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On Saturday April 5, people all around the nation gathered at midday to protest actions taken by our government. Some say five million participated across the country. It was a peaceful gathering on the Boston Common. As I marched with our contingent from Western Massachusetts, we mingled with a multitude of strangers. Many, seeing my clerical collar, said, “Thank you for being here.” People want to see the church proclaiming mercy, compassion and hope. People need us to bear witness to what it happening all around us. This is why I participated in the “Hands Off” protest.
Like you, I am overwhelmed daily as ICE raids in our major cities collect violent criminals in the same net as hard-working neighbors who lack documentation. There were over 370 people picked up during one such raid in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in March.
The video of Rümeysa Öztürk, the graduate student arrested near Tufts last week, is absolutely chilling. The Bishop of Massachusetts powerfully condemned this removal. While we cannot know these individuals or their unique circumstances, these disturbing removals to Louisiana or to El Salvador do not seem like ICE business as usual. I presume the good from those in law enforcement, and stand with them as they preserve and protect us, but these arrests by masked officers are unlike anything I have ever seen in America.
During the dehumanizing violence levied against non-violent protestors during the Civil Rights Movement, we saw their faces. We knew the name, “Bull” Connor. There is something different going on in 2025. People are afraid to go to work, to church, and to school. This is not OK. This is not right. We who follow Jesus must speak when the powers and principalities abuse the vulnerable and mock the disinherited in our society.
Even now, the courts are weighing the merits of a suit filed jointly by The Episcopal Church and 26 interfaith partners to make certain that our houses of worship – churches, synagogues, mosques, meetings – remain sensitive locations and safe spaces for all who seek the freedom to worship. Human beings are not the only ones endangered by our government’s decisions; it is all of God’s creation. Addressing our part in climate change and holding leaders accountable is a critical effort in our diocese, in The Episcopal Church and among people of all faiths.
As we stand together or alone, for and with those at risk, as we speak out, write and petition our leaders, it is love that compels us. Only love will defeat what is straining to co-opt our humanity and makes us enemies of one another.
In a recent reflection on the miracle in Luke 4,when Jesus slips through the murderous crowd that wants to throw him off a cliff, noted scholar, Diana Butler Bass wonders whether they were “all” enraged.[i] Maybe a few, she suggests, were ready to help Jesus and did it wisely to avoid any violence. “The bystanders find the courage to do something,” Bass writes. “Only a community—even one that goes unnoticed in the crowd—the band that refuses to join the rabble—can keep us from going completely over the edge.”
We, too, must find the courage to do something. This is a deeply spiritual battle between our fear and our compassion, our instinct to hide and our call to do justice. The appalling disregard for the dignity of all human beings is not OK. It is not right. People are disappeared. People are losing their jobs, homes and military benefits. People are told they do not exist, but the power of the resurrection is already at work within the Body of Christ – and within every human body. With Diana Butler Bass I say, “We must form squads of love and make a path through together… no matter how fearsome the mob.”
I can say that we were “a squad of love” on the Boston Common. Young, old, veterans, clergy, teachers, concerned citizens of every race and culture – we made a path together. We kept one another safe. We enacted the kind of peaceful, cooperative witness that our country needs now more than ever. In the days ahead, we each must discern when and how to bear witness. Know that I support you in your commitment to Jesus and to the dignity of every human being.
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