By Joe Guzzardi
03/21/2008
No matter which church you may attend on Easter Sunday, you stand a high probability of hearing a plea for "justice for immigrants" — that’s a given. And you'll also be called upon from the pulpit to, against all logic, embrace more immigration.
Accordingly, earlier this week I set out to determine which major religious denomination, pound for pound, has the worst pro-immigration record — members of the Treason Lobby, as we call it here at VDARE.COM. I limited my search to Roman Catholic as well as the Lutheran and Methodist Churches.
My secondary task was to find an official who represents one of those religions but who is also an immigration realist.
For pro-alien lobbying, the Catholic church (in which I was raised) is by far the most the most visible and notorious of the three. And well it should be, with a flock of 68 million members. That total represents nearly 25 percent of the world’s Catholic population.
From the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, Catholic immigration pandering has been non-stop for years. Even the relatively recent pedophilia scandals have barely slowed down Catholic immigration enthusiasm.
Over the last five years, Catholic Cardinals — most prominently Roger Cardinal Mahony, the Archbishop of Los Angeles — have urged support for amnesty and have argued passionately against immigration enforcement legislation.
Going one-step further to prove that no statement or action endorsing immigration is too outrageous, Mahony advocates violating federal law when and if enforcement measures are ever passed.
VDARE.COM writers have criticized Mahony with increasing disgust as his advocacy for illegal immigrants has intensified and his involvement in the pedophilia cover-ups have become more obvious.
But Mahony is far from the only Catholic Cardinal voice for aliens.
On the opposite coast, New York’s Cardinal Edward M Egan was out front and center (speaking Spanish, no less) at the Immigrant Workers' Freedom Ride, an even orchestrated five years ago and organized by dozens of open borders subversives who predicted — 100 percent incorrectly — that it would pressure Congress into passing an amnesty.
Other urgent issues like the New York diocese’s financial crisis have not distracted Egan, 75, from his illegal alien fanaticism.[ At 75, A Battle Tested but Unwavering Cardinal, By Michael Powell, New York Times, April 23, 2007]
Numbering about 15 million, about a quarter of the Catholic flock, they're fewer but equally determined.
In 2006, VDARE.COM contributor W. James Antle, III exposed the Methodists and their "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors" policy, a transparent, feel-good slogan that can be condensed to "Open Borders."
Including their "Global Ministries", "Justice for Our Neighbors" and "Hope for Newcomers" programs, the Methodists' commitment to mass immigration is impressive to many — but not to us.
They don’t have as much muscle (only 8 million members) as either the Catholics or the Methodists, but they're tireless fighters, especially on behalf of "refugees". Our Thomas Allen has written extensively about the refugee racket here.
The Lutherans always have a new wrinkle. The latest is its New Sanctuary Movement described as "a national immigrants' rights initiative by conscientious congregations responding to unjust deportations…" and a force that "…addresses the legal liabilities of providing sanctuary to undocumented immigrants."
"Troubling" state and local laws aimed at immigration enforcement concern the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. To assist in law breaking, the LIRS has prepared a backgrounder, acknowledging and thanking "the National Immigration Forum, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Council of La Raza, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the National Immigration Law Center for sharing their resources."
I got a close look at the LIRS’s influence when I researched my column on the Somali Bantu invasion of tiny Cayce, South Carolina.
The local Lutheran coordinator for the Somalis, Rev. Richard Robinson, called the Bantus' arrival "a blessing," even though few Cayce non-Lutherans agreed with him.
How much of a "blessing" LIRS-sponsored immigration may be depends on who you ask.
In 2004, James Fulford in his column linked the Lutherans, claiming to be "glorifying God’s name" and that "the love of God is in our hearts," to slavery and rape .[James Fulford writes: The actual acts of slavery and rape were, of course, committed by Albanian Gypsies — Lutherans aren’t into that sort of thing.]
Comparing their relatively small numbers versus their influence on immigration policy in general and refugees in particular, I therefore announce my "pound for pound" top Treason Lobbyist …
Battling individuals and organizations that allegedly follow the Bible’s word while doing "God’s work" is challenging. They purport to be on the high road while we the "nativists," according to them, reject the Lord’s message.
But the Catholics, Methodists and Lutherans have distorted the truth to serve their own specific agenda — mainly money and more people in the pews.
The religious arguments center on how people of faith should treat the "sojourner," the catchall word they incorrectly use to represent today’s immigrants.
To learn more about their imprecise use of the Bible and its language — "the sojourner" — to beat back immigration reform patriots, I contacted Ed Childress, an ordained United Methodist elder and director of the Homeless Programs of Fauquier County, Virginia. I had worked with Childress when he was Deputy Director of NumbersUSA.
Childress told me:
"I would emphasize again and again that ’sojourner' was a specific word for temporary wanderer, not meant to include immigrants. And the context of Biblical times, when ’sojourner' was used, was very different than today’s context. It’s appropriate that the citizens of a nation exercise oversight and stewardship of their national resources — and that includes their border."
Several years ago, Childress wrote an article for the Social Contract that included a five-point program on how to faithfully follow the Bible’s "true prescriptions" as they may relate to immigration. [The Sojourner Argument — Churches and Immigration, By Ed Childress, Social Contract, Spring 2001]
They are:
The willingness — even eagerness — of the major religions to twist the Bible’s meaning shows that they, and not we, are the true immigration extremists.
Joe Guzzardi is the Editor of VDARE.COM Letters to the Editor. In addition, he is an English teacher at the Lodi Adult School and has been writing a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.