The Border Crisis (with Lloyd Barba)

• Lloyd Barba’s Sowing the Sacred
• Leo Chavez’ Covering Immigration
• Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State, podcast, https://open.spotify.com/show/4kVxqJZfaOU58QeKCd9ITn?si=019bff0e029a4c7b

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Check, check, check.

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Alright.
Okay.
I think we're...
Sounds like whatever.
I think we're crispy up in here.
Crispy in the house.
Welcome to TikTok Theology, a podcast that tackles the major trending topics on social
media that concern the Christian faith.
I'm Meagan.
And I'm Steven.
We know you can't form a theology in three minutes or less, but those videos can identify

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current issues.
TikTok will give us the prompt, and then we'll do a deep dive.
Thanks for joining us in this exploration.
Hello friends.
Welcome back to TikTok Theology.
In kind of a continuation episode, almost, of a conversation we had a few episodes ago
about immigration, we also think it's important to address not just immigration policy or

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the things that we kind of chatted about with Bree, but to kind of focus on the border crisis
and what people have experienced physically at the borders of, specifically for us, the
United States.
This is specific to us, but I think you're going to see similar kind of crises in any
type of bordering nations where there is an immigration issue.
Yeah.
So, especially like things we've seen for years now on, whether it's photos of kids

(01:13):
in cages or whether it's...
Which by the way, those kids in cages, that's like those happened under Obama and they happened
over...
Right.
Those have been happening for immigration and the border crisis has been under Republicans
and Democrats for many, many years.
That's the point.
This issue is not a partisan issue.
We want to make sure that people can see that.
Yes.
That it has been a problem for both administrations and every administration.

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For a very, very long time under both parties.
So, we think it's important to address specifically this kind of conversation, which we see on
social media all the time, right?
Especially when we're talking about the Mexico border, because that is our bordering nation.
Mexico and Canada.
And so, when we see a lot on social media, whether it's people posting of things that

(01:59):
are happening or commentating or giving an experience, there's lots of emotions surrounding
what happens at the border.
So we think it's important to give another episode to have a conversation about that
specifically and give some voice to our guest that we have on this episode, that we're super
excited about who wrote a fantabulous book, kind of surrounding this topic.

(02:24):
Yeah, he's great.
We're going to introduce him in a minute here, but he's awesome.
So I did want to again mention, just like last time, we're not trying to make this a
political issue, but we are trying to make this a biblical issue, a theological issue.
As these things start talking about the things that Jesus talked about, that's when we need
to talk about them.
Correct.
There was one thing that I quoted.
I made this post on my social media accounts.

(02:46):
This is from my book, The Problem of Freedom, and it said this, when a refugee or immigrant,
legal or not, is seeking welcome at our home, which of our allegiances takes precedence?
Because we have a couple, right?
We have the King of God allegiance, and then we have our national allegiance of being American.
Should we double down on our national identities and shun the outsider to protect our home,

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or should we evoke our kingdom identities and see all people as kin?
This issue is even more compounded when the immigrants are Christians and members of our
same covenant.
Do we give precedence to our covenant, or to our national communities?
That's a really important question, right?

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As church folks, what should our stance be?
How can our churches help people?
What can we do?
Lloyd hits a lot of stuff to talk about.
I thought that was really, really pertinent.
One thing that brought me back is when you hear the idea of what a neighbor is, we can

(03:50):
go right back to the Good Samaritan, because they literally asked that to Jesus, and they
asked him that for political reasons.
Well, who's my neighbor?
He asked that so that way he can know who to exclude, who he can still exclude as his
neighbor.
Then Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan.
The two Jews that were rich, and they were actually part of that kin, part of that tribe,

(04:10):
they were not neighbors, the Samaritan, which was part of the other group, the outside group.
They had massive issues with, social issues with, they were against the pose from each
other.
He was the neighbor because he extended kindness.
Who was the neighbor?
The one who was compassionate and loving and extending kindness to the other person.

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One thing about us being on a border is that Mexico is literally our neighbor, but then
also how can we be extending neighborliness in the way Christ has said it, even in a sovereign
nation as we're dealing with sovereign nations to people who are at the border?
That's pretty wild, right?

