Sanctuary Goes Mainstream

Dr. Sergio M.González: In the early months of 1983, a small group of parishioners at Madison's St. Francis University Episcopal Center gathered weekly to engage in deliberate and extensive discussions about their faith. These were not regular Bible study sessions, however, although scripture certainly came up constantly in their conversations. No, these congregants at St. Francis were concerned with a topic that was quickly becoming a growing issue for houses of worship across the nation; sanctuary. The members of St. Francis joined with other people of faith in the city disturbed by the escalating violence in Central America and their obligation to, well, do something about it.

Dr. Lloyd Daniel Barba: These concerned Madisonians had formed the Madison Sanctuary Committee to engage in a discernment process to decide what exactly that 'something' might be. Now, they had brought the topic to the congregation as a whole to decide the merits of transforming their church into a place of refuge for these asylum seekers.

Media Clip (Speaker 1): I'm having real problems with making this decision now because I don't think we've had enough time as a congregation as a whole. This is the first meeting that we've had to discuss it among one another, and I don't think that this first meeting is the time to go ahead and make a decision.

Media Clip (Speaker 2): What's going to happen to them while they're waiting for us to make up our minds? If, if they are, if they're in a situation of great urgency, then we don't have time to talk about it and think about it. We just act and handle problems as they occur.

Media Clip (Speaker 3): If we as a congregation make the choice to provide sanctuary, we are violating Section 324 of the Section 8 of the US Code which is harboring aliens. And basically, it is a felony. We are liable, each of us, to a $2,000 fine and up to five years in prison.

Media Clip (Speaker 4): I, for one am, well, I'm an officer in the Naval Reserve and as such, I've taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And so, I am not able, in conscience, to engage in civil disobedience. And so I cannot participate.

Media Clip (Speaker 5): I think there are moments when civil disobedience is what we are called to do. To me, this is a question of conscience, and it is also not at all a question. I have no choice whatsoever in this. I owe it to these people to take this risk, and if it means officially declaring to INS and everybody else that I'm doing it on purpose, and if I have to go to jail, I will go gladly.

Media Clip (Speaker 6): I would hate to think that we, if we had had an opportunity to be a station in the underground railway, we would have let that opportunity go by. It may not be glorious, it may be a lot of nitty gritty, but I want to urge you, fervently, to vote for it, for sanctuary and for this congregation's participation in it.

Dr. Barba: After weeks of deliberations, the congregation had a decision to make. Here's Reverend Thomas Woodward, pastor of St. Francis, laying out the stakes.

Media Clip (Pastor Thomas Woodward): This is an important day for us. Following the service this morning, we will decide, as a congregation, whether or not to provide visible sanctuary to refugees from El Salvador or Guatemala. Right now there are thousands of people who are tired of being shot at, having family members threatened, raped, or killed; people who basically want a safe place: sanctuary.

Dr. Barba: A documentary crew was on the scene for the final vote.

Media Clip (Congregational Vote- Narrator): Now the time has come to vote.

Media Clip (Congregational Vote- Officiant): Those who are opposed vote no. There were seven who voted no and there were 50 who voted yes. The resolution passes.

Media Clip (Congregational Vote- Pastor Woodward): Can we please stand, and I would like to pray a prayer out of the Prayer Book...

Dr. González: And so, on May 23, 1983, St. Francis made the fateful decision to declare their church a sanctuary for Central American asylum seekers. The church, located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, my alma mater, became the first Episcopalian Church in the country to declare itself sanctuary. And by doing so, it helped inaugurate the movement in Madison, the second city in Wisconsin to join what was quickly becoming a national phenomena. That evening, St Francis's parishioners invited four Salvadoran refugees into their parish.

Music: (Congregation singing)

Dr. Barba: It was standing-room only as Pastor Woodward and faith leaders from five other supporting area congregations led a procession down the center of the sanctuary. They accompanied a Salvadoran family that had traveled thousands of miles to seek refuge. As Woodward approached the lectern, he reminded the assembled worshipers that their faith called them to act, even if it meant putting themselves in legal danger. What pastor Woodward laid out in his plea that night were two core planks of the Sanctuary Movement. First, that sanctuary stemmed from humanitarian compassion. Offering refuge was the religious and Christian thing to do. But he also outlined another major plank: that a declaration of sanctuary was political, though not always in a way that was divorced from Christian duty. Sanctuary offered refugees an opportunity to perform what Pastor Woodward called "acts of public witness" against, really, a kind of demonic situation.

Media Clip (5/23/83 Madison Sanctuary Service- Woodward): We have gathered here this evening because there are some things we will not stand for. When the cross and the flag are in conflict, the duty of the Christian is, unhesitatingly, to follow the cross.

Dr. González: Scriptural readings prepared for the service called on those in attendance to raise their voices in support of asylum seekers.

Media Clip (5/23/83 Madison Sanctuary Service- Bible Reading): The lesson is from the book of Proverbs. Speak up for people who cannot speak for themselves. Protect the rights of all who are helpless. Speak for them and be a righteous judge, protect the rights of the poor and the needy. The word of the Lord.

Dr. González: Reverend Ted Seege of Luther Memorial Church, a congregation that was offering support to St Francis, acknowledged that sanctuary was a risky step, one that might not even work. But it was a step that Madisonians had to take. There were no other options.

