Immigrant churches standing in sacred resistance against Trump’s “shock and awe” immigration policies

“WE ARE FULL of fear, but we are not helpless,” said Giselle, a 40-year-old living in a mixed-status immigrant family in Chicago. “We have the power of God, the power of the church, and the power of the Holy Spirit on our side,” she said.

Giselle is the mother of two children who are U.S. citizens. She is long settled in Chicago, having arrived two decades ago from Michoacán, Mexico. She lives in a three-bedroom apartment in Chicago’s Little Village — known as the “Mexico of the Midwest” or “La Villita” by locals — and works as a bookkeeper and worships at a local Pentecostal church where, she told Sojourners, there are other immigrants without permanent legal status singing next to her on Sundays. She volunteers and donates to local charities and generally tries to be a good neighbor — offering her time, talent, and treasure to others in her little corner of Chicago. Giselle said she has built her life in the U.S. and that her adolescent children know nothing else. “We are proud to be Mexican American, to live life here and be part of this community,” she said.

Like thousands of others across the U.S., Giselle and her family do not know how the Trump administration’s stated mass deportation policies will play out. But as policies are put in place and enforcement efforts ramp up, questions keep running through Giselle’s mind: How will I protect my family? What will happen to my immigration status? How will I be able to seek safety in the U.S.? “These are just some of the questions that handicap my ability to live,” she said.

As the Trump administration continues to implement its mass deportation plans, a swirling vortex of pain, fear, and uncertainty dominates the conversation among immigrants and faith communities across the nation. People of faith are responding with hope, resilience, and a steady resolve to be the best neighbors they can be to immigrants in need.

Chaos and confusion: Faith-based nonprofits plan for uncertain futures at federal fund freezes

“It was chaos,” sighed Stacey Hall Burge, CEO of Found House Interfaith Housing Network, which provides emergency shelter and programs for families dealing with housing loss and insecurity in the Cincinnati area.

“From Monday to Friday, we had no specifics, no clarity,” said Burge, recounting the past week at her organization. “There are rents and supports for hundreds of families I am not sure how to pay right now. Families that worked hard to get off the streets, who may go right back. Many of them working, but unable to fully afford rent in the current housing crisis,” she told Sojourners in an interview over Zoom.

“At any given time, we could be letting down a couple of hundred families who would be left on their own to figure out their housing,” she said.

For Found House, the saga began when the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo freezing all federal grants and loans on Jan. 27, following an executive order from President Donald Trump requiring all federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to … disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”

Legal experts argue the executive order directly violated Article I of the Constitution and decades of legal opinion. Cerin Lindgrensavage and William Ford, staff for the nonpartisan, anti-authoritarian nonprofit Protect Democracy wrote the Trump administration was trying “to wrest the spending power away from Congress and into the hands of the president and his appointees.”

“The system of checks and balances the Founders designed does not give the president unchecked power to execute only the laws passed by Congress that he agrees with,” they wrote. “When Congress appropriates funds, the president must spend them.”

The order put a temporary freeze on hundreds of billions of dollars, impacting a vast array of services provided by thousands of nonprofits working in education, social services, science research, health care, or refugee resettlement, who were unable to access federal government systems used to withdraw funds as last week began.

Though judges have ordered a temporary pause on the administration’s efforts to freeze federal fundingand the OMB memo was rescinded by a two-sentence notice on Jan. 29, uncertainty continues for faith-inspired and faith-based nonprofits like Found House.

Compounding the fear across the faith-based services sector, the back-and-forth with federal funding comes as the Trump administration also put a 90-day freeze on almost all foreign aid and Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” is shutting down payments to federal contractors.

On Sunday, Musk shared a post by Michael Flynn on X, Trump’s former national security adviser who previously plead guilty to lying to the FBI, listing what purported to be payments to Lutheran charities that receive government funding, ranging from Lutheran Social Services to Global Refuge — formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.

Musk tweeted, “corruption and waste is being rooted out in real-time” and claimed DOGE is “rapidly shutting down” payments to the charities.

Though the OMB memo was rescinded, nonprofit leaders remain nervous, anxious about what the future holds for their organizations, staff, and the families and individuals they serve.

“The question becomes: What do we actually have to work with?” said Burge.

Found House’s current contracts with the Department of Housing and Urban Development go through the end of June, but Burge and colleagues are openly questioning if those are safe. “The honest answer is: We are not sure.”