(04:52):
There's a couple of things about the border in our new administration.
We know about the border wall and stuff like that that's been happening.
Then two other things, the immigration policies work together with this, whereas in 2016 it
was more focused on the border crisis itself, because there's drugs and stuff coming in
fentanyl and stuff like that.
There's a legitimate thing that we need to look at, and that's always been the case.

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But then it's broadly more immigration has been the issue in this last administration.
One thing that is crucial that we need to discuss is there's been a move to redefine
birthright citizenship, which is literally in the Constitution.
Birthright citizenship is if you were born in America, you're an American citizen.

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And basically this is an executive order that was issued to revise birthright citizen excluding
children born to non-citizens or those on a temporary visa in our country that they would
not be American citizens.
This was blocked by a judge, and so it's in the legal system right now.
And several states are suing.
Yeah, so it was blocked right away because it's literally in the Constitution.

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So like kind of blatantly there.
The reason why this move even happened is because Trump wants to not have anchor babies.
Like basically if somebody comes in, like an immigrant comes in, they have a baby, and
then you don't want to split up the family, so that way you have some illegal immigrants
in there because their children are American citizens.

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He also doesn't want to deport the parents and leave the children here because they're
American citizens.
They don't want to split up families, but the solution for him is to deport the entire
family.
And so if you can take the birthright citizen, then they can all be deported.
Does that make sense?
So that's there.
And then there was also enhanced enforcement in sensitive locations.

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So this has been very troublesome.
This has been hard, yeah.
There's been restrictions preventing immigration and customs enforcement, which is ICE, from
conducting operations in sensitive locations like schools, churches, hospitals, but they
have been lifted.
And so now ICE has raided churches and schools.
My daughter Mila, who goes to public school here in SoCal, she got a letter issued just

(07:06):
like what would happen if there was an ICE raid?
You know what I'm saying?
She's in fourth grade.
And so it's pretty wild that that would happen.
There was a church in Atlanta that got raided.
And that's scary.
We have a lot of churches in our denomination.
A lot of churches around here are Spanish-speaking churches.
That might get raided just because they're Spanish-speaking churches.

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And so very scary situations and all that.
So as you can see, like the refugee crisis, this has been blowing up.
Everybody has a million things to say on social media.
Rightly so in some ways.
A lot of it is unhelpful though.
It's very inflammatory.
You can see why people have issues with it.

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This time we need to really have a good conversation about it.
And part of having a conversation is really understanding the history of how immigration
has worked on the border.
And that's why I'm so excited about our guest.
He's a really awesome historian.
We have Lloyd Barba.
He's a historian of religion in the Americas with training in Latinx history and American

(08:11):
race, ethnicity, immigration and all that stuff.
When you hear him talk, he is like your historian's historian.
Like he's super smart.
Spitting out dates and stuff like that.
Very objective, just kind of like just awesome dude.
And he has talked a lot about the American West and Mexico borderlands.
His scholarship on Mexican farm workers in California between 1906 and 1966 is based

(08:33):
on oral histories and an extensive archival research that he's conducted himself, which
I think is awesome.
Using photos and stuff that he's found.
Like he's just really, really doing the work himself.
Yeah.
And it also draws from the fields of immigration history, material culture and scholarship
in Pentecostalism and Catholicism.
And so he wrote a book, Sowing the Sacred Mexican Pentecostal Farm Workers in California.

(08:58):
I came out in 2022 from the Oxford University Press and it won award, won the NUMO award.
I was part of actually the selecting committee, the editorial team, because it's a fantastic
book.
Yeah.
It's so good.
And just the way he approaches history is fantastic.
And then he also has a podcast called Sanctuary on the Border between the church and state
that we're probably, we're going to reference quite a bit.

(09:19):
This is him and another scholar named Sergio Gonzalez, who's a professor at Marquette.
And they bring their research to the program with a focus on asylum seekers from Central
America, specifically how churches have become places of sanctuary for some folks.
It's very interesting.
It's the sanctuary movement in 1980s to the present.
And so, yeah, so that's, we're going to talk to him.

