Politics and Church

Our group just got back from our YAGM trip to the border in Arizona. We talked to workers who hold a United States worker’s visa, people who have worked in demonstration groups on the border for years, a ministry that recognizes the deaths of migrants every week, a migrant shelter, a drug recover shelter, a border patrol agent, a couple who does weekly walks in the wilderness to find migrant remains in the desert, several educators who have worked on issues of migration, a political representative and many more. Many of what these people are dedicated to do and what they had to say touch the humanitarian in me. It was very hard to see the amount of deaths; knowing that they are solely trying to escape a poor situation from their country hurts even more. I do not feel like we talked much about the conservative side about immigration. After the retreat, I do not better understand why people do not want immigrants in the United States. I have seen statistics on how much “the wall” costs and how much it could hurt the US economy. I have seen statistics on deaths and heard about how the expanding United States economy needed a cheap massive labor force to further fuel the economic expansion. I did not see statics on how immigration lowers the unemployment rate. The only conservative opinion we saw was from the border patrol agent. We heard about how he does his job as a Christian and how he makes the other agents treat immigrants as humans. He was not able to talk about the economic impact on the United States, but he was very fluent in the law aspect of it. He was very militarily set in his mind. He saw the border as a responsibility and job that he had to enforce to keep the country safe and I respect how he sees his job and how he does it because of his view.

The more that I am involved in the ELCA, the more I realize how liberal the organization is. One thing that I have learned from this year is how the church has a call for social justice. This part of social justice is a clear calling that is mandated from the Bible based on a calling to help others and make the world a better place for everyone. Many leaders of the ELCA lean towards the democrat party. I also believe that if a pastor is politically public in their church, they will lose members due to difference in opinion. As I talked to my host dad about the involvement of politics and church, he said something along the line of, “we need careful with who we align ourselves with in politics as the church. We need to not commit to specific political parties but to political issues and fighting for what is right.” I tend to agree, on our retreat we went to a museum while in Mexico and saw a picture of Lutheran pastors giving the Nazi salute. This struck me hard because it was hard to see churches committed to something that we strongly define as evil. Seeing that picture made me realize that my host dad is correct and that it is better to support positions and movements more than political parties.

One thing that I did learn from this experience is that it is very important to be involved in politics. I learned that our senators and representatives appreciate our opinions and are responsive to them. I am not sure how responsive they would be because of all the citizens they represent but I think I am going to try and write them a letter when I get back to the US and see what happens. I am going to write about my experiences and the opinions I saw.

I understand that this post is probably a little more controversial, so please email me back and tell me your thoughts on it. I would love to resonate on this a bit more and become a little more well-rounded in this topic.