‘Remember the Slave Ships?’ War Against the Poor

By Sarah Monroe

In popular culture, undocumented immigrants from Latin America are sometimes portrayed as people who are trying to get their share of the “American Dream,” people who are just too impatient to wait in line and take the legal route.

In Altar, the starting place for migrants wishing to cross from Mexico to the United States, I met Padre Prisciliano. He looked more cowboy than priest and says that he stays in his parish to serve the migrant Christ.

He described the experiences of immigrants as comparable to that of slavery. He pointed out that people are driven to migrate by U.S. economic policies such as NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), a policy that has devastated small Mexican farmers. Under NAFTA, for example, the U.S. can dump cheap corn on the Mexican market, undercutting subsistence farmers. Thousands of farmers have left the land they have farmed for centuries to move north to survive. If they make their way to the United States, they are used as cheap labor in the agricultural and service industries, growing much of our food and cleaning our hotels.

 

As we visited a flop house where migrants sleep sometimes 50 to a tiny room while waiting to cross, Padre Prisciliano noted; “Remember the slave ships? We have the same conditions here.”

While in Mexico, I talked with people getting ready to cross. I met a young man from Chiapas who said he could not survive on his father’s farm. I met another man at the dining table of a migrant shelter; he was obviously tired and hungry and said: “We come for work. Many die in the desert. But families need food on the table and clothes on their backs.” His tired eyes spoke of the pain and danger of crossing.

People are fleeing extreme poverty and are risking their lives to do so. Last year, 253 remains were found in the desert, a gruesome reminder that Latin America’s poor are ready to risk everything to feed their children.

The U.S. government has increased its Border Patrol presence, prosecuted millions of border crossers, built walls to drive people to cross the most dangerous parts of the desert, and turned a blind eye to federal abuse of detainees, and still people come. Even a government agent I spoke to referred to immigrants as economic refugees.

No way

They don’t go the legal route because there is no legal way for the poor to obtain a visa, unless they have an immediate family member that is a legal resident, and even that is a long shot. Immigration laws are purposefully classist. To obtain a visa to enter the U.S., a person has to prove financial stability. For families who have barely enough to feed their kids and who have never opened a bank account in their life, this is not possible.

Immigrant labor is needed by the service sector and by agribusiness. And what better labor force than one that is undocumented and has no legal rights? The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group of Florida farmworkers, has documented cases of abuse and slavery by landowners who make a profit off immigrant labor. The war against the poor does not end at the border; it continues in U.S. fields, factories, hotels, and restaurants and the creation of a permanent underclass.  

Seeing hundreds of poor refugees lining up for food at a migrant shelter, clutching their few belongings, and desperate enough to cross a desert in order to survive was heart wrenching. At the border, I found a war against the poor—policies that systematically seek to exclude the poor from immigrating and to reduce those who do migrate to economic servitude. The people I met were not only immigrants, they were economic refugees, fleeing a new economic reality supported and implemented by U.S. economic policy.

What does this mean for people of faith who claim to follow a wandering carpenter, the one Padre Prisciliano calls “the migrant Christ”? Can theologians once again talk about the “preferential option for the poor” in this context?

*  Sarah Monroe, a student at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts recently spent three weeks on the U.S.-Mexico border with an organization called Borderlinks. After years of immigrant rights activism, she says she wanted to see what was happening at “ground zero.”

Churches that commune

By Brett Donham

Winston Churchill once said, “Initially we shape our buildings and then, thereafter, they shape us.” This is never truer than with our places of worship. By and large, these buildings, as beautiful as they can be, frustrate the purpose for which they were built, or the purpose for which they should have been built. They can stifle the formation of fully engaged Christians.

Today, in many places, church buildings are being built and existing ones remodeled to serve a new model of “church” (the people gathered), that harks back to the early days of Christianity. In these places people gather in community to offer praise and thanksgiving, to reflect on scripture, to share stories about Jesus Christ and his impact on their lives, to share a commemorative meal, and through this to come into communion with Christ, and with one another. These are communal activities, with many players, several centers of action and movement, and require the ability to see one another and feel as a gathered body.

The traditional forms of church buildings, with everyone facing in the same direction and with the “expert”; the intermediary or interpreter, on a raised stage addressing an audience is the antithesis of gathering in community. The ministry of all the baptized, the gift of the Holy Spirit that says we all have something to contribute, has no acknowledged place in this style of church building. Church as a spectator activity doesn’t engage people in the ongoing work of formation. Only buildings that encourage a sense of community and participation can create the apostles necessary to invigorate the Church.

One such church building is St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline, Massachusetts. Originally designed by Richard Upjohn at the high point of the Oxford Movement, that sees the Holy as dark, mysterious and unapproachable; the building was reconstructed after a disastrous fire that left only the four walls and the tower standing. [See the 1849 plan].
1849 Plan
After two years of mourning, reflection, planning and discernment, the building was reconstructed in a centralized form. The former chancel was closed off to make a chapel. The altar which had been set against the east wall was moved a third of the way into the space. Dormers were added to the roof to flood the altar area with natural light, and the seating was wrapped around the altar on three sides with the choir seated on the fourth. [See the new plan].

New Plan

All the congregants are in close relationship to the altar area and members easily come forward to read scripture, assist with Communion and healing prayer, and offer announcements of mission opportunities and parish activities. Intercessory prayer is offered from the seated congregation, but because of the close seating arrangement, all can hear them. The altar, which is movable, sits on a platform around which the congregation gathers for Communion. As worshippers leave the circle to return to their chairs, others take their place. The priest and chalice bearer move around the platform, serving the bread and the wine, until all have received.


My last eight years as a trustee of Episcopal Divinity School, interacting with students and faculty, participating in worship and the classroom, have taught me the centrality of community in forming apostles and faithful people. I believe we need to rediscover our first century roots. Our theology demands it; the future of the Church demands it; creating the Kingdom here on earth demands it. Our designs of spaces for worship need to support it.


*Brett Donham is an architect whose practice includes churches. He is a trustee of Episcopal Divinity School.
(The photo shows St. Paul's Church Brookline, MA)