Media Clip (5/23/83 Madison Sanctuary Service- Pastor Ted Seege): There are times in human history when we need to recognize what Joshua said to his people: God has set before us, life and death. Choose life. I believe this is one of those times. Against international law and our own US statutes, our government is sending thousands of people back to a place they can hardly any longer call home. Will we be successful in stopping this evil? I don't know, but I don't think that's our main concern. Because here, as always, we are called not to be successful, but to be faithful.

Dr. González: Finally, Eliza and Angel, now these were pseudonyms assigned to the refugees to shield their identities, approached the lectern, accompanied by their young daughter, Noemi, to tell their own story. It was time for them to deliver their testimonio, or testimony. They did so with their faces hidden under bandanas and sunglasses, other tools to protect their family back in El Salvador.

Media Clip (Angel's Translator): [Angel speaking Spanish] My name is Angel. [Angel speaking Spanish] I have made my journey because of the situation in El Salvador.

Dr. González: Madison's faith community sat at the edges of their seats. Eliza and Angel had been university students working at a medical clinic. Their reward for helping their community's poor? Persecution at the hands of their country's military police, who accused them of being communist subversives. Eliza described the violence her family had faced.

Media Clip (Eliza's Translator): [Eliza speaking Spanish] Thank God. We are all well, and we thank God too for the people who helped us reach this city and a sanctuary from which we can speak freely, and tell the truth to the American people about what's happening in our country. [Eliza speaking Spanish] Now I would like to tell you about my little daughter. She suffered greatly when she saw me taken prisoner and saw how they beat me. For hours and hours she couldn't speak, and later, when she returned to reality, she could only cry and call for me. All she wanted was her mother and father. [Eliza speaking Spanish] I want to ask the American people, and especially you who are here, to support solidarity work and refugee work for Salvadorans and all Central American people so they can be free. [Clapping]

Dr. González: Eliza continued, explaining that her government was, quote, "good for nothing but killing people, extorting bribes, robbing, raising prices on the necessities of life, and freezing wages." None of this was possible, however, without quote, "the help of the United States," which supplied millions of dollars for "arms to destroy families."

Dr. Barba: Through their testimonios, asylum seekers could put a face to heartbreaking stories of migration, their country's Civil War, and the destructive consequences of US foreign policy. Eliza and Angel had made more than 100 presentations across southeast Wisconsin over the next year. They hoped that sharing their stories might raise the political consciousness of Americans and helped to shift the country's policy towards Central America. They met with congregations, organizations, and even with presidential candidate Walter Mondale.

Dr. González: Together, Madison's faith communities, Angel, and Eliza sought to reorient the political and moral reasoning of every individual they spoke to. They hoped to introduce the same dilemma that the parishioners at St. Francis had faced in their own discernment process- what would they do to support Central Americans seeking sanctuary in the United States?

Dr. Barba: Over the next four years, it was a question that hundreds of congregations would tackle as it debated whether to join what was quickly becoming the first concerted immigrant and refugee justice movement in the nation's history.

Dr. González: Welcome to Sanctuary, a limited podcast series about immigration, faith and the borders between church and state. Sanctuary was created by me. Dr. Sergio González

Dr. Barba: And me, Dr. Lloyd Barba.

Dr. González: In conjunction with the Institute for Religion, Media and Civic Engagement, and Axis Mundi Media.

Dr. Barba: Sanctuary was produced by Dr. Bradley Onishi and engineered by Scott Okamoto. Kari Onishi provided production assistance. Sanctuary was made possible through generous funding from the Henry Luce Foundation and with support from the religion department at Amherst College.

Dr. González: Additional support was provided by the American Academy of Religion. And before we get started, we just want to warn listeners that this series contains infrequent depictions of violence and sexual assault that may not be suitable for all listeners. The story of Madison's faith community wrestling with Angel and Eliza's testimonios reminds us of an important geographic reality about the 1980s sanctuary movement. Now, in most retellings of the history of the movement, sanctuary activists' primary place of organizing was in the Southwest, and that's partially the story we detailed in our last episode when we focused on origin stories in Tucson. But it's only part of the beginnings and eventual maturation of this movement, as we saw developing in Madison in 1983. Because while congregations in Arizona were thinking of ways to assist Central Americans in the late 1970s and early 1980s a system of activist and solidarity networks was developing all across the country.

Dr. Barba: That's right, Sergio, and that includes my home state of California, where concerned people of faith had begun to witness the same startling pattern of rising numbers of Central Americans finding no avenue for political asylum in the US.

Media Clip: [Chanting] "The people, united, will never be defeated! The people, united, will never be defeated!"

Dr. Barba: Most refugees who crossed into the US would eventually make their way to the Golden State, with San Francisco and Los Angeles as their main destinations.

