- Moderator
- #1
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly ... we've seen too much Bad and Ugly...here is the Good.
Religious leaders embrace cause of immigrant children | National | NewsObserver.com
Religious leaders embrace cause of immigrant children | National | NewsObserver.com
After protesters shouting Go Home turned back busloads of immigrant mothers and children in Murrieta, Calif., a furious Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, sat down and drafted a blog post detailing his shame at the episode, writing, It was un-American; it was un-biblical; it was inhumane.
When the governor of Iowa, Terry Branstad, said he did not want the migrants in his state, declaring, We cant accept every child in the world who has problems, clergy in Des Moines held a prayer vigil at a United Methodist Church to demonstrate their desire to make room for the refugees.
Americas most visible response to the arrival of tens of thousands of migrant children, many of them fleeing violence and exploitation in Central America, has been the angry pushback from citizens and local officials who have channeled their outrage over illegal immigration into opposition to proposed shelter sites. But around the nation an array of religious leaders are trying to mobilize support for the children, saying the nation can and should welcome them.
Were talking about whether were going to stand at the border and tell children who are fleeing a burning building to go back inside, said Rabbi Asher Knight of Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, who said leaders of more than 100 faith organizations in his city met last week to discuss how to help. He said that in his own congregation, some are comparing the flow of immigrant children to the Kindertransport, a rescue mission in the late 1930s that sent Jewish children from Nazi Germany to Britain for safekeeping.
The question for us is: How do we want to be remembered, as yelling and screaming to go back, or as using the teachings of our traditions to have compassion and love and grace for the lives of Gods children? Knight said.