Christ Church Blog

Post Office, Public School, Hospital, Law Enforcement, Health Insurance, Bank, Amazon, Cable, Retail Stores, Highway System, Grocery—these are but a few of the systems with which we interact on a regular basis and upon which we depend. In the past few days some of my friends and I have experienced a number of glitches in these systems that range from the humorous (an “information officer” for Public Schools who didn’t have the phone numbers for the various Public School buildings), to the inconvenient (a bank having no record of a deposit until presented with their own deposit receipt), to the dangerous (US Postal Service failure to deliver some critical medication in the guaranteed timely manner).

 It’s not that anyone expects perfection. It’s just that it seems to be getting to the point that when any of these systems actually work as they are a supposed to . . . we’re surprised. One of my greatest frustrations is the great amount of time I spend on the phone on ‘hold”, only to be disconnected or to discover that I have the wrong department. Imagine my delight when someone answers the phone and really has the answer or solution to my problem.

But one thing I can count upon is the community here at Christ Church. Oh, we have our problems, too. Sometimes the sound system doesn’t work the way we want it to or there’s a typo in the bulletin or someone doesn’t do something that we expected him or her to do. But in the end, this is a community of people who genuinely welcome and care for one another. I look forward to those times when we gather for worship and the community surrounds me and I know that at least for that short time the godly fellowship will work as promised, balm for my soul.

 –John Paddock

 Christ Church member Lorin Swinehart is a regular contributor to the publication “El Ojo del Lago”. This is the cover article for the September issue. Offered with the author’s permission.

           MASSIVE HUMAN RIGHTS TRAGEDY ON US SOUTHERN BORDER

          A Microcosm of Global Catastrophe/Forewarning of Things to Come

                                               Dr. Lorin Swinehart

     In recent months, there has been an influx across the southern U.S. border of approximately 57,000 children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, most unaccompanied by their parents. Ordinarily, the sight of impoverished, homeless, abandoned, mostly parent-less children would inspire compassion among adults. Instead, we have been treated to the spectacle of frenzied mobs shouting at buses transporting the unfortunate passengers to inadequate sanctuaries.

   President Obama has asked Congress to authorize $3.7 billion to address the crisis. The funds would be used to provide detention, care and transportation for the children, to increase the capacity of immigration courts, prosecute those who traffic in humans, increase border surveillance and assist Central American nations in repatriating the refugees.

   The children are innocent victims, trapped in a vicious cycle, chess pieces in a cruel and barbarous geopolitical game. Many have fled violence and predation in their home countries. They did not ask to be brought into this world, and they are not at fault for their plight.

     Local resources are inadequate to deal with the situation, and it is unfair to expect states such as New Mexico and Texas to bear the burden alone. This is not a state or local problem, and it cannot be solved on a state or local level.

     In many cases, cruel traffickers have profited from the plight of these desperate ones, assuring them that once inside the US, they will be allowed to remain. Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois has urged the prosecution of these so-called “coyotes”. Little has been said regarding Mexican officials complicit in the transportation of the refugees across 1500 miles of their territory.

     Most of the refugees are fleeing Honduras, which, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has the world’s highest per capita murder rate. Honduras suffers from a stagnant economy as well as political instability. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have both labeled it a Heavily Indebted Poor Country. Human rights workers and reformers are routinely harassed, beaten and even murdered, with government complicity.  

   In a 2009 coup d’etat, condemned by the OAS and the UN, the Honduran president was ousted and replaced by the leader of the congress. Only the US regarded the move as legal.

     In Honduras, where the birth rate hovers at 3.7 per woman, the government is currently attempting to criminalize emergency contraception. Emergency contraception is not abortophasic. With an estimated 800,000 to 1,000,000 Hondurans already living in the US and more in Spain and throughout the America’s, Honduras should not be discouraging contraception.

     In the 1980’s, Honduras hosted the world’s largest Peace Corps mission. At the same time, there is suspicion that the CIA supported a campaign of extra-judicial killings by the military while combating Marxist guerrillas.

   The US has been in dire need of a rational immigration policy for decades. Meaningful reform has often been thwarted by employers, particularly in agriculture, eager to profit from a population of undocumented workers willing to work for low wages and under harsh conditions.

   When I was very young, I worked alongside Puerto Rican migrant workers in the steaming summer fields of an Ohio truck farm. I was shocked and angered by the degradation they suffered and by the grower’s overbearing, supercilious attitude toward those men whom I had come to know as friends.

     Today, as the nation lurches out from under the Great Recession, undocumented workers are met with increasing hostility. Recent demonstrations in California and elsewhere are especially repugnant, with protestors flourishing the American flag as a symbol not of freedom and hope but of ugliness and hatred. One wonders if the protestors would be so fervent if the refugees hailed from Canada. The dark specter of racism looms over the debate.

   President Bush signed into law a bill requiring illegal immigrants from Latin countries other than Mexico to be granted a hearing before being sent back to their homelands, ostensibly in order to protect women and children from trafficking and sex slavery. The immigration courts frequently take one to three years before hearing a case.

   Simply dumping the immigrants back into the societies from which they have fled would be illegal under current US law. Small, parentless children would be easy prey for human predators. While tighter border security is required to end the current stampede, the situations of those already here need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

   Undocumented immigrants help drive US population growth, contributing to widespread loss of habitat and biodiversity. Recently, Science Magazine postulated that the world is facing its sixth great extinction because of overpopulation. As always, the problems of human suffering and environmental depletion cannot be separated.

