“AND A SECOND IS LIKE IT” – An International Discussion of Immigration. Hospitality, Justice, and Loving Your Neighbor [LDT082]

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 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” ³⁸This is the greatest and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ⁴⁰On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’  (Matthew 22:37-39)

Hi, Lovers. And welcome to Love in a Dangerous Time. I hope that each of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving table is so often the scene for family warfare, or impersonal mass feeding. It’s always been a goal of mine to have fantastic conversation, and I think we did it again this year.

Today we’re going to talk with some church folk who are deeply involved in helping the people who are forced to relocate, to other countries, to avoid crashed economies or the crashing down of brutal governments and the wars that they inflict on us. In the American Southwest and in Germany, some folks who are active in their denominations have been leading in this area, even to the extent of creating and building the Sanctuary movement.

The group, which doesn’t have a name, consists of three Lutheran clergy, who live in Berlin, one retired and one active Presbyterian pastors, who live in Arizona and New York City, and a member of a multi-faith intentional community at the Stony Point Conference Center in upstate New York. All of these people have experience working on immigrant issues and the Sanctuary movement.

They’ve been meeting, on Skype, for over a year to draft a statement that can be passed by denominations and other religious and secular organizations that spells out the problem, the moral issues involved and the measures that must be taken for the world to meet its moral obligation. I have been honored to join those meetings as the tech guy, making (well, usually making) Skype work for us.

So this episode is a report to our communities on the progress of the group. And Lovers, this report is for you too.

In the recent election, some pretty horrible things were said about immigrants and some draconian control measures were proposed. It’s very important that people of faith jump into this argument stand for the loving our neighbors, especially when they are in such need. There’s a lot to do, Lovers.

Please give this episode a good listen, read the final document and then take it to your faith community to mobilize as many as possible to take action on this crisis issue.

Then come back and leave a comment on LoveInADangerousTime.net, by typing in our comments section of leave a voice recording using the SpeakPipe feature on the right hand side of each page. Or you could go to Facebook/LoveInADangerousTime and join the discussion on our community page. The important thing is to hear the ideas of as many people as you can, and to express your own insights.

Lovers. We need to talk and act! Let’s go.

Here is the link to the Presbyterian website, with their comments on the document.