Washington faith leaders reject
immigration orders in Sunday sermons
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[January 30, 2017]
By Lisa Lambert
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The sun had just
risen when the head of St. John's Church across the street from the
White House broke from his standard practice of avoiding politics and
spoke passionately against sweeping new restrictions on immigration
ordered by President Donald Trump.
Reverend Luis Leon, St. John's rector, told the 20 people gathered for
the early Sunday service that he was a Cuban refugee who came to the
United States as a child and that Friday's executive order barring entry
to refugees fleeing violence in Syria was "very personal."
"I can't stand to think that we've become the kind of people who reject
people who are fighting for their lives," he said. "To send them back to
where they came from is unbelievable and unbearable to me."
Leon said his Christian beliefs gave him a "thirst and hunger for
righteousness" to stand up against the ban.
Often called "the presidents' church," St. John's always has a pew
reserved for the current White House occupant. Former president George
W. Bush frequently took his motorcade around the block for the 7:45 a.m.
service and chatted with Leon before leaving.
In churches all over the U.S. political capital on Sunday morning,
ministers, priests and other faith leaders criticized Trump's orders to
build a wall on the Mexican border, refuse visas to citizens of some
Muslim-dominated countries, and suspend a program admitting Syrian
refugees to the country.

Given that 70 percent of Americans consider themselves Christian,
according to Pew Research Center, some saw the "Muslim ban" as the
latest turn in centuries of tension between Christianity and Islam.
Up the street from St. John's at the church once attended by former
president Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, who ran against Trump in
the 2016 election, Senior Pastor Ginger Gaines-Cirelli said building
walls was counter to the work of Jesus.
"Rejecting the stranger, the immigrant, the refugee out of fear is to
reject both the teachings of Christ and the person of Christ," she told
congregants of Foundry United Methodist Church, adding that plans to
exempt Syrian Christians from the ban also go against Jesus' teachings.
Less than two miles away at the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, where
former President Barack Obama has spoken, Reverend Rutherford Cooke
urged people to seek "how God wants us to react in times like these.
“Our bearings are anchored in the word and the spirit of God,” he told
the congregation, which was formed in 1866 by freed slaves. "Don’t lose
your bearings."
'WHAT A WEEK IT HAS BEEN'
Trump, a Presbyterian, stayed at the White House on Sunday morning. The
National Presbyterian Church nearby has invited him to worship, an offer
that led to objections from some of its members, according to the
church's senior pastor, David Renwick.
[to top of second column] |

Pastor Matt Braddock of Christ Congregational Church offers free
lawn signs to congregants after U.S. President Donald Trump's
executive order travel ban, in a suburb of Washington, DC, U.S.
January 29, 2017 in this handout. Joanne Morrison/Handout via
REUTERS

Residents of Washington almost exclusively vote Democrat, and only
about 5 percent of registered voters are Republicans like Trump. The
city's political leanings were evident as many ministers widened
their sermons on the traditional day of Christian worship to all the
policies and priorities Trump has laid out since his inauguration on
Jan. 20.
They included beginning work on repealing the national healthcare
law, supposedly muzzling government scientists at the Environmental
Protection Agency and suggesting a steep border tax.
Last weekend the National Cathedral hosted an inauguration prayer
service that outraged so many members that its head had to write a
public letter in defense.
On Sunday the cathedral's tone had changed, as Reverend-Canon
Rosemarie Logan Duncan announced from the pulpit: "We are living in
difficult times, days of deep divisions, of uncertainty, of fear and
anxiety that leaves many in our nation without any hope for the
future.
"Societal advances seem to be under the threat of being stripped
away, and there is a sense that the hands of time are quickly
spinning in reverse."
Father Moises Villalta urged the 200 people of a wide variety of
races and socioeconomic levels gathered at the Shrine of the Sacred
Heart, a popular Catholic worship space in the Columbia Heights
neighborhood, to keep working to create peace, saying true happiness
is found by acting in solidarity with others.
"What a week it has been," he said. "What a week it has been."
(Additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Frank McGurty
and Lisa Von Ahn)
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