(09:41):
He's such an important voice to talk about the subject.
For sure.
So I'm excited for everybody to hear it.
Let's check it out.
All right.
I am so happy.
So my friend Lloyd Barba here.
How you doing, Lloyd?
Doing all right.
Thanks for having me.
Hey, absolutely.
We met pretty recently at SPS, I would say.
You were the man last year at SPS.
You won a book award.

(10:02):
You were like a keynote or you were on some panels or something like that.
You were just all over the place.
It was a busy year.
I'll admit that.
But I haven't known you very long, Stephen, but I've known your work for quite some time.
Okay.
And then I've worked, they read your first book and integrated it into my book, actually.
Oh, very cool.
Very cool.
I love your book, man.
Like I said, it won the Numa Book Award.

(10:24):
Very, very well deserving.
And for those, like, we'll get into some nerdiness here and then we'll get into our topic.
But for people who like history, the way you approach history by looking at actual photos
and oral stories and all these other elements that people don't typically think about as
a history, like this modern approach, that was such a brilliant way to do it.

(10:46):
It's almost like you're reading history and then you become empathetic towards people
and towards their story because you're seeing it because you're actually like, like reliving
it a little bit.
So exactly.
Bravo, my friend.
Bravo.
It was awesome.
Thank you.
Alrighty.
So Lloyd, we're so excited to have you on today.
And so honestly, like we're just going to knock right into it.
So give us a bit of background, right?

(11:08):
Set the stage for us of why you've dedicated your research specifically to the border crisis
and other pivotal matters pertaining to migrant Hispanic communities.
Give us some background.
How do we end up here?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, there's a very long version of it, right?
But for the sake of the podcast recording, I'll keep it brief.
I mean, to some extent, I grew up, I did grow up in California in Stockton, which is no

(11:32):
Stockton, it's urban, but it's completely surrounded by orchards and vineyards.
So it's very much the, you know, it's in the thick of the Central Valley.
So agriculture is, I mean, I really mean, as it's in the air, like it carries a pollen
and it makes you sneeze as a kid.
I was always a kid, you know, picking up tissues from the office because I was always
sneezing so much, realized I had allergic to like everything under the sun.

(11:54):
But I mean, part of what I have to do is, as well, I mean, I'm from a Mexican Catholic
household.
One of my earliest experiences with anything Pentecostal Charismatic was when my dad was
extremely ill.
Folks in the community knew that, you know, when you needed, let's say prayer that works,
I think prayer, you didn't call him the priest, but you called on the Reyes family, the King

(12:18):
family, right?
It translated.
And they were, I not have the categories much later to think about it, but they were Catholic
Charismatics.
And so they came, they prayed for my father, he spoke in tongues in a living room.
And you know, he eventually, you know, did recover from that ailment.
And so that was my first encounter, but I spent teenage years, early adult years in

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variety of different Pentecostal contexts and geographically as well.
And I wanted to find a way of bringing the research all together.
And I ended up studying a denomination that I'm not affiliated with, but I think it really
did make for a pay for kind of case study where you had Mexicans, again, family, you
know, history and that Pentecostal farm workers, and it turned out California was a place to

(13:07):
do this, but, you know, as Steven already alluded to is the way of doing that history
was a bit unconventional.
I mean, didn't have oral histories in an archive.
So I had to turn to photographs and I had to conduct oral histories.
And so in my study of the first book, So in the Sacred Mexican Pentecostal Farm Workers
in California, that ended in the mid sixties.

