A practical resource for congregations discerning how to respond to the immigration crisis: the theological framework, the structural argument, six forms of faithful action, and how to make a congregational decision together.
This guide is a companion to the Faith & Resistance four-week series. It is designed for use by sessions, committees, and congregational discernment groups who want to move from the framework developed in that series to specific, concrete action. It can be used in a single session meeting or worked through over several weeks.
The guide assumes familiarity with the basic argument of the series. If you have not encountered that material, the presentation for Week 4 (available at fpcclasses.com/faithandresistance/week4) covers the essential ground. The five discernment questions, the Kairos three-theology framework, and Walter Wink’s vocabulary for Question 5 are all treated there in full.
Every conversation in this guide should be organized around these five questions in order. They are not a checklist. They are a cycle: the fifth question leads back to the first. The congregation that learns to use them together has a tool that works on any issue, not only this one.
The anchor question, and always the first one asked. The question is concrete, not abstract: Who, specifically, in this community, is being harmed? This question must be answered before any other question is asked. Every faithful case study in the history of the church begins here. Every failure begins with this question being crowded out by order, unity, or convenience.
Authority always exists and always has legitimate functions. The question is whether, in this specific exercise of power, authority is serving its vocation or inverting it. Calvin’s measure: the standard by which a ruler is ordained is also the standard by which a ruler is judged.
Both sides always have a verse. The question is which reading fits the whole arc from Genesis to Revelation, and which reading has historically served the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable. On the question of the stranger: the arc is unambiguous. Exodus 22:21, Leviticus 19:33–34, Deuteronomy 10:18–19, Matthew 25:35.
Faithful discernment is communal. The Covenanters signed together. King built a movement. Las Madres wore their headscarves together in silence. The Kairos theologians signed their names together under threat. Going alone has not been the faithful pattern.
Nonviolent, truth-telling, public where possible, and willing to bear the cost. The form that tells the truth about what is happening without adding to the violence already present. This question leads back to Question 1: whatever form we choose, does it serve the people we named at the start?
The Kairos Document (South Africa, 1985) named three theological postures that appear in every generation of the church when it faces a moment of crisis. Before deciding what to do, it helps to name where you are.
“The theological justification of the status quo.” Uses Romans 13 and similar texts to bless whatever power currently exists, demand obedience, and reduce those being harmed to passivity. The Kairos Document calls this not merely wrong but heretical and blasphemous. A congregation standing here is an active participant in the harm, not a neutral observer.
In a “limited, guarded and cautious way” critical of injustice, but unwilling to take sides, do social analysis, or accept any cost. Calls for reconciliation and dialogue without asking whose reconciliation and on what terms. Prefers a negative peace to the costly work of justice. This is the most common posture of comfortable congregations. The Kairos Document says it is a different religion from faithful discipleship.
Does thorough analysis. Asks Question 1 and refuses to let the answer be crowded out. Reads the whole arc of Scripture rather than the proof text. Takes an unambiguous stand and accepts the cost of it. This is the theology of every faithful case study in the historical record, and of Jesus.
A useful opening question for a congregational discernment meeting: Where is this congregation standing right now? Are we in State Theology, Church Theology, or Prophetic Theology on this question? Name it honestly before deciding what to do.
What follows is a structural account of an arrangement that has been in place across multiple administrations and both political parties, and one this congregation benefits from every day.
Roughly 11 million undocumented people live in the United States. They make up about 5% of the total workforce but represent 45% of farm workers, 14% of construction workers, and significant portions of food service, elder care, hospital, and domestic workers. In 2022 they paid $96.7 billion in taxes, including $25.7 billion into Social Security and $6.4 billion into Medicare, programs they are legally barred from collecting. In 40 of 50 states, undocumented immigrants pay a higher effective state and local tax rate than the top 1% of households.
If this workforce were removed from the economy, economic modeling projects food prices would rise by 10–14.5%, construction costs by 6%, and milk prices by as much as 90%. These figures are a measure of present benefit: the price differential American consumers receive because this workforce has no legal power to demand more. The gap between current prices and what a regularized workforce could command is the size of the ongoing transfer.
