If Mitch McConnell picked up his hometown newspaper Wednesday morning, the story would have been impossible for him to miss. In a story blazoned across the front page of the Louisville Courier-Journal, a century-old church—“driven in large part by the policies and rhetoric of President Donald Trump”—announced it was reaffirming its “sanctuary” status, and announcing a demand for justice for immigrant families.
"When immigrants, black and brown persons, Muslims, LGBTQ persons and other communities are under attack, Christians cannot remain silent," St. William Catholic Church said in a statement. "We therefore affirm our commitment to sanctuary, understood not simply as offering space in churches, but as an active praxis of solidarity.”
The church has already had “sanctuary” status as part of the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980s, but the Trump administration’s war on immigrants and their families—as well as "tolerance for white supremacist terrorism and encouragement of harsh enforcement by ICE and Border Patrol agents,” the church said—has the congregation going further.
In its declaration, the church demands an "immediate closure of brutal and overcrowded detention centers at the southern border”; that the administration respect the U.S. right to ask for asylum; family reunification; humane immigration reform; and “structural economic reforms,” the Courier-Journal said, “that ‘combat the root causes of poverty’ that ‘push people to migrate in the first place’ and are ‘driven by U.S. economic and military dominance.’”
The church is one of the at least 800 houses of worship that have reaffirmed or newly-affirmed their dedication to helping protect immigrant families since Trump’s inauguration, a trend that has continued. In August, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America passed a resolution declaring itself a “sanctuary church body” and urged other “congregations, synods and other church organizations to speak out against the ‘inhumane policies of harassment, detention and deportation implemented by the U.S. government.’”
Remember, though, that from family separation at the southern border, to the out-of-control Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agencies, to attacks on the U.S. right to asylum, to the theft of our funds for a racist and stupid border wall, all of this is happening with the consent of McConnell, who has abdicated his responsibilities rather than anger a racist president, and for his own political gain.
St. William Catholic Church said it won’t be complicit. "We commit ourselves to resist this administration's horrendous policies and rhetoric toward immigrants, and to offer ongoing and active support to immigrant-led movements for justice,” the church’s statement continued. “We raise our voices to cry out, in the name of God, for sanctuary for all.”