Dr. González: And on the same day that Southside Presbyterian declared sanctuary- March 24 1982, the second anniversary of the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero-five bay area churches also inaugurated their congregations as places of safe harbor for Salvadorans and Guatemalans,

Dr. Barba: And as had been the case in Tucson, Sergio, sanctuary activism in the San Francisco Bay Area built upon years of concern for Central American asylum seekers. Parishes and church agencies had begun to develop legal and social service programs to aid incoming asylum seekers, beginning in the late 1970s. San Francisco's Catholic Archbishop, John Quinn, meanwhile, had faced somewhat of a radicalizing experience in March 1980. As the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Quinn had attended the funeral of murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero. There, he watched in horror as the Salvadoran military shot at the assembled mourners in the cathedral. Quinn returned to San Francisco intent on helping his parishioners support the solidarity cause. In the summer of 1980, he sent the Archdiocesan Social Justice Commission to El Salvador on a fact-finding commission.

Dr. González: That's right, Lloyd, and among the delegates was Eileen Purcell, the lay director of San Francisco's Catholic Social Service. Now, we'll get to hear from Purcell directly a little later in this episode. But here, I'd like to ask Lloyd to read a quote from Purcell as she describes that month-long trip, one that she remembers as a life changing one:

Dr. Barba: "It was my transforming experience. They had just closed the University. We could see machine gun holes in virtually every building at the university. There were bodies in the streets. There were decapitated people in front of the theater in downtown San Salvador."

Dr. González: Purcell and the delegation returned to the Bay Area determined to expand their central American solidarity work. And as in Tucson, they first tried to protect asylum seekers from being deported back to their home countries. They collaborated with mainline Protestant denominations and their social service agencies to set up a network of pro bono lawyers, health care providers, social workers and lay volunteers. The coalition also developed a public awareness campaign on deportation issues and carried out public actions against INS and their deportation proceedings.

Dr. Barba: But, just like in Tucson, San Francisco's legal network quickly grew frustrated with the inequitable application of asylum for Central Americans. Here's Eileen Purcell in 1984 describing those barriers:

Media Clip (Eileen Purcell): We hear stories of human suffering, stories of people who have been attacked and repressed and continue to fear for their families who remain behind. And they flee their homeland because they're fleeing for their lives. And they make a migration through Central America that brings them into neighboring countries that are also at war, and they come northward through Mexico and face economic repression as well as political repression in Mexico. And then finally, come into the United States, which they have heard all their lives is the country of plenty and of dreams. It's interesting, there are very few North Americans who can quote the inscription around the Statue of Liberty, and yet many Central Americans that I've met can. And it's the shock when they come into our homeland here and discover that they are not welcome. But the people we work with are fleeing for their lives.

Dr. Barba: So, the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant and ecumenical coalition of churches and synagogues began to ramp up their efforts by planning to offer church based safe harbor for Central Americans in early 1982 in February, 1982 five congregations signed a covenant of sanctuary to provide support, protection and advocacy for Salvadoran refugees requesting safe haven at the request of Salvador refugees living in the area. The group sponsored a series of delegations to Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugee camps in Honduras that spring, the delegation returned to the Bay Area transformed, and they stood ready to engage in what was surely going to be a difficult process. Here's Eileen Purcell again describing the shift from legal aid work to Sanctuary work.

Media Clip (Eileen Purcell): It's true, many churches began by privately ministering to the needs of hundreds, hundreds of people who came to our doors in Arizona, in Texas, in California, here in San Francisco. The value of public sanctuary is that it says, as church people, we will minister to the pastoral and physical and spiritual needs of our people, our brothers and sisters from Central America. But it's not enough that we must turn that pastoral care into a prophetic witness, if you will, to our community and to our policy makers, and that we have a responsibility to address ourselves, to them and to address the policies that force these people to flee their homeland in the first place.

Dr. González: Now, one of those churches prepared to engage in prophetic witness, as Purcell called it, was Berkeley's University Lutheran Church, or ULC. On March 24, 1982, three Salvadoran men took sanctuary at ULC. These were a medical student, a teenager, and a survivor of the July 1980 disaster at Organ Pipe National Monument that we learned about in the last episode.

Dr. Barba: But for ULC it wasn't the first time somebody had come to the church seeking refuge from potential government persecution. In fact, for several of the key organizers in the Bay Area, providing sanctuary in the 1980s was not a completely new undertaking. Some, such as pastor Gustav Schultz of the ULC, had provided sanctuary to soldiers drafted into the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. These were young men who, for reasons of conscience, had decided that they could not go to or return to fight in Vietnam. Here we can hear from one of those Berkeley churches declaring itself a sanctuary for conscientious objectors in 1971:

Media Clip: We offer sanctuary in order to fulfill our religious heritage. We are not encouraging persons to desert the military, nor encouraging them to take sanctuaries. We are offering sanctuary because it is our conscientious duty to do so.

Dr. Barba: So this idea of offering sanctuary as a spiritual and ethical obligation was well embedded in the Bay Area churches, and part of a longer tradition of antiwar protests and challenges to state power.

Dr. González: ULC's joint project with other Bay Area churches gained widespread support. And soon more Central Americans sought refuge in Bay Area churches. Here we can hear why sanctuary was so essential. Let's listen to Jesus, a Salvadoran man who took refuge in Palo Alto:

Media Clip (Speaker 1): Jesus is a Salvadoran who escaped to the US with eight members of his family. He was a union organizer in the construction trade and was therefore targeted as a subversive. The family received threats and moved to an uncle's house in another village. But before they left, Jesus' brother was caught by the armed forces, and his throat was slit. He was left for dead on a pile of four corpses, but was found by a friend who took him to a hospital.