The last amnesty was 1986. Since then, there has been no path to legal status for the vast majority of undocumented people, regardless of how long they have lived here, worked here, or raised children here. They have no political representation and no vote, and they cannot organize to defend their labor rights without risking deportation. They are barred from the federal benefits their taxes fund. Their legal situation remains permanently subject to whatever enforcement posture the current administration adopts.
And when it is politically convenient, they are scapegoated. When the economy struggles or elections need an enemy, people with no political voice and no legal recourse are available to absorb the blame. The arrangement that requires their presence also requires their vulnerability to this use, and that vulnerability was built in from the beginning.
Reagan (1986): The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) granted amnesty to 2.7 million people, the last time Congress tried to resolve the status question. IRCA also introduced employer sanctions for hiring undocumented workers, which were never meaningfully enforced.
Clinton (1996): The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) created expedited removal, mandatory detention, multi-year re-entry bars, and sharply limited judicial review, tools that every subsequent administration has used. Deportations tripled in two years, and total expulsions including voluntary returns reached approximately 12.3 million, the highest of any president. The infrastructure for mass enforcement was built here, by a Democratic administration, and handed intact to every successor.
Bush (2001–2009): After September 11, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was abolished and replaced by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with immigration enforcement reframed as a national security matter. Annual enforcement funding reached $18 billion, more than the FBI, DEA, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals, and ATF combined. The Secure Communities program linked local police arrest records to federal immigration databases, and over 70 local police agencies were deputized for immigration enforcement through 287(g) agreements.
Obama (2009–2017): The administration carried out 2.75 million formal removals, the highest in American history at the time, reaching a peak of 1,123 deportations per day in 2012. More than 70% of those deported through Secure Communities had no serious criminal record, despite the administration’s stated focus on removing criminals. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA, 2012) offered temporary protection to roughly 700,000 people, about 7% of the undocumented population, creating a two-tier system while leaving the broader question unaddressed.
Trump 45 (2017–2021): A zero tolerance policy resulted in the criminal prosecution of every adult crossing without authorization and the systematic separation of thousands of children from their parents. The American Academy of Pediatrics called the harm to separated children “irreparable.” Prosecutorial discretion, the longstanding practice of not pursuing deportation against people with deep community ties and no criminal record, was ended, making all 11 million undocumented people removal priorities.
Biden (2021–2025): Biden reversed the most visible cruelties on day one, ending family separation, halting wall construction, and restoring DACA. Record border encounters in subsequent years led to the reimposition of Title 42 expulsions (a public health authority used to rapidly expel migrants without asylum review) and a quiet resumption of some wall construction. A bipartisan border bill in 2024, which would have imposed asylum restrictions more stringent than anything since 1996, was killed by Senate Republicans at Trump 45’s urging. Biden then imposed similar restrictions by executive order.
Trump 47 (2025–): The administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to bypass immigration courts entirely, deporting people to third countries without individual hearings. The Laken Riley Act, passed in early 2025, allows detention on arrest alone, with no charge or conviction required. ICE conducted arrests inside churches, courthouses, and schools, and the agency’s budget reached $85 billion through the One Big Beautiful Bill, more than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. Every previous administration maintained due process as a nominal floor of the enforcement system.
Who is suffering? People whose labor we depend on. People Scripture has commanded us to love as native-born for three thousand years. People whose legal precarity we have tolerated because it serves our economic interests.
The question includes our relationship to the arrangement, and what we have been willing to live inside without naming it. This congregation is a beneficiary of the arrangement. That is the starting point for discernment.
What follows is a menu, not a checklist. The congregation’s task is to discern together which of these forms it will actually take up, not which ones it agrees with in principle, but which ones it will do before the next Sunday. Each form is grounded in the biblical arc and a historical precedent, and each includes specific local organizations and contacts. The commitment level varies considerably across the six. A congregation that takes up one form seriously and follows through is doing more than one that endorses all six and does nothing.
The biblical root: Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah did not lobby in private. They named in public, at cost, without softening. “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). The prophetic voice speaks to power on behalf of the vulnerable.
The historical anchor: King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail was written in the margins of a newspaper to comfortable clergy who called his timing wrong. It named the white moderate who “prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” The written word as the form of faithful witness.