(13:29):
The biggest reason was in the sixties, you had the in the mid sixties, the United Farm
Workers founded by Cesar Chavez de la Tuerza, which, you know, they do engender really important
changes for farm workers.
But also, I mean, the question of immigration really blows up in 1965 in terms of the isolationist
sort of model of immigration from that was in place from 24 to 64 was, let's just say

(13:51):
attenuated a little bit, right?
There's still heavy immigration restrictions.
But now I'm studying, yeah, as you mentioned, the border immigration and the intersection
of those things with religion.
And I'm looking beyond 1965 into the present moment.
And so I've just been intrigued now with the sanctuary movement that is the phenomenon

(14:13):
of undocumented immigrants taking sanctuary in churches and how those churches have offered
in a relative measure of safety.
And I'm just trying to wrap my head around why, what is it about these churches, these
houses of worship synagogues that make that that allow for that?
Yeah.
Okay.
So, you know, taking a step back, like, how do you think scripture to shape our views

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of migrant communities?
I mean, for me, it's like, I don't see how you can read the Bible and come away with
anything different.
But and so this maybe speaks a little bit towards maybe some biblical literacy that
we see in our culture too.
But I would just love to hear like, there's so many biblical concepts like gleaning in
the, you know, in the Old Testament that I see a correlation with the sowing the sacred

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big time.
And, you know, loving your neighbors, loving your enemies, welcoming the strangers, so many
passages.
But can you just speak like, even before we get into like what your projects are doing,
like what is some like biblical basis like that you see for caring for the migrant communities?
There's really two I think that come across most clearly.
The first one is a passage in Matthew 25, specifically when Jesus says, I was a stranger

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and you took me in to those sheep on the right hand and the goats on the left, you know,
they get the let's just say the bad treatment.
They had it coming, I suppose.
But, you know, when Jesus, the least of these was sick, they were visited here when, you
know, they were a stranger not taken in.
Well, this is different to outcome, let's just say read on into verses 45 or so.

(15:43):
So that's a major one, right?
Matthew 25, welcoming the stranger.
But another important one comes from the Hebrew Bible.
And this is where you see a lot more, I mean, for obvious reasons, collaboration, if you
will, or sort of, you know, lines of solidarity formed between Jewish congregation and Christian
ones.
So Hebrew Bible passages about not oppressing the stranger.

(16:05):
I mean, that feels pretty baseline, right?
Like do not oppress them, right?
And I think what's a nice elaboration upon that is you do have again later in the Hebrew
Bible where they're, you know, you're supposed to care for the for the sojourner for the children
of Israel were on sojourners in the land of Egypt.
But then in Matthew, you have really explicit, clear instructions by Jesus as to what to

(16:25):
do as you're supposed to take them in.
So those are sort of two major passages.
But when we get specific to sanctuary, and I can say more later if you like, that's where
the whole concept of the cities of refuge come in a bit more.
Yeah.
They do point back very clearly.
And they, I mean, you know, the sanctuary movement of the 80s and the present day, they
point back to the Hebrew Bible as examples of sanctuary and that the house of God should

(16:50):
afford some kind of safety or at least a point of mediation when there is an oppressive state.
Yeah.
No, that's awesome.
And I want to talk about the sanctuary, but like going back to the Matthew passage, just
even saying it like one thing that like kind of that shocked me a little bit when you read
it and you think about it.
He tells us to treat, you know, foreigners, resident aliens as natives, as insiders and

(17:13):
as Ken.
But then Jesus specifically said, you know, I was a stranger.
You welcome me.
I was naked.
You gave me clothing.
I was sick.
You get care for me.
But he says, just as you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you
did it to me.
Yeah.
And I always get struck on that.
Like he literally called them his own family.
Yeah.

(17:33):
And so like when we start thinking about strangers, he's not telling us to just like let foreigners
in.
He's telling us to let his own siblings in.
And that's yeah, that's that's some of that Matthew passage, I think is just, oh my goodness,
gracious.
Oh yeah.
I mean, again, if there's, I'd say between that and the Hebrew bio passage mentioned,
those really do inform the imagination of these immigration faith activists.