Media Clip (Speaker 2): [Jesus speaking Spanish] The police came to interrogate him. And in order for him to not be finished by the police he told them that it was the guerrilla who had done the cutting. It was justified that he said that, because if he had told them that their own forces had started the killing, they would have finished him right there.

Media Clip (Speaker 1): Although a death squad managed to kill his father-in-law and also one of his brothers, who was a teacher, Jesus and seven others in his family made it to the US in 1982 and 83. Now they are part of the Palo Alto's sanctuary community every March 24...

Dr. Barba: Now Sergio, I think it's really important for us to take a quick detour and discuss an important aspect of the sanctuary movement. Refugees like Jesus, were not just spokespeople for the movement, but they were, in fact, leaders.

Dr. González: Absolutely, Lloyd. The hospitality dynamic that was at the center of the movement- American houses of worship as hosts, refugees as guests- could lead us to think about this movement as a form of charity. The dynamic might leave us thinking of refugees as mere recipients of sanctuary. And without a doubt, this was at times a criticism of the movement, both externally and internally. But it was also something that sanctuary participants, both North and Central American, worked actively to avoid.

Dr. Barba: That's right Sergio. And that's why we, in the spirit of these collaborations, understand refugees to have been leaders in their own right. Sanctuary, not only offered Central American safety, but also in the words of movement participants, a "prophetic platform" to share their stories of the horrors that they witnessed. So when Jesus took the lectern in Palo Alto to deliver his testimonial, he was fulfilling a central objective of the movement. And it was a task that refugees took on in hundreds of congregations all across the country in the 80s.

Dr. González: Yeah, that's right, Lloyd. Sanctuary participants drew from liberation theology practices developed in Latin America to create these testimonios. They became a form of Christian discourse that was clearly both political and spiritual. You know, on one hand, they tried to create a very direct, empathetic connection between the stranger standing at the lectern, someone from a different country who often spoke Spanish with these American English speaking congregations. It quickly created this very basic human identification between individuals. Testimonios, however, also had a much more explicitly political function. They sought to shine a light on the suffering of Guatemalans and Salvadorans. Suffering that was directly connected to the infusion of US taxpayer dollars into military escapades and Central America.

Dr. Barba: So, hearing a testimonio, Sergio, so emotional that they were, could really make an impact on us congregations. These lectures contravened much of the Reagan propaganda. Offering those in attendance a sobering image of those on the receiving end of Cold War campaigns.

Dr. González: Mhm, Lloyd, that's right. And eventually, it wasn't just congregations that were hearing these testimonios. Newspapers, both local and national, also carried these harrowing stories.

Media Clip (Speaker 1): The family has been offered sanctuary by a group of monks who live here.

Media Clip (Speaker 2): Our faith calls us very simply to welcome the oppressed, to take them in, and to make our love for others very concrete. And we feel that we're simply living out what the gospel of Jesus calls us to as Christians.

Media Clip (Speaker 1): For the Ixcot family, it was a long journey. An ordeal that began in November of 1982.

Media Clip (Speaker 3): The latest arrival was driven across the Mexican border by a Southside parishioner.

Media Clip (Speaker 4): Why did you leave?

Media Clip (Speaker 5): The situation was very difficult, and two members of the family died.

Media Clip (Speaker 4): Assassinated?

Media Clip (Speaker 5): Assassinated.

Media Clip (Speaker 3): We want to work without the threat of getting killed.

Dr. González: And then they became even more powerful when national TV outlets ran clips of interviews with refugees. Imagine turning on your nightly news on ABC, CBS, or NBC, or watching a special episode of 60 Minutes or PBS Frontline, and engaging with these life histories.

Dr. Barba: One can definitely imagine that, and some might even remember these, Sergio. Those testimonios certainly made an impact in places like San Francisco, which quickly expanded their work into a growing interfaith network of supporters. The Sanctuary Movement in the San Francisco Bay Area demonstrated the power of Jewish, Catholic and Protestant congregations to work together in the name of justice for refugees. Anthropologist Susan Bibler Coutin embedded herself in these types of networks in the 1980s and studied sanctuary congregations in the Bay Area and Tucson. She noted that many underwent a "conversion." It's a conversion of sorts, in the way that they joined sanctuary. So powerful were the testimonios and so cogent were the articulations of sanctuary as sacred work, that many quickly joined the cause.

Dr. González: Let's listen to another of these moving speeches offered in the Bay Area in the 1980s. We'll warn listeners, however, that the excerpt contains details of violence.

Media Clip (Miguel's Translator): It makes me very sad to remember the reason why I left. I didn't wish to leave my family. Neither did my family wish me to abandon them. I thought that I was going to be crazy when I heard how my father had died four days after an army operation had taken place in my hometown.

Dr. González: Miguel was only 16 years old, and had arrived in the US in 1984 after a perilous six month journey from El Salvador. His father, not a subversive, was killed and mutilated by the army. Miguel himself was eventually accosted by soldiers while walking alone in San Salvador, the nation's capital.