     Overpopulation and the consequential depletion of natural resources exacerbates all other issues. Family planning and contraceptive services on a global level would do much in the long run to ameliorate conditions such as those in Honduras and throughout much of Latin America. A necessary prerequisite is the empowerment of women, especially with regard to the ever-controversial issue of reproductive rights. Any doctrine encouraging population growth anywhere, whether promoted by governments, religious organizations or macho bullies needs to be soundly rejected.

     The US cannot unilaterally reform Honduras. Altering the manner in which a society thinks and acts, from the bottom up, dwarfs the seven labors of Hercules. Our efforts will meet with limited success in a region where the charge of Yankee Imperialism still resonates.

   The scenes along the US southern border will be repeated many times in the future, as societies collapse beneath the burdens of too many people and too few resources. In his prescient study, The Coming Anarchy, Robert Kaplan warns that conflicts will arise over scarce water and topsoil resources in the 21^st century, as they have over petroleum reserves in the 20th.

   Simple solutions, raging rhetoric and the latest outbursts of congressional Newspeak only worsen a tragic situation. The President has offered a responsible plan. It is time for Congress to step up to the plate.

   Many countries in the world today are economic and societal failures, as is evidenced by the number of their citizens eager to flee elsewhere. To simply move on to a new place after devouring one’s own country from beneath oneself is no solution to world poverty and the depletion of natural resources. No country, including the US, can admit everyone who wants to enter, whether legally or illegally. To do so invites chaos.

   In the meantime, humane treatment is required for those whom the great prophets of the Old Testament would have called “sojourners” among us. Given that the infant Jesus Christ was himself a refugee in a strange land, those who profess to follow him need to ask themselves whether they will behave like the Good Samaritan or like the Scribe and the Pharisee who, when confronted by the sufferings of a crime victim, chose to look the other way. Before submerging one’s mind and soul in the jingoistic mob, it might be wise to remember the words, “What you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.”

Today in our calendar of Holy Women and Holy Men we remember “The Righteous Gentiles.” These were people who risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust.

We Americans celebrate the untold number of people who operated the Underground Railroad prior to the Civil War who assisted runaway slaves to escape to safe havens in the north and in Canada. They too risked their lives and violated the unjust laws of their time.

Let us take time to celebrate the people of faith and others of good will who have the moral courage to shield and shelter underage immigrant children crossing our borders who are escaping war, drug violence, abuse in many forms. Rather than welcome these children and youth, our government is jailing, then deporting many of them right back into the desperate situations they worked so hard to escape–situations often created or exacerbated by U.S. foreign and economic policy.

Let’s not forget the promise of liberty enshrined in our faith, in our Declaration of Independence, in the Righteous Gentiles, in the Underground railroaders, and in the words of Emma Lazarus placed in the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

From the time of Pharaoh the cry of the oppressed has risen to God who then sends prophets demanding of the oppressors, “Let my people go!” Be a prophet.

Just imagine it. The Sermon on the Mount posted outside every court house, reminding judges, juries and lawyers to favor the poor and to be merciful to those who fall short. And posted in every classroom, reminding bullies to care for the meek, not torment them; reminding those with raging hormones to be pure in heart.

Imagine Jesus’ teachings about wealth guiding our bankers, hedge fund managers, business schools and earnest seekers after wealth. His real teachings, not the phony “prosperity gospel.”

Imagine citizens standing at the borders and holding out open arms to strangers seeking respite from the storms. Imagine people with food going through impoverished areas sharing with they have. Imagine the Jesus people remembering they how they suffered at the hands of the intolerant, and then respecting the faiths of other people, as Jesus did.

Imagine healing being made available to all, as Jesus dispensed healing. Imagine people being taught, not exploited; treasured, not judged.

And yes, from to time, when the forces of evil declare war on humankind, imagine men and women serving as needed, not buying their way out of military duty; showing courage as best they can, and then returning quickly to their plows.

I know that such imaginings aren’t what right-wing religionists mean by “Christian nation.” They hunger for a nation in which people live by the prejudices and preferences that right-wing zealots have baptized as “Christian”: hating gays, favoring whites, a nation of no handouts to the poor (handouts to bankers are okay), no illegal immigrants, where prayers are public and bullying, not private, as Jesus preferred.

Such a nation might jibe with the intolerance of the early Puritans, the Protestant vs Catholic sectarian warfare brought over from Europe, and the attitudes toward human dignity that prevailed in the slave-owning South. But it would have little to do with the Jesus who actually was.

That’s the dilemma, of course. Right-wing religionists have an agenda they want to impose on everyone. They claim it is God’s will, when in fact it is just the product of their own fear-driven and nostalgic worldview. Calling it “Christian” doesn’t make it so.

Still, it is delicious to imagine a nation in which people joined hands in solidarity, were bold for justice, shared wealth, cared for the least among us, showed light in the darkness, and embraced all that God has made because God made it.

In my opinion, that is what America is supposed to be about. Anything less misses the mark. And the right-wing vision doesn’t come close.

Re-blogged from Tom Erich, Morning Walk Media.