(17:57):
Now we want to be very clear.
It's faith that primarily leads them.
And I mean, that's just clear if you're looking at the documents in the 80s, they say I'm
driven by my faith.
I'm driven by my conscience.
And it's really the political that I think that's secondary to the religious.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Even speaking in like that, I feel like when you making the comment about something being
political, right, we know that these conversations have gotten quite politicized, especially

(18:21):
in churches, which I think has caused us to divert from the word of God and become kind
of wrapped up in a lot of other things.
But when we have to ask like, how can the church discuss these matters in non politically
partisan ways?
What are ways to engage this conversation that don't feel so like overwhelmed and bogged

(18:43):
down by politics, but when we can get right to the heart of what does it mean to love
people?
Yeah, it's a great question.
And I love that you have the term partisan in there, right?
That's what I think it really does get bogged down of blaming one part or the other.
And what you find, I'll just draw again from my most proximate research of the sanctuary
movement.
To be clear, for the most part, you do have left of center, sort of across that side of

(19:08):
the spectrum, folks who are involved, but it's by no means limited to that.
So in one of my favorite recordings, it was actually a TV recording.
I think it was 60 minutes or PBS front line, one or the other.
But the folks in the church in Minnesota are asked, what's your political affiliation?
And these are folks who are part of a congregation that just declared sanctuary.

(19:30):
They took in a Guatemalan man providing refuge.
And she says, I am a lifelong card-carrying Republican.
And names all the presidents she had voted for, the Republican presidents.
But she says, this is where my consciousness is calling me.
And that's where you have consistent theme you see.
So I think it's important to, again, first lay aside the partisan sort of name calling

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and what is scripture calling us to do in this case?
And I think when you're able to do that, especially with respect to immigration, folks, it's just
so clear what the Bible calls us to do.
I think invoking a partisanship really does get in the way of carrying out the message
of Jesus, which is pretty clear.

(20:16):
Yeah, that's absolutely the truth.
In the book that I just recently came out with, it talks about it's a public theology
for the church.
And so one of the big things for me is I don't really want to write a public theology for
politics, for partisanship.
I don't want it to be used by that.
I want it to be used for us.
When we are looking at what the Bible says and how to act politically in the world, how

(20:40):
to act like to a polis, how to like publicly.
And I like to use the language of public versus political just because people have messed
up the word political.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, oh, for sure.
And so we get all of that there is just what you're saying, issues of the migrant of the
border of our literal neighbor, right?
Yeah.
These are not things that should ever, ever be partisan, yet they have been.

(21:04):
And that's one of our one of our big issues.
And you know, when we think about the border was a big issue in Trump's first presidency
and now immigration generally is.
And so it's kind of like moved there.
And you do want to like, you don't want to like just straight up demonize an idea.

(21:25):
You know, if you have a sovereign nation, you know, you want to have secure borders.
You want to have a way to protect and be there for your own national citizens.
But at the same time, we have a kinship towards everyone and like the human race, the human
population and Jesus does so much of like equalizing that like if you are the one that

(21:47):
has, you know, means, then we share, you know, to creating like a sharing economy or whatever.
And there's there's just a lot there to talk about it, but it can so easily get into one
way or the other and be called names and different things, which is always problematic.
And so what I love about this sanctuary movement project, which I would love for you to talk

(22:08):
about a little bit, you're not actually getting into like picking one side or the other, but
talking about like a real response, like a response that's like actually happening and
then tracing that.
Can you talk to us a little bit about one, what is the sanctuary movement project?
And then two, if you can plug a little bit, even your podcast, the sanctuary on the border
between church and state, I would love for you to plug that and talk about what that

(22:31):
is and we'll put it in the show notes because I think people should listen to it.
So yeah, talk to us a little bit about that.
Yeah, happy to do so.
So the podcast is sanctuary on the border between church and state.
It's seven episodes.
The first four episodes deal with sanctuary in 1980s.
So the cliff notes on that sanctuary in 1980s was very clearly for Guatemalan and Salvadorans

(22:54):
fleeing civil wars.
And so in 1980, Jimmy Carter signed the refugee act, the refugee act of 1980.
And churches grew concerned as they realized that there was an increasing number of, I
mean, this is the term used by the border patrol actually, OTM other than Mexicans who
are crossing the border.

(23:15):
And why in these large numbers?
And there's this incident that happens in 1981, an organ pipe national monument.
It's in Arizona, way down in the desert.
There's 26 Salvadorans who were found stranded in the desert.
Half of them, how he died.
And the other half were kind of used a language of KJV and the Good Samaritan were half dead,

(23:37):
basically, and really, really bad shape.
And this sort of lets this moment of reckoning like what is going on so bad that Salvadorans
are skipping through Mexico and trying to come to the US?
Like what message are they trying to get across?
Yeah.
And what was very clear is they fit the classical definition of a refugee.
And you see classical, I mean, it's pretty recent at that point.
It's developed by the UN in the Protocols and Conventions of 51 and 67.

(24:02):
What's clear is that these people would be just sort of textbook examples of refugees.
Why isn't the US extending refugee recognition or granting asylum cases?
And it's clear, well, the US is backing financially and through training and arms the Salvadoran
dictatorship as well as the Guatemalan dictatorship.
Wow.

(24:23):
So you can't, I mean, the right kind of administration can't sell in the one hand is, oh, these people
are refugees, but also the other hand is involved in again, uprooting these people in the first
place.
So the right administration, I think the statistics somewhere like around 1980, 485, it's less
than 3% of Salvadorans, less than 2% of Guatemalans are given refugee status.
And that's the people who actually apply for it, right?

(24:44):
So many people are not applying because they're just being wholesale denied it.
So faith community step up and they say, especially this kind of the argument more in the Tucson
area, if the government is not going to carry out its responsibility and recognize these
folks as refugees, we're going to take it upon ourselves and we're going to call it
civil initiative.
But we're going to uphold the refugee act when the government fails to do so.

(25:07):
That's one line of thinking.
Another one is just engaging in civil disobedience.
Both of them really kind of do work in tandem.
The long story short, it's very clear to communities of faith that these are refugees.
This is what God calls us to do.
And then they're drawing upon all sorts of New Testament examples as well.
You might recall the passage in Acts 9 where Paul escapes Damascus, he let down through

(25:29):
a basket.
They looked at passages like that and say like, well, the Christian church, the Jewish
traditions have a long history of surrepetitious crossing.
You turn to the story of the gospels, the holy family's flight into Egypt.
It's also again surrepetitious crossing of borders and of territory.
And of course, there's always a passage in Hebrews 13 where it says, don't neglect to
show hospitality to the strangers.

(25:52):
Some have entertained angels on the wires.
Sorry folks, I quote KJV because most of you would tend to know.
Or some version of that.
It's all mishmash at this point.
So in the 1980s, that's the goal.
And they do, the sanctuary movement takes credit for winning a major battle in that the cases
of Salvador and the Guatemalans are revaluated by the Reagan administration.

(26:13):
Actually, that's after the Reagan administration.
That would be the first Bush administration Bush, the dad that is HW.
Yeah.
And I just always hear Dana Carvey whenever it's that George, you don't know Dana Carvey,
the comedian.
No, he was on SNL back in the day.
And and he just did a really, really spot on George HW Bush.

(26:34):
It was so funny.
Yeah.
That's as always.
That was the image.
I don't even know what the real Bush looks like.
There's no like Dana Carvey's version of George HW Bush, which is great.
So anyways, sorry to interrupt.
Oh, it's fine.
No worries.
So that's the 80s movement.
And let's fast forward the 1990s, numerous immigration laws that are passed.

(26:57):
The board is really ramped up.
You have this moment in California with Prop 187.
California has been governor Pete.
Oh my God.
Pete Wilson.
Sorry, Pete Buttigieg kept coming to mind.
That's totally wrong.
Yeah.
Pete Wilson.
Again, basically trying to do the work of the federal government in creating regularly
immigration, they strip social services of undocumented immigrants.
It's this real high tide moment of xenophobia.

(27:20):
So all this kind of building of constricting immigration in the 90s and you get to the 2000s,
what was then the immigration naturalization services is now ICE as we know it, right?
And it's no longer under the DOJ, but under the Department of Homeland Security.
It's a serious intensification of trying to clamp down on the border.
So there's an extent to which the moment we're seeing today with intense anti-immigration

(27:44):
bills that they do meet pushback.
So in 2005, there was a census and Brenner bill, which again, sought to heavily penalize
immigration and those who employed undocumented immigrants.
The reaction to that was the marches that blew up all across the country of a day without
an immigrant and in Chicago, the marches in 2006.

