon.com/Im-Still-Here-Dignity-Whiteness/dp/1524760854/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527276465&sr=8-1&keywords=I'm+Still+Here%3A+Black+Dignity+in+a+World+Made+for+Whiteness

An essay by our Director of Public Policy Elizabeth Sholes

I always tried to pay attention to Albert Einstein’s sarcastic comment, “I love humanity. It’s people I can’t stand!” 
 
For years I’ve heard people sneer at those of us who do social justice work saying that is precisely what we do – ignore the people. Then they add (as if they were experts) that if we really knew the people for whom we advocated, we’d hate them.  The final kicker is, if we’re working to find solutions to homelessness, the opposition will snarl, “So how many drifters have you taken into your house?”
 
Well, now I can answer that last question:  twenty-two.  Plus three dogs and one cat.  Oh yes, a toad that lives in an aquarium.  Some stayed inside temporarily, some lived on either the front porch (the police asked us not to do that) or in the backyard in a sheltered gazebo or the garage.  Others came to dinner for the holidays and still others come over to visit and share food.
 
Do I like all of them? Yes, actually, I do.  Even Speedy.  Speedy is pretty hapless because he has no idea how to be polite.  I’ve given up doing much more than feeding him  because the biggest success I’ve had in five years is to make him stop saying, “Yo! Mama!” when he sees me. That’s all I’ll ever get from him. It’s enough.
 
We are not called to like everyone who deserves help.  I freely admit I do judge some actions more than others. I don’t interact with people who hold arguments with other people I can’t see.  I don’t tolerate drug use at my home ever, and I do push sobriety where I can.   
 
My one demand is that, over a period of time, they get signed up for the programs we have, as advocates, fought tooth and nail to obtain for them – food stamps, health care, basic minimal income.  If I’m giving out money, they need to make that effort so I can give out less.  I agree with folksy, progressive radio commentator, Jim Hightower: “Money’s like manure, he said. “You gotta spread it around.”  When people have basic benefits, my own fertilizer goes further.
 
This all started with a very simple act – I let homeless people use our address for their mail.  This is life altering for them since with an address for their mail they know when they have to update their records, know they have benefits at all, and prevent loss as reporting changes occur.  We get our own first class mail at a PO Box anyway, but it was such a simple thing and has made an enormous difference for all those people. 
 
Having protection from the vagaries of both homelessness and being out of touch has made a difference.  A lot of them are Vietnam vets, have worked, and are too old to find employment anymore. A few have disability income finally, one is on Social Security, and others have applied.   The cat lived on a harness and leash for two years to keep him safe, and now he and his owner have their own small apartment because they regularized their social service contacts via our address. We are thrilled for them both.  Others have gone home to family, and still others have VA or HUD housing.  All of this happened because they had an address.
 
I come by this outreach honorably.  During the Depression years, my grandmother fed “hoboes and bums” in the backyard in exchange for some work.  At some point one of them carved a simple figure on the gate – a curled up cat – telling other such men that “a kind-hearted woman lives here.”  Well I don’t have the sign, but everyone knows who we are, including the police who look away because our corner of the universe is calm, peaceful, and clean.  Our neighbors love the men living in the backyard and hire them for weekly clean up and small jobs. 
 
I can walk my extended neighborhood and see people I don’t know who know who I am.  When I had a medical crisis (that turned out to be nothing but was temporarily very painful) I was surrounded by care from everyone we’d helped.  We are a community. I consider them my friends. I’m afraid of no one because no one would let anything happen to me.
 
Obviously what helps this along is that there is a public bathroom a block away that is open 24/7.  I don’t think I have a solution for that where such things don’t exist.  But I’d probably rent a porta-potty or buy a compost toilet – it’s really not too much to do.
 
But if I did nothing more than make sandwiches and hot soup or cold drinks depending on the weather, just sharing our front porch mailbox would, to them, have been enough.  We morphed into the living situations. It’s not for everyone, but it works for us.  There are, however, totally possible solutions we can offer.
 
How life changing would it be if churches put up cubbies with numbers that become “apartments” in the public records to give homeless people an address they can access during business hours? They would keep their social services, have a contact if they got ill, and otherwise just make stability in a small way where otherwise the system rolls over those who are already just barely scraping by?
 
How hard is it to put out a water station and plastic cups (plus a waste basked) in the heat of summer days?  How hard is it to have “cup o’ noodles” and insulated cups for cold weather? 
 
Homeless people give back.  Recently an entire field got cleaned up because a friend who leaves home baked goodies for the people who camp there got harmed.  She does cat rescue work, leaves food bins to make it easier, and those bins got stolen. She got REALLY mad and took them back forcefully from the new homeless man who’d taken them.  The other homeless people who saw what happened rallied around, drove the thief away, and then cleaned up every inch of the mess he (mostly) had made.  She was amazed.  I told her – they did this for you. They know what good you do for animals and for them, and they wouldn’t tolerate the decay of their fragile community stability that teeters on the kindnesses you show them.
 
I am adamant no one needs to repay me, but they DO have to “pay if forward” to others in harm’s way.  They do that – I’ve seen it repeatedly. But they also bring me presents. I have a gorgeous scarf one gave me, bracelets, a bird feeder- things they found, nice things they salvaged – to say thanks.  I treasure them. And no – these things aren’t stolen.  You’d be appalled at what people throw away.  The homeless are masters of finding and salvaging what others merely toss.
 
They are smart, funny, kind, and engaging.  Yes, some have mental health issues, now with Medi-Cal largely under control.  Some have records, freely disclosed and, from me, not judged.  They work hard both at keeping body and soul together and keeping our neighborhood clean and crime free.  Being poor is the hardest work there is, and they put their shoulders to the wheel, day after day.
 