Media Clip (Miguel's Translator, young Salvadoran man living in South Bay Sanctuary): [Miguel speaking Spanish] They tie my hands behind me. [Miguel speaking Spanish] And they told me that they were taking me to serve in the military forces. And I told them that I didn't want to belong to a military body. And they asked me if I was a collaborator with the subversion, and I answered them that the only thing I did was to work and to study. They kicked me, and kept telling me to tell the truth. One of them put the rifle barrel on my head and said it would be better to kill me right there so I wouldn't say anything. I felt that that was my end. Crying, I told them that I did not belong to the subversion, that I just studied and worked, and that I promised that I wasn't going to say anything. Late at night when I was almost unconscious, they told me to run and they kept shooting at my feet.

Dr. Barba: Now, so far, we've mapped out the birth of the Sanctuary Movement in Tucson and the San Francisco Bay Area, two major players on the day that the Sanctuary Movement went public. But our map of the 1980s is still woefully incomplete without a discussion of the major hub of sanctuary work. This will take us away from California and the Borderlands.

Media Clip (60 Minutes host, Ed Bradley): If you want to know what the Sanctuary Movement is all about, if you want to see how committed people really are, it helps to come here to the heartland of America...

Dr. González: And here we make our way to the heartland of America, as we heard 60 Minutes host Ed Bradley refer to it, to what we might describe as a central turning point for the Sanctuary Movement.

Dr. Barba: We arrive, Sergio, in the Windy City in the summer of 1982, just a couple of months after the founding of the movement in California and Arizona. It's here that the Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America took the movement national, helping explode a borderlands ministry into an American movement. The Chicago Religious Task Force, or CRTF, as we'll call it, was originally founded in the early 1980s as, what was known then, a peace and solidarity organization. It was one of a growing number of groups- some secular, some religiously affiliated- that developed in the late 70s and early 80s.

Dr. González: These Central American solidarity groups were concerned over increased US military support for dictators committing human rights abuses.

Media Clip: 18,000 people have lost their lives in the 16-month war. Thousands are homeless. America's part has been to send advisors, arms, and equipment. And just yesterday, a Senate subcommittee approved $32 million in aid. The Reagan administration has portrayed the conflict as one against red communist backed guerrillas. But the 100 who showed up here suggest why apathetic Americans should care.

Dr. González: So what groups are we talking about? Well, there were quite a few that developed across the nation, which should probably tell us how important this issue was becoming for Americans. At the risk of leaving out some important actors, we're going to name a few so listeners can make the connections. The largest and most active were transnational groups with branches across the United States. They included:

Dr. Barba: The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. CSPES, as you might call it, founded in 1980 in opposition to US military aid to the Salvadoran government.

Dr. González: The Central American Refugee Center, created in 1982 by Salvadoran refugees as a legal aid resource for Central American asylees.

Dr. Barba: Pledge of Resistance, founded in 1984 as a direct action group. They engaged in civil resistance in order to disrupt US military intervention in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Dr. Barba: And Witness for Peace, founded in 1983 in opposition to the Reagan administration's support of Nicaraguan Contra forces. Witness for Peace also coordinated US citizens' travel to the region so they can witness firsthand the effects of their country's military intervention.

Dr. Barba: These groups, along with the CRTF, all sought to develop national and international organizing networks in support of Central Americans and their fight for self determination in their home countries.

Dr. González: So in 1982, Lloyd, Tucson's sanctuary leadership reached out to the CRTF for help in growing the movement beyond the borderlands. Members of CRTF agreed to join on, but they initially saw their 'sanctuary ministry,' as they referred to it, as just a small part of their larger work in support of solidarity for Central Americans. That quickly changed as sanctuary organizing became the primary objective for the Chicago-based organization.

Dr. Barba: The CRTF, Sergio, very effectively, created a template of sorts for congregations to intentionally and meaningfully take up the question of sanctuary. They developed training seminars: working directly with refugees, coordinating communication between parishes, coalitions, and national religious bodies. They also published a monthly newspaper called Basta (Spanish for 'Enough') and also produced sanctuary 'how-to' guidebooks for faith communities undertaking the discernment process to enter the movement.

Dr. González: Now Lloyd, listeners will remember the discernment in Madison we heard at the beginning of our episode today. It was one of the most important aspects of the movement, as it opened space for education and deliberation and set the base for solidarity necessary before inviting a refugee into sanctuary.

Dr. Barba: That's right. And it was a process that Chicago's own churches went through in the summer of 1982. That resulted in the first Midwestern congregation to join the movement at Chicago's historic Wellington Avenue Church.

Dr. González: Now, Lloyd, I'm sure listeners are wondering,...How did refugees make their way from the US-Mexico borderlands to congregations in Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, Boston, Seattle, Miami, and other parts of the country?

Dr. Barba: Well, the answer lies in the new Underground Railroad. Named in honor the clandestine antebellum network of safe houses to move enslaved people from the South to freedom in the North. The New Underground Railroad surreptitiously moved refugees from the border to the heartlands and beyond. Let's hear from one of the conductors who made the new Underground Railroad hum:

Media Clip (Narrator): The journey will take five long days during which they must avoid roadblocks in the border area and stay on the move along a network of safe houses until they reach their final destination.

Media Clip (Conductor): We drove at night and we drove on roads that were not well traveled. And the reason for that being that we knew, for example, that migrant workers take certain routes beginning around this time of year. We wanted to avoid any routes where we felt there was going to be trouble. I can tell you that I breathed a lot easier when we crossed over the Arkansas border.

Dr. Barba: Being a conductor carried risk, that much is clear to us, but those engaged in this part of the sanctuary movement saw their involvement as critical in trying to stop the violence and killing in Central America that was forcing refugees northward.

Media Clip (Conductor): You know, when I first got into this thing, I thought it would be over in short order. I don't think any of us realized how long the policies would remain in place and how many more refugees would continue to come over. You know, some of us have visions of things changing in El Salvador. You know that the war, the war is going to end and that people will no longer have any reason to come. There's no reason for that optimism. But people are talking years now instead of months.

Dr. González: Now, you can imagine that building this interregional network required a lot of people, all of whom brought different life experiences and skills to the work. One of the most important figures connecting borderlands ministry to this heartland coordination through this Underground Railroad was Sister Darlene Nicgorski. A Milwaukee native and member of the School of Sisters of St. Francis, Nicgorski had seen firsthand the brutal effects of the civil war during her time as a missionary. Here we'll turn to Nicgorski as she describes her time in the region.

Media Clip (Nicgorski): I myself worked in Guatemala. I was only there 10 months when our pastor was shot and killed. I know we didn't wait for our names to appear on any death squad list. We accepted the word of the people that we would be the next ones killed. And so then I worked in the camps in Mexico, the Guatemalan refugee camps. And it is there that I heard repeatedly that people had confidence in the madrecitas, the sisters they knew who had worked in Guatemala to tell their stories about how the army came into the camps and came into their villages and destroyed and entire villages, burning the crops, including the animals.

Dr. González: Sister Nicgorski later shared with me how these experiences behooved to, quote, "read the scriptures differently" and to reconsider her mission as a Catholic sister. She instead found in the Bible a challenge to live life by, quote, "the way of the cross." This was a sort of conversion experience for the already religiously devoted nun. She was one of the many members of religious orders and lay people of faith who would join the ranks of sanctuary. In 1982 she became a part of the CRTF. Here's Sister Nicgorski again, outlining what drew individuals and congregations into the fray:

Media Clip (Nicgorski): Churches have felt compelled by their knowledge, I believe mostly from missionaries who work in these countries, what the reality is, and the many stories of the refugees themselves, that these refugees are fleeing political persecution and violence, and are not here for economic reasons, and therefore feel compelled by a law of God and by the ancient tradition of sanctuary, to give protection and harbor to these people.

Dr. González: And although she started off in Chicago, it wouldn't be too long before sister Nicgorski headed off to assist the work in Tucson.

Dr. Barba: But what could persuade people from the heartland, people maybe who hadn't had these transformative missionary experiences in Central America, to care so much about a so-called "border issue" thousands of miles away? Well, one of the reasons that the movement was able to go national across the country, was because the movement organizers tapped into something that transcended binary political identities. Here, let's listen in to some more of those discernment processes from a 60 minute special.

Media Clip (Speaker 1): I cannot understand the position of our government to support, what I feel to be, as an improper policy.

Media Clip (60 Minutes host, Ed Bradley): How would you describe this group? Politically?

Media Clip (Speaker 1): I'm a card carrying Republican. I'm a member of the National Committee.

Media Clip (60 Minutes host, Ed Bradley): As a liberal? Conservative? How would you describe yourself?

Media Clip 10 (Speaker 2): I grew up in a Republican household. I voted for Barry Goldwater.

Dr. Barba: To be sure, much of the larger movement against US intervention in Central America consisted mostly of politically leftist organizations. But sanctuary workers didn't map on so neatly to political polarities. Political identity, at least in terms of partisan affiliation, was really secondary to an effort to live out the Scripture's injunction to welcome the stranger. And beyond this, some saw the situation with Salvadorans and Guatemalans simply as a human rights issue.

Dr. González: So we see that the movement really contained multitudes. But the range of members' political ideologies was only one aspect of that diversity of ideas. As anyone who studies social movements knows, the larger a movement gets, the more people develop differing objectives and tactics for moving it forward.

Dr. Barba: By the middle of the 1980s sanctuary work was booming across the nation. But, as with any mass movement or large organization, disagreements crept up between organizers. The most pertinent disagreements within the movement pertained mostly to mission and strategy. And these differing visions grew out of two main hubs of the movement: Tucson with its direct border ministry, and Chicago, with its developing national network.

Dr. González: So let's dig into one of the biggest tension points between these two poles of sanctuary. The sociologist Robin Lorentzen has helpfully summarized these different conceptualizations of sanctuary work as the humanitarian approach, and the political approach. First, a view of the humanitarian approach. Since Tucson is close to the border, everyone who came to the church seeking refuge found it. Organizers in Tucson did not necessarily ask questions about political background, or vet individuals to see what their former political affiliation in their home country had been. Tucson members provided the basics of food and shelter, but in many cases also legal, financial and other forms of material support. People seeking respite at Southside Presbyterian, for example, could be former soldiers or military deserters who had seen and perhaps done too much, felt remorseful and had to get out. There were also those, of course, whose family and loved ones had been killed by armed forces, and those who had been targeted and suffered injuries at the hands of death squads. The Tucson members operated under the assumption that much of the basic aid they provided was not just biblical or in direct response to what Jesus would call them to do, but that it was also within the legal parameters of international and national human rights law.

