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The Sanctuary Challenge

By Jack Elder

By contributing so, we hope in some small way to remember Pastor Andre' Trocme' of La Chambon, France, who shielded and saved hundreds of Jewish children, strangers to his village, from the Vichy authorities and the occupying Germans in the early 1940's...

—From a March 1984 letter to the author, at the time director of Casa Oscar Romero in San Benito, TX.

To remember, to put together the jagged, incomplete pieces of an obscured reality and have it mean something, has today become a subversive activity in America. By remembering, we rekindle ideals we once thought were lost. We are challenged by the examples of people who confronted inhumanity with their compassionate action. By acknowledging the choices made by men and women nearly half a century ago, we gain clearer perspective of the choices that people active in the sanctuary movement are making today.

In Tucson, Arizona, men and women, found guilty by a jury on 18 counts of transporting illegal immigrants, conspiracy, and related charges, face sentencing. Their six-month trial generated heated arguments in the courtroom and wide debate throughout the country. State department, Border Patrol, and Immigration and Naturalization Service officials have intentionally blurred the distinction between economic migrants and refugees, blanketing all undocumented persons with the "illegal alien" label and charging that the sanctuary movement in fact exploits refugees and "hides them away from the benefits of our laws and uses their suffering in a domestic political debate" (As Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs, put it.) As misdirected as these charges may be, they have been remarkably successful in intimidating people in general and church bodies in particular. In some circles, the word "sanctuary" has become a loaded term, the way "justice" has in El Salvador: it's simply not mentioned because of its anti-establishment connotation.

What is it about the sanctuary movement that causes it to be perceived by the government as such a threat?

For one thing, it frustrates the attempts by the Executive Branch for "consensus" on our foreign policy in Central America. In a speech in April Deputy Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs, James Michel noted, "There are, of course, still some who deny that positive worthwhile change is occurring in El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala or who assert that the U.S. is supporting repressive oligarchies in those countries and is so obsessed with anticommunism that it focuses only on military solutions." Michel can only be accused of understatement here. And yet he touches on a primary feature of the debate about sanctuary: Who shall define Central American reality? When refugees from the countries Michel mentions come to us bearing scars and sharing their histories they open a window through which we are able to view the often obscured realties of their homelands. When what they tell us if corroborated by non-governmental human rights groups, comite's of relatives of the disappeared, international human rights organizations, and, at times, even our own embassy staffs, we become duly skeptical of the official line—that "Central America engages our strategic and moral interests" (in that order) and that the Administration's policies, such as the Caribbean Basin Initiative, will continue to promote stability and progress in the region. The men and women of the sanctuary movement seek to help refugees fleeing persecution and to keep open that window on Central America. It is this insistence on drawing a connection between the large numbers of Central Americans in our country and the cauldrons of state-sponsored violence from which they've fled that disturbs the architects of our policy in the region. Consensus is simply not possible when the Administration's airbrushed portrait of life in Central America clashed so persistently with the disturbing montage of images brought to us by refugees and by the testimonies of those who have stayed behind to struggle, hope, disappear, and die.

And so now the President's entire vision of Central America is being questioned. Do we really expect that more military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, for example, will hasten the advent of stability in Central America? As this preposterous, deadly vision is being questioned, something else, a second critical feature of sanctuary, is taking place.

Communities of faith are looking at their traditions and themselves and are asking fundamental questions. This process continues, in fact, flourishes, in spirit of the indictment, prosecution and conviction of church workers because the sanctuary movement is not a political movement but a response to deep injustice and chilling violence. Not to respond to the compelling trauma unfolding today in Central America becomes itself too terrible a burden.

So the faith communities come to grips with the ageless universal mandate to offer special solace and protection to children, widows, and the strangers in our land.

As these communities of faith (mainly Protestant congregations, but including synagogues, Catholic parishes, and Quaker meetings) learn more about both the suffering and hope that co-exist in Central America and the role our country has played—"episodes of intense U.S. involvement interspersed with periods of U.S. neglect," says James Michel in fine historical shorthand—some will eventually vote to declare themselves a sanctuary for Central America refugees. Whether or not they reach that point may not be as important as whether they at least grapple with the moral issues inherent in the concept of sanctuary. Jim Corbett, recently acquitted in the Tucson trial, writes, "Whenever a congregation that proclaims the prophetic faith abandons the poor and persecuted to organized oppression, its unfaithfulness darkens the way for all humankind. And when it stands as a community's bulwark against state violations of human rights, it lights the way." This seems straightforward enough. But the need to go from an awareness of injustice to a collective, compassionate response is a transformation that must torment many people even as it finds realization in comparably few. The challenge of sanctuary falls squarely at the feet of our communities faith. Should these communities be resentful—or—thankful—to Central Americans and to the sanctuary movement for the challenge "to light the way"?

Today we are confronted by a malefic vision in Central America. "Low intensity warfare" there is designed to impose our political, economic, and military will in the region with a minimum of outrage from the folks here at home. It's designed to build consensus. But some people have not lost their capacity to remember. Their courage goes beyond saving "never again" to the violent excesses of the past generation. They recognize that there is no single season for people to open their eyes and to make moral choices. In this sense, the sanctuary movement has only begun. The personal and collective transformation it calls us to is essentially beyond the reach of federal indictments and propaganda campaigns. By becoming faithful to the best of our moral and civic traditions we reject the idolatry of our day that calls for a consensus for the destruction of Central America. And by standing fast by these traditions we honor Pastor Andre' Trocme' and other whose own steadfastness still lights our way.

—Jack Elder, San Antonio VVAW