Haunted Land, Popular Saints: Rituals of Death along the U.S./Mexico Border

It’s a gray, mid-May morning in Panteón Municipal #1, a city cemetery in Tijuana’s Zona Norte neighborhood. Alberto, the gatekeeper, saunters down a rocky pathway lined with palms, jacaranda, and gravestones to a prominent, red brick chapel, built over the tomb of one Juan Castillo Morales.

The shrine is covered wall-to-wall with candles, flowers, and plaques with names and messages of thanks to “Juan Soldado” (Juan the Soldier), as Castillo is known. Amid the array sits a stylized bust of a young soldier, resplendent in military attire, this morning bearing a black rosary and a blue-and-white Los Angeles Dodgers snapback hat.

The shrine is one of many unofficial memorials where loved ones remember lives of immigrants lost along the U.S.-Mexico border. From chapels erected around the graves of unofficial saints such as Castillo to digital memorials people carry with them into the desert to the crosses, flowers, and other mementos left along the border boundary itself, these monuments not only pay tribute to the individuals lost but bear witness to the ubiquity of death — and faith — in America’s southwestern borderlands.

Rosalba Ruiz-Hernández, a 46-year-old mother of five, stands in the shrine. Ruiz-Hernández, originally from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, was deported back to Tijuana after her own failed attempt to start a new life in the U.S. Two of her grown children still live in Long Beach, Calif., near her former husband. They are undocumented, she said, but they make a living. Two others are in Tijuana with her. Matías, her middle son, died in the desert on his way north to join his siblings in Southern California.

“I come to Juanito’s chapel to give thanks for the children who have their new life in Long Beach,” Rosalba said, “and to pray for Matías’ soul.”

Juan Soldado is an unlikely saint. According to the Roman Catholic Church, he isn’t a saint at all. On Feb. 17, 1938, Castillo was executed for the rape and murder of Olga Camacho Martínez, a young girl who is buried in a cemetery just up the road. William Calvo-Quirós, an associate professor of American and Latino/a Studies at the University of Michigan, said the young soldier, a convicted murderer and rapist, transformed over time into Juan Soldado — a “folk saint” who is venerated as a victim of state violence.

And Tijuana holds many such stories, of border “saints” who, in death and in life, suffered at the intersections between worlds. And beyond Tijuana, there are numerous other unofficial saints’ shrines populating the U.S.-Mexico borderlands: El Tiradito in Tucson, Ariz.; Jesús Malverde in Culiacán, Sinaloa; Niño Fidencio in Espinazo, Nuevo León; the Virgen de San Juan del Valle, outside McAllen, Texas; and El Señor de los Milagros in San Antonio. Each memorial is part of a rich tapestry of rituals and beliefs that immigrants and their loved ones carry with them, or depend on, to sustain them amid migration, uncertainty, and death.

Nobody knows how many of these saints exist, wrote historian Paul J. Vanderwood. But the popular devotions and informal canonizations that emerged around them are a testament to the unjust circumstances of their deaths and, by extension, the deaths of many in the borderlands. These are souls with “unfinished” business, Vanderwood wrote — they “clamor for assistance” and cry out for justice.

Hundreds of migrants die every year along one of the world’s deadliest land borders. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency reports that 8,050 people died attempting to cross the border between 1998 and 2020. The agency recorded an additional 568 deaths in 2021 and 895 in 2022 — the most deaths recorded in a single year. Many more, who die from some form of exposure (heat stroke, hypothermia, or dehydration), are left unaccounted for and unclaimed. Then there are those who die somewhere in Mexico or Central and South America, en route to the U.S.-Mexico border.

This, said Calvo-Quirós, makes the border a nearly 2,000-mile stretch of “haunted land.”

Art, Immigration, and Faith

The amber appears to ooze across the floor like slow-flowing lava. Containing found objects and materials sourced from Salvadoran communities around Los Angeles, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio’s artwork is expansive and expressive of the materiality of often-marginalized Central American migrants in Southern California.

His artistic craft, Aparicio said, speaks to the innovative, resourceful, and resilient voices of migrants throughout the city and beyond. Artists of many kinds hope works like Aparicio’s can tell new kinds of immigrant stories — ones often full of faith and spirituality, migration and baptism, encounters with Jesus and varying experiences with church life.

Amid the leaves, bones, broken dishware, condom wrappers, beer holders, and archival papers in Aparicio’s work is a single flier for a church — a “Casa del Dios” advertising their services with Jesus’ words in bold red across the top: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

The installation, on display at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, hints at how immigration and faith are represented in various artistic mediums.

While political conversations about immigrants and immigration policy tend toward broad, often dehumanizing stereotypes, artists such as Aparicio are using their art to help viewers reflect on the deep, and expansive, experience of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in the U.S.

Giselle Elgarresta Rios, the first Cuban-American woman to conduct at Carnegie Hall in New York, wrote that art — perhaps more than other media — can help us better “see the souls of immigrants.”

Religion, Immigration and the 2024 Elections

Over the last six months, I’ve been covering religion and immigration for Sojourners Magazine.

I traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, Lampedusa, Italy, southern Arizona and downtown Los Angeles to hear from migrants making their way. I heard from Muslim aid workers on the front lines providing sanctuary and nuns serving the vulnerable asylum seekers living on the streets of Skid Row. I sat with mothers weeping over their children and praying for safe passage at a cemetery just meters from the bollard-steel border wall that rips through the Sonoran wilderness like a rust-colored wound. 

In my latest for ReligionLink and as part of my “What You Missed Without Religion Class” series at Patheos, I reflect on what you need to know about faith and immigration ahead of the 2024 elections.

Their church basement used to host quinceañeras. Now it houses Mauritanian Muslims

“They call me Mom,” said Maria Elena Montalvo, pastor of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bell, Calif., as she worked with Dioulde and Jallo, two asylum seekers from Mauritania, to mop the floors of the church basement where they have been staying since September 2023.

Dioulde and Jallo are two of 20 Mauritanians living in a space that used to be rented out for quinceañeras in the largely working-class area of southeast Los Angeles, where the population is 89.1 percent Latino. Now, in a space that families used to celebrate their daughters’ 15th birthdays under the sprinkling lights of a chandelier, there are rows of futon-style beds lined up against the walls, with folded Muslim prayer rugs, gallon-sized water bottles, and plastic sandals neatly stacked alongside. (Sojourners is withholding the full names of migrants in this story, at their request, due to the sensitivities of immigration status.)

Showing Dioulde how to work the mop bucket and telling Jallo to get the chicken out of the freezer so it can thaw for dinner that night, Montalvo cuts the figure of a mom giving her kids directions on their chores.

But her daughter, Jennifer Coria, 24, who works at the church, said with a wry smile, “She’s nicer to them than she is to us at home.”

For more than six years, Montalvo’s church has made space available to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers arriving in Bell from countries in Central and South America and Mexico. But over the last nine months, Mauritanians like Dioulde and Jallo have come to call the 100-year-old church their home as well.

They arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border last summer…

Torn: Why Latino Evangelicals Don't Always Support Immigration Reform

Miguel Cárdenas came to the U.S. as a child in 1980. His parents brought him from the western Mexican state of Jalisco across the Rio Grande without documentation.

They went on to work for farms across Texas with the hope of giving their son a better life. Then, on Nov. 6, 1986, when Cárdenas was in fifth grade, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act into law, allowing around 3 million immigrants who entered the U.S. without papers before 1982 — including the Cárdenas family — the ability to apply for legal status.

“It’s the classic American dream,” Miguel, now 48, said. “I am eternally grateful to my parents and Reagan for making my life what it is today.”

That life is filled with family barbecues and hunting trips with his wife and three kids; building his insurance business in Houston; and volunteering his time with his local church, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Republican party in the greater Houston area. He enthusiastically supported former President Donald Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020.

“Sometimes, people are surprised to meet a Mexican migrant who is pro-Trump,” Cárdenas said. “But then I remind them that of all people, we are pro-family, pro-security, pro-business.”

As Cárdenas makes clear, Latinos do not always support candidates with progressive immigration policies — including policies that expand legal pathways to citizenship, enforce fewer penalties for those who immigrate without documentation, or end sanctions that devastate economies and fuel immigration. Experts and members of the community say Latinos of faith, with or without an immigration background, can feel torn between theologies that emphasize respect for the rule of law, a cultural emphasis on the family, allegiances to denominations that encourage support for conservative candidates, and their own personal trajectories, like that of Cárdenas, that can lead them one way or the other.

Texas Ministries Say "the work of God can never be illegal"

Faith-based migrant ministries in Texas are used to operating in tough circumstances, including finding the right resources, meeting migrant needs, and funding their day-to-day work. But recent legal challenges have left some Texas faith leaders uncertain about the future of their ministries.

At the forefront of these legal challenges is Senate Bill 4, a bill passed by Texas lawmakers in 2023 which would make it a state crime for migrants to cross the border into Texas at any unauthorized point and allow authorities to arrest people for doing so. Though it was expected to go into effect in early March 2024, the bill was delayed by legal challenges from the U.S. Justice Department, framed as an unconstitutional infringement on the federal government’s power to set and enforce immigration law. The Supreme Court briefly cleared the way for the law’s implementation on March 19 before it was blocked just hours later when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an administrative stay. The court heard formal appeals on April 3 in New Orleans, but at the time of publication, the law remains blocked.

Many ministries feel that if SB4 is allowed to stand, the bill and ensuing legal actions will erode existing welcoming efforts across the state.

“SB4 will unequivocally create an environment of fear and distrust in local Texas communities, erode welcoming efforts, and legitimize racial profiling,” said Melissa Cedillo, a board member of Hope Border Institute, an organization working to advance justice and end poverty on the U.S./Mexico border.

Cedillo told Sojourners that families with members of different legal statuses, who already live in fear that one of their family members could be deported, may be more reticent to seek out care from migrant ministries.

“They may now feel they have to learn how to exist in the shadows, to live so that they are not noticed in the hope it might offer them some kind of protection, instead of shelters and hospitable ministries.

“The atmosphere these legal actions make may mean they will not even try to access these services or connect with ministries designed specifically for them,” she said.

Evangelicals want immigration reform. Here's why they're unlikely to get it

What do evangelicals in the U.S. want? Immigration reform.

When do they want it? Now.

When will they get it? No time soon, it seems.

According to a recent Lifeway Research poll sponsored by the Evangelical Immigration Table and other evangelical groups, evangelicals desire immigration reform with increasing urgency. Showing a marked increase from prior years, 77 percent of poll respondents say it is important that Congress passes significant new immigration legislation in 2024 — up from 71 percent in 2022 and 68 percent in 2015.

Their opinions are in line with the wider U.S. population, which generally agrees that the current immigration system needs to be reformed. Different political groups, however, rarely agree on what exactly is broken or how to fix it.

Among evangelical leaders, the consensus is that the legislation should be both bipartisan andcomprehensive. That is the golden standard, said Chelsea Sobolik, director of government relations at World Relief — the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, and one of the poll’s sponsors.

Research from political scientists Ruth Melkonian-Hoover and Lyman A. Kellstedt confirms that evangelical clergy and denominational leadership tend to support immigration reform efforts, and have stepped up their involvement to support them, based on biblical principles of “welcoming the stranger.” But a combination of partisanship, presidential voting preferences, and right-wing cultural populist attitudes mean not all evangelicals feel the same, they write. In particular, white evangelical laity historically view the effects of immigration most negatively and favor the most restrictive immigration policies.

From her time working in the nation’s capital, Sobolik knows immigration issues can draw strong passions from different populations and political factions. Nonetheless, she believes in the power of faith to motivate lawmakers to find bipartisan solutions by meeting on common sacred ground.

“Americans of faith want leaders who will work together on immigration and sensible border solutions,” Sobolik said in an interview. “They want pragmatic reforms that offer increased security infrastructure without sacrificing compassion and human dignity.

“In the end, they want a different, more reasonable conversation,” she said.

Sobolik suggested those sensible solutions draw on the principles proposed by the Evangelical Immigration Table, which include: respect for the God-given dignity of every person; protecting the unity of the immediate family; respecting the rule of law; guaranteeing secure national borders; ensuring fairness to taxpayers; and establishing a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents.

Language, Preaching, and the Politics of Immigration

How does the language preachers, politicians or reporters use impact the kind of immigration policies we might make or opinions we have about migrants themselves?

In my first two pieces as Faith and Immigration Reporter at Sojourners magazine, I take a look at both issues.

In the one, I explore how more than colloquial conundrum, the language we use determines the policies we support and the theologies we hold about people crossing borders.

In the other, I talk to pastors and theologians about how they are navigating the political polarization around the topic from their pulpits.

100 Sermons and #MeToo

I was talking with someone at my church on Sunday and they confided in me that, “it’s been a rough week for women.” 

In one sense, they are totally right. The issues of sexual violence, assault, and the abuse of women were prominently back in the spotlight this week. Women were sharing their stories again. The pain was evident. So was the righteous anger. So was the resolve. To all the women who spoke up and out, I want you to know that I hear you. I believe you. I am inspired by you and humbled by you. 

