"The Power of Intimate Solidarity"
Introducing a Podcast Interview About the History and Future of Faith-Based Immigrant Rights Organizing with the Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra
I last posted on Substack about nine months ago. Since then my family and I moved to El Paso to live and work at a shelter for migrants; it was part of God’s answer to my reflection in my last post in May, “The Spigot is Open, But the Well is Dry.”
Ever since our days have been overflowing, but after many months I have again found a container for writing. This interview, and the weekly writing and podcasting I plan to now resume, is borne out of my context on the border in Texas where I can see Ciudad Juarez and the outlines of the wall from my backyard: What does this political moment require of North American Christians? What does it mean to honor the dignity of brothers and sisters in Christ and also migrants in the U.S.?
For any person of faith troubled and outraged by President Trump’s promise to deport 11 million people and wondering “What can I do?” “How can I be effective?” “How do I plug in?” listen to the Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra. In this interview I talk about these questions and more with the organizer, author, Lutheran pastor, and professor. You can listen to the podcast below or at Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you get your podcasts.
Alexia’s lengthy list of books and articles can be found at the Fuller Seminary website where she has taught since 2014 and is Academic Dean for Centro Latino and Associate Professor of Mission and Global Transformation. I reached out to her, however, not primarily because of her academic accolades but because of her extensive experience leading faith-based organizations for immigrants rights. As it says in the introduction of her newest book, God’s Resistance, “Salvatierra offers a firsthand and behind-the-scenes glimpse and understanding of the inner workings of the U.S. Sanctuary Movement. Dr. Salvatierra was a young member of one of the first congregations to declare sanctuary in 1980, a founding member of the New Sanctuary Movement in the 2000s, and an ongoing leader in the development of other faith-based approaches to the immigration crisis.”
We talk not only about ethical and effective support of migrants in the US at this moment but also about her formation and call as madrina, or godmother, of faith-based movements for immigrant rights; the theology of the border and the limits of Christian love; her involvement in the Sanctuary movement of the 80s and its theological grounding from the Bible in Numbers 35 and its legal grounding in the principle of non-refoulement; the tension in the movement between the goals of being faithful and being politically effective; the power of intimate solidarity as a motivation and what the Sanctuary movement accomplished politically; how that experience shaped Alexia to lead the New Sanctuary Movement beginning in 2007; why the New Sanctuary Movement didn’t repeat the strategy of the first movement; the divide between Right and Left in today’s media environment around immigration and the role of immigrant churches in bridging it; the tactics she expects Trump to take against migrants and which will be most pernicious; how White churches can support immigrant churches and how Church World Service is supporting those collaborations; why migrants will die, especially mothers and children; why for well-intentioned White Christians the orientation shouldn’t be saving people but joining the immigrant church; expecting to win on the timeline of “my daughter’s daughter”; and how as Christians “all children are our children”.
I hope you find the conversation as inspiring and informative as I did. Below is a list of some of the books, people, organizations and migration-related laws which Alexia references.
Books
God’s Resistance by Brad Christerson, Alexia Salvatierra, Robert Chao Romero, Nancy Wang Yuen
Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration by Douglas Massey
Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States by Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry
The Borders of Baptism: Identities, Allegiances, and the Church by Michael Budde
People
Organizations and Movements
Base Christian Communities
CLUE in Los Angeles
Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) - “The Alinksy organization”
Legal Terms
DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals)