"Faith & Sanctuary"
Brian Burch
I was pleased to be asked to speak for a bit to provide some personal
reflections, historical and biblical, on the providing of sanctuary. My
remarks are inherently
from a Christian perspective, but there are similar views expressed by people
from other faith perspectives.There is a definitive anarchist streak in the Christian faith, that
ultimately puts
obedience to a personal understanding of divine will as being more
important that obedience to the dictates of the nation state. And there is
also an real streak of arrogance — that we are indeed at times morally
superior than others, a superiority that demands that we trust our own
judgement rather than popular will. While this can be expressed is ways
that have lead to oppressive and violent movements, at its best it has
inspired movements of liberation and radical compassion and encouraged
individuals to take extreme personal risks on behalf on strangers and
outcasts, defying convention, laws and threats of violence, imprisonment or
death to do so. At this time when our government jails people without
charges, sends people to other countries to face poverty, imprisonment or
death, works hand in hand with those that believe you can call someone a
danger because of whom they pray with, this positive stream of resistance
can be found, needing nurturing and encouragement but providing, for a few
people, an opportunity for hope in a time of growing hopelessness. We, as a
people of faith, are expected to obey the overarching demands of the law of
love and resist being an advocate of the human law of violence.
(The above was inspired by Leo Tolstoy, "The Law of Love and the Law of
Violence").
A few brief reflections from Christian scripture:
Deuteronomy 19: 2–3
"you shall set apart three cities for you in the land which the Lord your
God gives you to possess. You shall prepare the roads, and divide into
three parts the area of the land which the Lord your God gives you as a
possession, so that any manslayer can flee to them."
The roots of our understanding of the importance of sanctuary can
be found in this passage. People accused of violence had to have a place
to flee to in order for them to be able to challenge they accusation they
were faced with. This wasn't a suggestion on how to live in relationship
with the divine; rather it is a challenge to humanity to recognise that we
need to have places where those facing injustice could be safe.
Isaiah 58: 6-7a
"Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to
undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and break every
yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless
poor into your house"
Expressions of worship, in this passage, include active compassion for
those in need
— freeing the oppressed and providing a place to live for those without a
home. How
one free the oppressed if there is no place for them to live? How can one
offer a home
to one without a homeland without opening up one's doors?
Matthew 25: 41–46
"Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed,
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was
hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I
was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me,
sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer,
'Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or
sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?' Then he will answer them,
'Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you
did it not to me.'"
Ultimately, we will be judged by the way that we directly and effectively
meet the needs of those in need — including welcoming the stranger, the
sojourner, who comes into our midst. We are not expected to have perfected
mediation techniques, become skilled in theological debate or live a life
of retreat and prayer. Rather, we are expected to respond to the physical,
human needs of those around us.
It is from these, and other, passages that the idea of sanctuary and the
call for real hospitality, of being open to providing a haven from refuges,
arise. And, as individuals and as people of faith, our living out such
basic and inherently conservative values is something that we can be help
accountable for.
B. Some 20th century expressions of sanctuary
I have decided not to devote a great deal of time looking at pre-modern
examples of communal and church based expressions of sanctuary — it is a
fascinating tradition but feels far from our lives. One example that must
be stressed of sanctuary in pre-modern times was the welcoming of the Jews
expelled by Christian Spain by the Islamic world, and specifically the
Ottoman Empire. Thousands were welcomed into a foreign land all at once, a
sign of real compassion all too rarely emulated in modern times.
I do want to touch upon offering of sanctuary both under extremely
oppressive situations and under stressful and uncertain situations in the
modern, Western world. My comments will necessarily be brief, but in the
current time of denying sanctuary and dignity to many people from many
lands, I do feel that looking at the recent past can be both encouraging
and a call to action. Examples of
offering sanctuary I'll touch on are:
(A) under Nazism, Christians offering sanctuary for the Jews
(B) in the 1960s and early 70s, Canadians welcoming U.S. draft resisters
(Nancy Pocock, et. al.)
(C) U.S. Sanctuary Movement
It is surprising to hear advanced as serious arguments against
providing sanctuary and support to those who come to this land the dangers
of losing charitable status, the irresponsibility of breaking the law, even
statements that perhaps in these periods of terrorist activity we must not
be so concerned with justice. I contrast this with the many who lived on
Nazi occupation who risked imprisonment, torture and death to provide
sanctuary to declared enemies of the state. As Martin Gilbert wrote: "Those
who had hidden Jewish children, saving them from deportation and death,
included Roman Catholics...Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians,
Protestants, Baptists and Lutherans, as well as Muslims in Bosnia and
Albania." (page xvi) One of the more phenomenal examples of offering
sanctuary to Jews under the Nazi's was the French village of Le Chambon.
This was a entire community, lead by both protestant and Catholic leaders,
that combined to provide effective sanctuary to large numbers of Jewish
people. They did so over the objections of their church hierarchies and
civil authorities. Some of those offering sanctuary or advocating
resistance to the Nazis were tortured and executed. Individual Jews and
some Jewish families were successfully rounded up and many were killed.
However, from active non-co-operation with efforts to vilify Jewish to
specific efforts to interfere with initiatives that fed into the Holocaust
machine, this small village provided a haven and remains an example of
successful pacifist actions against a violence and oppression structure.
Within Germany itself, where the official Catholic and Protestant church
leaders actively supported the Nazi regime, offering of sanctuary was seen
as the only real way of living out a faithful life by thousands of
individuals who took substantive risks to provide shelter and some degree
of safety. As one example, again from Gilbert, "Only a few Pomeranian Jews
were not deported. They owed their survival, write the historian of
Pomeranian Jewry, Stephen Nicholls, 'either to the loyalty of their
Christian partner or to the bravery to those who were prepared to hide
single Jews. For example, Joachim Pfannschmidt, vicar of Gross Kiesow near
Griefswald and an active member of the German Confession church, hid
Gertrud Birnbaum in his vicarage from 1939-1944. This pharmacist from
Berlin survived the war. (pg. 285).
(Comments on sanctuary under the Nazis are based on: Irving Abella and
Harold Troper, None is Too Many. Martin Gilbert, The Righteous: The Unsung
Heroes of the Holocaust. Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood be Shed. Anny
Latour, The Jewish Resistance in France (especially the sections 'The
Huguenot Stronghold'
and 'Underground Networks for Child Rescue'). Milton Meltzer, Rescue.)
In more recent times, in the background of my early years of activism,
thousands of Canadians opened up homes, church spaces and drop-in centres
to provide sanctuary to up to 500,000 young Americans who would not support
the U.S. war in Vietnam. To provide an idea of the climate of the time,
immediately following the declaration of the War Measures Act in October
1971 (from Hagan, pg. 141) "The mayors of Canada's largest cities used the
law in a backlash against American war resisters. Mayor William Dennison of
Toronto claimed that "a few hippies and deserters are Toronto's only
problem." Mayor Jean Drapeau of Montreal charged that draft and military
resisters were part of a "revolutionary conspiracy. Mayor Tom Campbell of
Vancouver declared, "I don't like draft dodgers and I'll do anything within
the law that allows me to get rid of them." All three expressed a
willingness to use the War Measurers Act against war resisters. Mayor
Campbell was the most explicit, telling the Toronto Star, "I believe the
law should be used against any revolutionary whether he's a U.S. draft
dodger or a hippie."
For years, most of the difficulties with cultural and
emotional — leaving a country at war to find haven in a near-by country is
difficult. But illegal extradition, arbitrary decisions by immigration
officers and changes in rules around granting landed immigrant status that
weren't debated in the legislature created additional burdens. Those unable
to get legal status needed safe housing, financial support and aid in
finding employment and other forms of pragmatic assistance. Churches, such
as the Church of the Holy Trinity, opened up their doors for draft
resisters to sleep. Individuals, such as Nancy Pocock of the Society of
Friends (Quakers) provided emotional support, referrals and hot soup. They
operated in a space between laws —
the government wasn't actively sending U.S. citizens back to face (in many
cases) charges and imprisonment for desertion or refusing to co-operative
with the draft. But there was little in the way of support for those that
made it to Canada with no resources on their own. In 1965 those providing
sanctuary to the first wave of resisters did not likely think it would be a
decade before their work was over.
This openness to U.S. anti-war refugees is, to me, a highlight of
the faith response to those coming to Canada. Jewish activists from Holy
Blossom joined with those from Toronto Monthly Meeting to find common
ground in welcoming those who would not participate in war. Many active
from that time, from Ann Pohl to Frank Showler to Charles Roach, both in
and outside of the faith communities, maintain their commitment to ensuring
that there be a haven here for
those needing sanctuary.
There is some danger that our desire to support resisters to war
from the
U.S. and to provide a haven for refugees from other lands includes an emotional
anti-Americanism. One of the more sustained peace time sanctuary movements
in modern time was the U.S. movement, primarily based in Arizona, Texas and
California, to provide sanctuary to people fleeing U.S. backed brutal
regimes in
Latin America in a movement that began informally in the late 1970s but
formally
was active from 1982 to 1987.
During this time, from Chile north the U.S. government supplied
arms and
training to death squads, provided aid to governments that practised
torture and
extra judicial executions on a routine basis and worked hard to undermine any
progressive initiative to improve the lives of people. It was a period in
the U.S.
when the violence of the U.S. government against internal dissent was very
vivid.
People remembered attacks on the Black Panther Party and the American Indian
movements and read about efforts to claim that groups such as The American
Friends Service Committee were dangerous organisations. Counterpol, a U.S.
government effort to discredit the left, indeed all effective progressive
movements,
was in full swing.
And into this atmosphere individuals in south west United States,
almost all from faith communities, stepped forward to state that in their
congregations and in their homes, people made refugees as a result of the
policies of their government
would find sanctuary. They organised an underground railway for those at
high
risk, some of whom ended up in Canada.
There were penalties paid, more personal than severe. Some clergy were
removed from their parishes. In once case, involving 8 activists in
Arizona, defendants were gives suspended sentences and three to five years'
probation.
Very few were convicted of actions and then jailed specifically due to
actions directly related to providing sanctuary; those jailed during this
period were jailed primarily
as a result of public protest such as occupying offices and other acts of
non-violent resistance. I think that there experience is what the Canadian
sanctuary movement would experience in these current times if it started to
be effective. The priest at
Church of the Holy Trinity, if she ever opened the church doors to provide
sanctuary
for U.S. anti-war or Algerian refugees could face sanctions from diocese or
might lose
her clearance to visit prisons or could even face a fine or probation. If
Mathew Behrens and myself went into an Immigration Tribunal office and
poured blood on
their files, we'd face jail.
(This section was influenced primarily by Ann Crittenden's
Sanctuary and Renny Goden and Michael McConnell, Sanctuary: The New
Underground Railroad.)
The radical risk taking of those providing sanctuary to the Jews
under Nazi dominated Europe or the demanding welcoming by those providing
sanctuary to anti-Vietnam War Americans, do provide examples today that
some congregations are following — but all too few — and that some agencies
are mimicking — but all too few. People are being sent back to places where
they risk torture and imprisonment, possibility even death, while others
with almost identical backgrounds are granted refugee status. Some housing
providers demand perfect proof of a legal right to reside
in Canada while others seek for loopholes in a complex system.
And perhaps
there is something a little less pleasant in the refusal of some within the
faith communities to take risks. This is, after all, a country that refused
ship loads of Jewish refugees sanctuary when they were trying to escape
Nazi Germany. This is a country that
rounded up citizens of Japanese dissent during the Second World War. And
while Canada did welcome U.S. draft resisters, only a comparative small
number of the Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees ended up here. Is there
perhaps some unspoken message when Canada does not automatically offer
haven to gay men facing imprisonment or women coming her to escape genital
mutilation? What is the message that we provide to the world when Leonard
Peltier was improperly
and rapidly extradited to the U.S. while Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel is
only now being considered for deportation to Germany? Is there a proposal
to the world that Canada is making when individuals within the Islamic
community, Canadian citizens, were not being welcomed back to Canada but
sent to Syria or Afghanistan against their will? It was a minority
of Christians that defied church leaders and the law to provide sanctuary
for the Jews. It was a minority of Canadians of all faith backgrounds and
from many places on the progressive spectrum that actively welcomed
American draft resisters. I do wonder what is in the hearts of the majority
who are silent, the majority who are showing by their actions that those in
need are not welcomed here.