(28:07):
One of the key story, I mentioned that because one of the key stories from that is the new
sanctuary movement.
Now the story's not at this point, oh, these are refugees who are taking sanctuary in churches.
These are Americans.
These are folks who have been in the country for one of the early cases.
I mean, the woman had been in the country for almost 10 years or so, had a U.S. born
child.

(28:30):
And there's a case we made that these are integral members of American communities.
And so that continues on to this day.
And so again, we cover that in the podcast and in the book I'm working on titled a refugee
of resistance.
I'm giving another long history, more thematic and a bit more comparative between 80s and
today.
But that's the work.
That's powerful, man.
You're doing some really, really awesome work and just like tracing the history, seeing

(28:55):
where we are now and why, like how we've come there is so fascinating because it feels like
we have ebbs and flows on just American sentiments towards immigrants.
We do.
And so, but just tracing it back and forth, I think it's just so pivotal.
That's really good.
Yeah, and I don't want to minimize again the intensity of sort of the anti-immigrant policy,

(29:16):
the different executive orders that have been signed.
Now I don't want to minimize that, but I'm saying is something of an organization, organizing
know-how from very sanctuary organizers, immigrant faith communities.
Again, they've been through something like this before.
So yeah, right upon a similar experience.
That's great.
Well, as we kind of draw this conversation to a close, right, we try at the end of all

(29:37):
of these conversations, all these episodes to give a practical application, to give the
listener something to take away that they can do, right?
And so in a very practical sense, like what can the US church, US Christians, church,
do today to help migrant communities across the country?

(29:57):
I'm going to take my answer from the sanctuary movement.
Those folks knew well how to organize and what to do.
And a lot of them drew inspiration actually from liberation theology, which the idea,
my co-host from the sanctuary podcast said he has a great summary phrase of educate and
empower.

(30:18):
So another way to think about like basically educate and then take action.
And so number one, I think is to become educated about these matters.
So much at this point, misinformation.
And it's one of the things I actually do track quite a bit is all the misinformation that
circulates is developing the critical thinking skills to realize what is probably misinformation,
what is fleeting, what is likely to not even be an issue in the matter of next week because

(30:41):
it's no longer a story because it was proven false.
It just did a lot of, it feels like there's too much information to consume.
I think one trying to educate yourself with a little more background about immigration.
So hey, yeah, you can listen to the sanctuary podcast.
I think you give you a good sense, you know, different ideas.
But also, I mean, I do draw from the work of anthropologist Leo Chavez, who has this

(31:03):
really excellent book called Covering Immigration.
And folks, anyway, listening, he's been at work decades ago.
And he's covering images on magazines like Time Magazine, USA Today newspapers, and showing
all the ways in which media personalities, but updated for today, influencers, you know,

(31:23):
social media personalities, they'll show images of like the border in absolute crisis and
chaos to magnify the idea that there is some kind of severe problem, and they'll kind of
message out over and over.
And also images of like a line of people approaching the border and actually approaching
the camera.
So you feel like, oh, this migrant invasion.

(31:45):
So right, Trump took credit for inventing the phrase Biden migrant crime.
It's so bad.
Look, this is a long line.
Leo Chavez calls it the infinity line.
Like the line of people goes beyond even sort of the frame of the photograph.
I think Stephen had mentioned the 14th Amendment.
That relies on the old trope, right, that folks are afraid of the fertile Latina woman

(32:07):
who's going to come here and have a bunch of anchor babies as the story goes.
So I think educating oneself and learning how to navigate through the morass of misinformation
is important.
And as far as becoming involved in these sorts of matters, I think this is where it's important
to pull away from some of the national news and try to look into local news.