The biblical root: The tithe in Deuteronomy 14 explicitly funds the Levite, the widow, the orphan, and “the stranger living among you” (14:29). The Jubilee in Leviticus 25 cancels debt and liberates workers on a fixed cycle regardless of economic convenience. The economy of the covenant community is structurally oriented toward the vulnerable. What a congregation does with its resources is a theological act.
The historical anchor: Southside Presbyterian’s basements were the material expression of John Fife’s declaration. The 500 congregations that joined the Sanctuary Movement deployed buildings, budgets, and networks. Theological witness without material commitment is speech without a body.
The biblical root: “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles” (Matthew 5:41). The second mile is freely chosen, public, and reframes the power dynamic. The act exposes what the first mile was about. Chosen presence, public and costly, is a theological argument.
The historical anchor: Fourteen women on a Thursday afternoon in Buenos Aires. The junta could not acknowledge the march without acknowledging the disappearances. The silent circular walk forced the truth into public space. Presence was the argument, and they did not need permission to make it.
The biblical root: Boaz does not solve Ruth’s problem from a distance. He notices her in his field, speaks to her directly, and leaves grain deliberately for her to find. The model is presence alongside, not charity from above. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35) is not metaphor. It is a description of someone being in your house.
The historical anchor: Jim Corbett drove through the Arizona desert to people in INS detention. Sanctuary congregations housed families, drove people to hearings, and sat in waiting rooms. Physical accompaniment through a system designed to isolate and exhaust.
The biblical root: The Mosaic law designated six cities of refuge where a person could flee violence and receive protection pending a fair hearing (Numbers 35, Joshua 20). No one should face irreversible harm before their case is heard. This is the oldest legal sanctuary concept in the Western tradition, and it comes from Scripture.
The historical anchor: On March 24, 1982, the second anniversary of Archbishop Oscar Romero’s assassination, John Fife declared Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson a public sanctuary for Central American refugees. He sent the declaration in advance to the INS, the U.S. attorney, and the media, making it a public theological act rather than a covert one. He was convicted under federal law and sentenced to five years probation, and more than 500 congregations followed. As of 2025, Southside Presbyterian continues the practice it began that day.
What happened in 2017 and 2025: When Trump took office in January 2017, the number of congregations declaring sanctuary doubled within months, from roughly 400 to over 1,000. Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Unitarian, Jewish, and Quaker. St. Andrew’s Presbyterian in Austin, Texas sheltered a Guatemalan mother and her son for years. Churches posted signs: “ICE may not enter without a judicial warrant.” In January 2025, Trump rescinded the longstanding policy protecting churches as sensitive locations where ICE would not act. Five Quaker societies immediately sued the federal government under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The Episcopal Diocese of New York declared itself a sanctuary diocese. Lake View Presbyterian in Chicago converted a Sunday school classroom into a studio apartment for immigrant families.
The biblical root: “Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14). Esther has access to the king that Mordecai does not. The civic and political access this congregation has (citizenship, English fluency, economic stability, relationships with elected officials) is a kairos.
The historical anchor: Calvin’s breakthrough in Institutes IV.20: elected officials and representative bodies hold offices with God-given vocation to protect the people. When higher authority inverts that vocation, they have an obligation, not merely permission, to resist. In a democracy, citizens participate in that function. This is the lesser magistrate principle applied to civic life.
Walter Wink, The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium (Doubleday, 1998). The accessible summary of his trilogy on nonviolent resistance. Essential on Matthew 5 and what aligns with Christ in practice.
The Kairos Document (1985). Freely available at sahistory.org.za and worth reading in full. The three-theology framework in the voice of people who lived under apartheid while writing it.
Renny Golden & Michael McConnell, Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad (Orbis Books, 1986). The primary account of the 1980s Sanctuary Movement, written by two participants.
Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise (Zondervan, 2019). A thorough account of the American church’s record of comfort and complicity on race across several centuries.
John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Eerdmans, 1972; 2nd ed. 1994). The most rigorous theological case that Jesus’ political practice is normative for the church.
Diana Butler Bass, A People’s History of Christianity (HarperOne, 2009). The dissenting and resistance movements within Christian history that institutional history tends to minimize.
Faithful resistance is the shape of Christian love in a world where the strong still dominate the weak.
History does not remove the difficulty, but it removes the excuse of surprise. The pressures are not new, the pattern is legible, and the framework has been tested. The first question still applies.