Dr. Barba: That's right, Sergio. Corbett's core conviction, however, was that the federal government was the one operating illegally in its violation of human rights laws. By not offering political asylum, the Reagan administration had abdicated its legal duty to offer safe harbor to refugees. And this especially applied to cases in which one's own government is a violator, and even if one's government has failed to codify or ratify these rights.

Dr. González: So the humanitarian approach as it developed in Tucson, right there on the border, where thousands of Central Americans were arriving each year, prioritized immediate physical aid to any and all refugees arriving at the church door

Dr. Barba: In Chicago, hundreds of miles removed from the immediate humanitarian crisis at the border, activists developed a different methodology. Now, this method was known as a political approach, but it was at its heart, still deeply religious. In fact, when I recently interviewed someone actively involved in the 1980s movement in Chicago, I asked whether she imagined herself doing political or religious work. She, very frankly, replied that she never thought of herself as doing sanctuary work separated between the religious and the political. For her, the political was religious and the religious was political. Sanctuary provided her with a new way of seeing her faith in action. So what this distance from the border meant for Chicagoans was that since they did not run the risk of having their humanitarian work shut down, they could be somewhat riskier and pursue more politically... let's say, radical means. This was especially the case that pertained to pushing the boundaries of legally protected protest. In fact, let's hear directly from a member of the Chicago Religious Task Force, who can explain this approach for us. Listen to Renny Golden, a Catholic civil rights activist and feminist scholar who became a co-founder and leader in the Chicago movement, as she describes why they were so public and so political in their work.

Media Clip (Renny Golden): As a matter of fact, the openness of the railroad and the openness of the people who are willing to risk themselves in it, is to make a statement politically, to our State Department, to our INS, which says, "enough," we say, "basta." No more will you deport these people back. So it's an attempt at political pressure. But the grounds… The basis was on moral grounds. That is, we could do nothing else.

Dr. González: Yeah. Golden lays it out pretty succinctly here, Lloyd. Humanitarian work like that in Tucson treated the victims as it should; but the strategy in Chicago sought to more forthrightly address root causes. This is not to say that Tucson folks weren't actively criticizing US intervention in Central America. They were and actively so, but the Chicago hub of the movement exerted much more energy into this. Their very active demonstrations against the US to stop deportations and pull out of Central America took on more confrontational tactics. For example, the Chicago Religious Task Force more frequently used its many resources to send delegations to bear direct witness to the violence and uprooting in Central America.

Dr. Barba: And, Sergio, the different approaches were more than just differences in philosophy, even though at first it may have seemed that way. And these alternative views of how to approach sanctuary work could have serious consequences, as one episode in particular makes clear. At one point in the movement, the Chicago Religious Task Force received a young Guatemalan couple, sent through the Underground Railroad by Tucson activists. To the frustration of the Chicago organizers, the couple couldn't seem to provide enough firsthand eyewitness accounts of violence (the very material of testimonios) that organizers thought that they needed to go into Midwest congregations and to try to change hearts and minds. Some Chicago organizers reasoned that it would be best to send the couple back to Tucson. That, to put it mildly, incensed Tucson sanctuary workers. And these types of divisions could bear out more publicly as well. That's what happened at a national sanctuary conference held in Tucson in January 1985, where refugees voiced concern over paternalism within the movement.

Dr. González: But there was another division developing between Tucson and Chicago, and that was the way in which they envisioned their direct action tactics. Here the fight became whether to refer to sanctuary work as a form of civil disobedience or civil initiative.

Dr. Barba: Now, in the months leading up to the opening of the public sanctuary movement in Tucson, Southside Presbyterian pastor, John Fife, had written a letter to his congregation. In it, he urged the church to provide sanctuary, as there was, at the time, no middle ground between collaboration and resistance. Sacred resistance, he said, called for civil disobedience.

Dr. González: Sanctuary activists across the country took that charge to heart. They invoked a wide ranging set of historical examples of disobedience from which they could draw. Most immediately, activists found inspiration in Henry David Thoreau's famous justification for civil disobedience. Let's hear Reverend William Sloan Coffin of New York's Riverside Church invoking Thoreau.

Media Clip (Sloane Coffin Jr.): So we are here to say, God bless you to our sisters and brothers in Arizona who have been indicted. To say, God bless you to all our sisters and brothers who are arrested as illegal aliens across the country. And to remind our government of Thoreau's words, 'They are the lovers of law and order who uphold the law when the government breaks it.'

Dr. Barba: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, these all provided archetypes of civil disobedience. Some who engaged in disobedience imagined that they were joining the historic and good company of "Old Testament prophets who spoke out in 'civil disobedience' against the evils of government," as one Brethren resolution put it.

Dr. González: Along similar lines, the Seattle area Jewish Community Relations Committee acknowledged, quote, "the legitimacy of acts of civil disobedience when governmental action threatens basic human rights guaranteed to all people." They understood how, quote, "sanctuary actions are consistent with the concept of civil disobedience, which is part of our Jewish tradition."