Still, in another sense my friend’s statement was only half true. Instead of saying it’s been a rough week for women we could say it’s been a rough few months. Or a rough few years. A rough decade. Or several strung together. 

Some of the stories that women shared this week included assaults and incidents that occurred a long time ago. The event may be in the past, but the pain is still very potent. The environments that allowed for these things to happen still exist. Worse, they are still excused and defended.  

We have to do better. We have to listen. We have to lament.

We also have to repent, because as true as it is that it’s been a rough few decades for women we could also say it’s been a rough few centuries. A rough era. A rough epoch. 

Or, we could just humbly admit that it’s been rough to be a woman since time began. If there is one thing that the #MeToo movement has taught us is that women’s struggle against abuse, assault, and inequality is a tale as old as time. It is also a story that needs to change. 

That’s where the #ChurchToo movement comes in. It has shown us that things need to change when it comes to religious communities as well. 

That is why I am proud to be small, if humble, part of Sojourners’ “100 Sermons” project.  

They wrote of their project:

When #MeToo went viral in 2017, the movement paved the way for #ChurchToo and #SilenceIsNotSpiritual, hashtags that insisted that because Christians are not immune to perpetrating sexual and domestic violence, they must actively denounce it. Christians all across the spectrum spoke out online against abuse. But we wanted to know, would faith leaders be willing to elevate the conversation from Twitter to the pulpit?

They found those sermons and posted them online for readers to search and learn how to make religious communities safer for survivors. You can search the collection by location, scripture, or denomination.

One of my sermons is part of that database. The quote they pulled out is one I continue to stand by. I hope you can appreciate these words. Let them sink in. Let them hit you. Let them unsettle you. Let them move you to action. 

For people who have been abused, there is no quick fix. I wish I could say there was. However, as the promise from Isaiah makes clear, in Jesus there is hope and healing, liberation and justice. I can only pray that the reality of those promises are evident in your life in the days, weeks, and years to come.

Until then, religious leaders like me have work to do—to interrupt the injustices being perpetrated by our very own leaders on our very own people.

Through this process, and over the last week, I am learning that it is not enough to be an ally. It’s not enough to preach a sermon. Instead, it’s time to revolt against a system that has — for far too long — abused, ostracized, and ignored the very people who have often made that same system as great, just, or humane as it possibly could be: women. 

I continue to learn. I continue to grow. I continue to mature. I pray that you’ll join me by listening to, and learning from, more of the sermons on the “100 Sermons” site. 

The 2 Questions Neither Political Party is Asking

It is rare to hear a U.S. political party convention theme couched as a question. Conventions, for good reason, are typically oriented around statements — grand and bellicose, rallying and inspiring.

Last week, the Republican Party’s convention centered on the theme, “Make America Great Again.” This week, the Democratic Party’s theme is, “United Together.” Each is meant to galvanize the party’s base and entice voters with their vision for the United States. But what if they circled around a question? What if our political process — particularly in this poignant moment — started with a set of queries?

Letting the field lie fallow

Fresh from a breakfast of piping hot spaghetti on toast and loud laughs, the employees at Joyclas Farms headed back to work for the day on the New Zealand dairy farm. There was important work to be done.

The smell of sweet silage hung in the air and the strikingly iridescent grass of the paddocks shone in the early morning sun. We drove past a patch of turf that was unwieldy and overgrown. As yet jejune in my dairy farming apprenticeship, having grown up in the Los Angeles area, I wondered aloud why this pasture was different than all the rest.

“That field is lying fallow,” said Lawrence, one of the farm’s owners. “It will be rich for the heifers to enjoy next season.”

Leaving a field to lie fallow means leaving a paddock to be unseeded, uneaten, and unspoiled for a season or more. It is one of the best ways farmers can allow the land to replenish its nutrients and regain its fertility. It also helps prevent erosion — the roots of the plants left free to grow help to hold the soil in place against the ravages of wind and rain.

When fallow, the field is at rest so that it can serve its function to feed the heifers for years to come.

Just as fields need to lie fallow, so does all creation — including us. In a world that is rife with addiction to busyness, it is imperative that we rediscover the lost art of re-creative rest. 

Evangelical press association award

I am humbled & honored to announce that I was recently awarded an Evangelical Press Association (EPA) Higher Goals Student Writer of the Year award. 

