On Tuesday, Bishop Marion Edgar Budde used her sermon to beg Trump for mercy. Trump was not pleased. The ICE raids began in earnest on Wednesday. As an Episcopalian, I’m nervous that our churches will be the first ones violated. Our White parishioners are growing old and rare, but Latinos have been coming to our services. In some cities, we beat the Catholics in providing services for migrants.
If your church or parish serves the poor, the migrants, GLBT+ or other marginalized groups, they will end up on Trump’s list eventually. We will be the ones meeting in secret places. For a while.
Eventually Trump’s Fourth Reich will fall and some of his victims will be out for revenge. If we fail to keep Jesus’ message of hope, love and duty to the weak and oppressed out far enough that some of us are cast into prison or martyred, then when the survivors of the Fourth Reich see the Cross, they will see it as survivors of the Third Reich see the swastika, and attempt to extirpate it.