The fight against President Trump’s executive orders to turn away refugees, deport undocumented immigrants and build a wall along the Mexican border is about to escalate in many American churches.
A campaign is being organized by the Orthodox and mainline Protestant churches affiliated with the National Council of Churches and Church World Service.
A broad network of 37 Protestant and Orthodox Christian denominations will announce on Friday a campaign to mobilize its congregants — some 30 million Americans in all — to lobby the president and members of Congress to rescind the executive orders.
In a declaration hammered out over the last month, church leaders call the orders “unjust and immoral” and say they run counter to “the values we as people of faith hold dear: to welcome the stranger and assist those most in need.”
“It is imperative that we speak out against the notion that refugees are a threat to our safety,” the declaration adds. “They are not.”
The president’s Jan. 27 executive order, which he called necessary for national security, barred people from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the country for 90 days, stopped refugee admissions for 120 days and banned refugees from Syria indefinitely. The White House is expected to issue a revised order very soon.