The EPA is a professional association of Christian publications — magazines, newspapers and newsletters — and content-rich websites. EPA's purpose is “to strengthen evangelical periodicals through inspiration, instruction, and networking.” 

My piece, "A 'Radical' Response to Islamophobia," published in the August 2015 edition of Sojourners Magazine won 4th place in the Student Writer of the Year category. 

As the EPA gathered in Lancaster, PA for its annual convention my friend Peter Slayton -- LCMS Social Media Manager -- sent me a message that read, "Congratulations on your EPA award." It was a surprise to me, but a welcome one. 

Thank you to Sojourners Magazine, Betsy Shirley for editing my piece and nominating it, and to those who participated in the interviews for the article (Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, Ruth Nasrullah, Jon Huckins). I also encourage you to find and read the other award winners for more great content! 

A 'Radical' Response to Islamophobia

If you know me at all, you know that I love Muslims. 

Really, with all my heart. And not in some kumbayá-lets-all-get-along or orientalist-fascinated-with-the-middle-east-dancing-around-in-a-fez type of way. 

I love Muslims because many of them I count as friends -- from Amman, Jordan to Miami, U.S.A. from Rakai, Uganda to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and everywhere in between. My Muslims friends have shown me immense hospitality in their homes, forgiveness when I offer them pork when we are eating out, and insight into their social situations in my many years of conversations, meals, and moments of exchange with them. 

That's why I'm fed up with Islamophobia.

It's time for a 'radical' response to the irrational fear that too often grips our fascinations, is broadcasted on our televisions, and pushed from our pulpits. 

I know. I know. 'Islamophobia' is a charged word. There are problems with using such labels. And yes, we need to love those we deem, 'Islamophobic' as well. And I do. At least I try. 

But in the face of constant vitriol being thrown at my Muslim friends and a natural proclivity for 'us' to turn against 'them' (whoever the 'them' in vogue might be) I am proposing a 'radical' response to Islamophobia. 

Sojourners Magazine was kind enough to carry my piece where I lay out the WHY, the WHAT, and the HOW of the necessity of a Christian response to Islamophobia. For this week and this week only you can get behind their paywall and read the full essay. Seriously, go check it out. 

Pronto. The world can't wait. Nor should you. 

Peace. 

-Ken 

"Why do Westerners join ISIS?" Featured at Sojourners

Over the weekend, my post "The lonely jihadi: Why do Westerners join ISIS?" was featured on the Sojourner's 'God's Politics' blog.

Sojourner's magazine is a progressive publication of the social justice organization Sojourners, founded by current editor Jim Wallis who is active in bringing faith to light on issues of racial and social justice, life and peace, and environmental stewardship. 

*For more on religion and culture, follow @kchitwood.

It was an honor to write for their online portal and I amended my original post to include a section on how Christian congregations and individuals can "combat" ISIS. While there is much to be said about the essentializing, and perhaps racially tinged, "multi-cultural" viewpoint that I espouse (casting "Muslims" as a community bloc or single identity given so much internal diversity) I still believe that a program of positive, multifaceted, integration on the public and private levels is the way forward in dealing with extremism and isolated individuals who join radical, violent, causes. This integration is not assimilation as such, but a bridge building and re-construction of what it means to be American (or European) in light of Muslim belief and practice. It is a two-way street, but one which non-Muslims (who too often cast Muslims in a solely negative light) bear the prime responsibility to cross. This is not because Muslims are incapable of making inroads toward integration, but the onus is on those of us who tend to push them to the margins in the first place. 

Anyways, check out the blog and react to my paragraph about pro-active Christian initiatives to integrate the isolated Muslim who tends to join groups like ISIS: 

Christians can be engaged at both the personal and congregational level. It begins with paying attention and recognizing the Muslim communities and individual Muslim families in your neighborhood and community; then, the impetus to find, and form, appropriate and respectful relationships. Once a friendship is established, take the time to listen, learn, and value their Islamic faith and practice. This friendship is best established, and nourished, through dining together, dialogue events, and interfaith community projects. These friendly encounters will not only build new bridges between Muslims and Christians, but also integrate isolated Muslims into the fold of their new communities making a home for them beyond the boundaries of religion and ethnicity.

These types of efforts, more than bombs and bombastic rhetoric, are how we can combat the lonely jihadi and make a significant contribution to peace in the Middle East, and indeed, across the globe.