Arrests for illegal camping are almost non-existent in our area because if they are rousted, they can temporarily leave their things in the backyard while they move their sites.  Nothing is more stupid than the ‘cat and mouse’ ticketing of homeless for sleeping outside and making them move their stuff, then ticketing them if they can’t.  Then comes the warrants for their failure to appear (they have no transportation to court or work details), then jailing them for 3 days only to have the cycle repeat.  Just giving them a place to store things while they relocate has cut down on the cycle and let them get legally placed. 
 
One woman a block over – I dislike her far too much to consider her a neighbor – hates the homeless.  She has made as many as 52 calls in one night to the police claiming one man – ONE – was doing terrible things in the alley by her house. These are all lies.  Why isn’t she cited for false police reports? She’s a homeowner. That’s why.  When my homeless friend asked her why she was so angry with him (he had permission to sleep several houses down from her) she said, “Because I’m a CHRISTIAN!” 
 
Seriously.  She said that. 
 
She has called the police on us, to no avail, for giving access to our own property.  She has filed complaints that we are messy and lowering property values (thanks to the homeless men, our house is lovely – neat, trimmed, clean, raked.)  So her brand of “Christianity” does not prevail, thank goodness.  I see her peeking down my driveway from time to time, so I recently put a sign in the front window, “Matthew 25:40 Lives Here.”  For some reason she hasn’t been by since.  Wonder why…
 
“As ye have done to the least of these…”  That is the crux of what faith teaches me. No rules, no ritual, no rites will matter so much as that one directive. Walking the walk on whatever level you can is all we are asked to do.  It’s amazingly simple to find a way to be kind.  And guess what?  You get back friends.  Who knew?  

December 05, 2017 by Rachel Held Evans


It’s an unconventional birth announcement.
Defiant.
Prophetic.
Unsentimental.
We like to paint Mary in the softer hues—her robes clean, hair combed and covered, body poised in prayerful surrender—but this young woman was a fierce one, full of strength and fury. When she accepts the dangerous charge before her, (every birth was risky in those days, this one especially so), rather than reciting a maternal blessing, Mary offers a prophecy:
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,    
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him    
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;    
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,    
and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things,    
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,    
in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors,    
to Abraham and to his descendants forever. 
When sung in a warm, candlelit church at Advent, it can be easy to blunt these words, to imagine them as symbolic, non-specific, comforting.
But I’m not feeling sentimental this Advent. I’m feeling angry, restless. 
And so in this season, I hear Mary’s Magnificat shouted, not sung: 
In the halls of the Capitol Building…. 
"He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
In the corridors of the West Wing…
“He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.”
In the streets of Charlottesville…
“He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.”
Among women who have survived assault, harassment, and rape...
“He has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed.”
Among the poor, the refugees, the victims of gun violence, and the faithful ministers of the gospel who at great cost are speaking out against the false religions of nationalism and white supremacy…
“His mercy is for those who fear him, from generation to generation.”
With the Magnificat, Mary not only announces a birth, she announces the inauguration of a new kingdom, one that stands in stark contrast to every other kingdom—past, present, and future—that relies on violence and exploitation to achieve “greatness.” With the Magnificat, Mary declares that God has indeed chosen sides.
And it’s not with the powerful, but the humble.
It’s not with the rich, but with the poor.
It’s not with the occupying force, but with people on the margins.  
It’s not with narcissistic kings, but with an un-wed, un-believed teenage girl entrusted with the holy task of birthing, nursing, and nurturing God.
This is the stunning claim of the incarnation: God has made a home among the very people the world casts aside. And in her defiant prayer, Mary—a dark-skinned woman, a refugee, a religious minority in an occupied land—names this reality.  
“God is with us. And if God is with us, who can stand against us?”I hear a lot of professed Christians right now suggesting that it’s okay if powerful men resort to a little lying, bigotry, abuse, and misogyny as long as Americans “get to say Merry Christmas again.” Besides the fact that virtually no one in this country has ever been prohibited from saying “Merry Christmas” in the first place, such a sentiment stands in blasphemous contradiction to the very doctrine of incarnation we are meant to embrace this time of year.
God did not wrap himself up in flesh, humbling himself to the point of birth in a stable and death on a cross, eating, laughing, weeping, and suffering as one of us, so that I can complain to management when a barista at Starbucks wishes me “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” The incarnation isn’t about desperately grasping at the threads of power and privilege. It’s not about making some civic holiday “bigger and better.” It’s about surrendering power, setting aside privilege, and finding God in the smallness and vulnerability of a baby in a womb.
To claim that the lighting of a national Christmas tree each year makes this country “a Christian nation,” while its powerful systematically oppress the poor, turn away refugees, incite violence against religious and ethnic minorities, molest and harass women and girls and call them liars when they dare to speak up, is, in the words of the prophet Amos, sickening to God.
“I hate, I despise your festivals,” God says in Amos 5, “and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies… Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
We cannot claim to embrace the Holy Family while withholding justice from those who would most identify with them. We cannot talk of “making Christmas great again” while taking the side of powerful and violent over the vulnerable. 
The season of Advent is meant to be a time of waiting.
 In years past, I lit candles, sang “O Come Emmanuel,” and pondered in stillness the joy of Christ’s first coming and the hope of his second.  
But this year I cannot be still. This year, hope is hard, belief is hard.
And so I’m waiting with the angst of the prophets, with the restlessness of the psalmist who cried “How long, oh Lord, will You hide your face forever?” and with the stubborn, unsentimental hope of a woman so convinced the baby inside her would change everything, she proclaimed in present tense that the great reversal has already arrived--
The powerful have already been humbled.
The vulnerable have already been lifted up.
For God has made a home among the people.
God has made a home with us.

https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/unsentimental-advent