Dr. Barba: Now, the concept of civil disobedience made sense to most people who joined the movement. And many saw what they were doing as potentially a form of law breaking, albeit in service to a greater good. The Chicago Religious Task Force, with all of its discernment materials, its journal: Basta, and its growing network, played the most important role in tying the idea of sanctuary with civil disobedience.

Dr. González: Now, this wasn't the only way to envision sanctuary work. One of the movement's co-founders, Tucson's Jim Corbett, proposed a much different conceptualization, one that sharply differed from the Chicago model. Historian Adam Waters explains that the CRTF rooted their idea of civil disobedience in their broader ethic of revolutionary struggle. And as we've already discussed, they advanced this concept with a clear political message, one that they were willing to push forward, even if it meant breaking the law.

Dr. Barba: And that's right, Sergio. Corbett's core conviction, however, was that the federal government was the one operating illegally in its violation of human rights laws. By not offering political asylum, the Reagan administration had abdicated their legal claim to offering safe harbor. What sanctuary members were involved in, Corbett proposed, wasn't law breaking or civil disobedience. They were engaged in what he referred to as "Civil Initiative." Civil Initiative functionally meant that sanctuary activists were acting to comply with laws that officials themselves were violating.

Media Clip (Corbett): Well, you know, our point is that it is, in fact, legal. That the right of civil initiative, to help people escape torture and murder is very well established. If we can present that to a jury, there's no one that's going to convict us in this country.

Dr. Barba: To reprise a quote we heard from William Sloan Coffin Jr. earlier in our series, sanctuary organizers were there to uphold a "good" law (here, the Refugee Act of 1980) when the government was failing to do so.

Dr. González: In order to uphold that law, however, sanctuary activists had to break others, including laws related to aiding, transporting and harboring undocumented immigrants. Let's hear from movement founder John Fife, who shifted his own perspective from civil disobedience towards Corbett's conception of civil initiative.

Media Clip (Fife): And about a month after I had thought I was quite eloquent in describing what we were doing is civil disobedience in the tradition of Dr. King and the civil rights movement, I get a phone call and this guy says, 'I'm a human rights attorney from New York, and you've got to stop talking about civil disobedience. You're not doing civil disobedience.' And I said, 'Really? I'm just waiting for the papers to indict me, because the government said they're going to do that.' And he said, 'Listen, dummy,' and that's a direct quote, he said, 'Listen, dummy, you're not violating United States law. It's the United States government that's violating the 1980 Refugee Act. Every time they order refugees from the conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala to be deported, that's a violation of international law, United States law and human rights. And you've got to stop talking about civil disobedience.' And I said, 'Oh, I understand, but what do we call what we're doing?' And he said, 'I don't know, make it up.' And so I went to my friend Jim Corbett, and he came back two days later with a paper titled Civil Initiative, to distinguish it from civil disobedience. And he defined it as the legal right and responsibility of all of us under the law to directly aid the victims of human rights violations. When the government violates human rights.

Dr. González: The full meaning of civil initiative acquired more nuance over the next few years, especially under the stroke of Corbett's pen. It would remain, however, the minority view among sanctuary activists around the country, who are gearing themselves up as potential law breakers in their discernment processes.

Dr. Barba: Ultimately, whether one chose to frame their engagement in Sanctuary as civil disobedience or civil initiative, this work was understood to be religious, especially in the line of prophetic religion. Prophetic religion involves judgment, and sometimes it calls for condemnation of the state as religious folks bear witness to the course of human action measured up against biblical notions of justice. One widely circulated pamphlet described how prophetic witness went hand in hand with civil disobedience. Sergio, could you read a bit from the pamphlet for us?

Dr. González: Gladly, Lloyd. Quote, 'When a church has to break the law in order to provide refuge for homeless people, the struggle for justice has reached a new stage. Now the pastoral has merged with the political. Service is prophetic and love is a subversive activity.'

Dr. Barba: Whether we're talking about the decision to declare sanctuary, how a church might best support refugees that one government deems illegitimate or worse, illegal; or whether we're discussing the political versus humanitarian approaches; or say, the difference between civil disobedience versus civil initiative, one thing remains true; this was tough legal terrain to navigate. Sanctuary organizers were actively debating all of these nuances to movement strategy, at times cordially, but sometimes in ways that threatened to disrupt the broader national network that they were trying to build

Dr. González: Those divisions, however, would soon be the least of the movement's problems. Because all the while sanctuary participants, Central American and North American alike, were trying to elevate this prophetic witness in their church pews, opposing institutions were listening in and preparing to tear it all down. This challenge to state power, sanctuary's opponents believed, could not go unchecked. And in 1985, the federal government, a central target of sanctuary organizing, responded with church infiltrations, legal convictions and a concerted counter-public media campaign. The outcome was a year-long legal proceeding that captivated the nation's attention. Sanctuary, a movement not three years old, was on trial. The movement now truly found itself "On the Border Between Church and State."

Dr. Barba: That's it for this episode of Sanctuary. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Dr. Lloyd Barba,

Dr. González: and I'm Dr. Sergio González.

Dr. Barba: Remember, sanctuary saves lives

Dr. González: and strangers are neighbors you just haven't met yet.