(32:28):
You know, someone wanted to be, let's just say, for example, involved in sanctuary, those
sorts of efforts.
There are several chapters and more so coming now throughout the country, but also one can
turn, you know, one belongs to a denomination.
Let's say you're, you know, someone's in the United Methodist Church.
The United Methodist Church has done a great job of putting together the kind of programming
for immigration, same for the evangelical Lutheran Church of America, where it's been

(32:52):
a bit harder, I'll be honest, in some of the Pentecostal contexts, where you don't have
robust programming for immigration.
And I think that's one thing where we could push leaders a bit more to engage or rightly
in them.
That's really good.
Yeah.
No, I know our four square church has a heart for that, but I think you're 100% right.
We could do a lot more, especially as like, you know, the issues are compounding heavy

(33:17):
right now and people are really, really in need right now.
I think, I mean, and to give one very, very practical thing to do is to provide for folks
who might need it, good information on know your rights.
Like we're talking about basic legal stuff, right?
To know your rights.
You'd be surprised the number of folks I talked to who don't know some of the basics, right?
So there's like little know your rights, you know, know your constitutional rights cards

(33:40):
that are handed out that you can print out.
And again, this is not like a subversion of law.
I think any rule of law or let's say, you know, constitution caring person shouldn't
know these sorts of basic things.
And it's not illegal to do any of that.
And so I think, you know, finding again, the information online that is provided by an actual

(34:00):
immigration clinic, there's tons of these that circulate around, but sharing that kind
of information can be helpful for those who do risk, you know, falling credit to mass
deportation.
Yeah, you know, education action.
That's what you said.
And, you know, we have, we have another episode in this season that talks about the kitchen
modification of truth, how like how truth is a kitchen fire, it's reduced to a unrecognized

(34:25):
bait made into a strawman, essentially, and then used to kind of like push people to some
kind of extremes or whatever.
Education subverts that education lets you know the context behind things, you know,
what's the what's the history, what is actually going on?
What are people's biased agendas as they are trying to make you believe certain things
about certain things?

(34:46):
So yeah, education and then action.
I think that's actually really important distinction, not action and then education, but education
and then action, you know, yeah.
Thank God that we have historians like you, Lloyd Barba got the receipts.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but hey, you're doing some important work for the kingdom and helping out some
of the most some of the people in the world that need it the most.

(35:08):
And we just got to keep praying for this.
And thanks, brother.
I appreciate you being on.
Thank you all for having me.
It was a pleasure.
Oh, that was good.
That was good.
Lloyd's the man.
I fear I love when people who are so smart are like really interesting to listen to and
kind of engaging and like, you're like, oh, fun and humble and humble and also like funny

(35:28):
and good because you're like, wow, that's it's crazy that you're so wise and wrote a
book and won an award and like that's crazy.
But I think what Lloyd said is so important, right, especially he comes from a perspective
that I feel like we don't often hear.
You're not often hearing about Mexican farm workers.
That's not a group of people that I feel like is in the narrative very often.
So I think it's really humbling and inspiring to hear from the history of people that don't

(35:54):
haven't often made it into our history stuff that we've been taught here in the US and
also really inspiring to hear how much churches really were involved in and still are and
still should be in a lot of ways surrounding these conversations about the border and immigration
and encouraging in a lot of ways.
So I mean, like this is very, very tough issue, but just seeing God's good work is good.

(36:17):
And he, along with Bre, just gave really, really good practical advice how to get involved.
And so that's awesome.
So hope you guys enjoyed it.
These are like two of the more difficult conversations that we had, but like, hey, if we're not talking
about it, then we're just ignoring this major issue happening in our world that everybody's
talking about.
And then I mean, somebody else is putting their two cents in and we're not speaking about

(36:39):
Jesus and what we think is what we think is on his heart.
Yep.
We feel definitely a responsibility to talk about these things.
This is brought to you by School of Theology and Ministry, but also just a little sidebar.
We've been putting in our show notes, but we do want to say like our guests and stuff
like that.
We vet them, we love them, we think they're awesome.
But you know, not everybody's going to hold all the same ideas as some of our sponsors,

(37:00):
place of employment sponsors.
This one we do our recording here, but you know, a lot of different people go to school
here, a lot of different people, you know, working to come from different stripes and
different ideas and stuff like that.
So this is more than anything else, it's a conversation that we're trying to have.
So anyways, hope you enjoyed it.
We'll see you guys next time.
See ya.