By Gary Hedding, ELCA Pastor and member of JONAH’s Immigration Task Force
It is clear to me that racism plays a large role in the opposition to immigration and immigrants. About twelve years ago, Linda and I needed to have professionals clad the wood siding on our house with vinyl siding. Friends recommended a local multigenerational, “heritage” family window and siding business and we contracted them for the work. When the workers showed up, they were two Latino men with very limited English. They dove into the project and went to work.
On the second day of their work, I was doing some yard work and a neighbor showed up and asked, “Why did you hire these people to put on the siding?” I responded, “I didn’t hire them, our contractor did.” And I named the business. He said, “I know the owner of that business, we are in Rotary together, and I know that he wouldn’t do that.” “Well”, I said, “I wrote him a pretty big check so that he could purchase materials and supplies, and when the job is done, I will write him another pretty big check for the labor. Someone there hired these men and they are doing a good job.” The man said, “I am going to talk to him and straighten this out.” He walked away. He never got back to me about his conversation with our contractor.
This unneighborly neighbor objected to brown, Spanish speaking people working near where he lived. Other neighbors let me know that he was worried that if brown, Spanish speaking people could make a living wage working in Cedar Falls, Iowa, that they would move here and that would be bad. The character of the town would be changed.
When a character of a town is racist, a change would be a good thing. It would be a Jesus thing. I have become convinced that much of the Bible, and especially the New Testament, is a manual about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Jesus was constantly engaging diverse people who did not have equity, nor were they included as the right people to know. The book of Acts is all about the crisis of the early church struggling to know what to do with all the Gentiles. Can Gentiles join the church and be baptized without first converting to Judaism? There were heated discussions among the leaders of the church about that. The prevailing decision was, yes, they can.
Paul continues addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion in his letters – with mixed results at times – by and large, proclaiming that faith and baptism unify people far more than any social or cultural divisions that might be thought as significantly defining outside of the church. We recognize all people as God’s people, as our siblings, and as our neighbors. To do otherwise is to turn our backs on Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit.