WASHINGTON (RNS)—A bipartisan group of lawmakers has sent a letter to Trump administration officials calling on them not to reduce the refugee cap to zero, arguing that doing so could threaten the country’s “legacy as a protector of human rights” and call into question a promise to assist persecuted religious minorities abroad.

The senators, including Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Marco Rubio of Florida and Susan Collins of Maine, said such a move would contradict the country’s historic dedication to refugees, whom they describe as “part of a diverse American culture and flourishing economy.”

“At a time when we are facing the ‘highest levels of displacement on record,’ according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, we urge you to increase the refugee resettlement cap and to admit as many refugees as possible within that cap,” the letter reads in part. “America has a responsibility to promote compassion and democracy around the world through assistance to vulnerable and displaced people.”

Policy conflicts with pledge

The letter’s authors pointed out that a policy of eliminating refugee admissions conflicted with the administration’s pledge to aid persecuted religious minorities, whose cause, the senators noted, was championed last month at the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, convened by the U.S. State Department.

“We were especially surprised to hear reports of the elimination or severe decrease in proposed refugee resettlement on the heels of the State Department’s Second Ministerial for International Religious Freedom, where survivors of severe persecution came to the United States to share testimonies of unimaginable human rights atrocities,” the letter reads.

“America has an obvious interest in demonstrating and promoting freedom of religion to the world, including accepting refugees who flee persecution because of their faith. In fact, the administration acknowledges the partnership between refugee admission and protection of inherent human rights in both the 2018 Report on International Religious Freedom and the 2018 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.”

Personal experience with refugees

Faith concerns were at the center of the letter’s argument in other ways. The letter was initially crafted by Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and James Lankford, R-Okla., a bipartisan duo that co-chairs both the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast and the annual National Prayer Breakfast.

In an interview with Religion News Service, Coons explained his own concern for refugees and immigrants by invoking both his life experience and his faith.

“My own home church when I was a kid welcomed a refugee family from Vietnam,” he said. “This particular family had a remarkable and harrowing story … but my home church welcomed them. My mom and some of her closest friends were very active in helping them get an apartment, get clothes, get the kids in school, learn English. They came to worship with us regularly.”

Coons added: “To go from literally destitute refugees from Vietnam to people who are fully American and successful and engaged in one generation is a remarkable thing. But it’s not unusual. It has happened hundreds of thousands of times all over the country.”

The letter also was signed by Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., Tina Smith, D-Minn., Mike Rounds, R-S.D., Thomas R. Carper, D-Del., Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Roy Blunt, R-Mo., Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Ed Markey, D-Mass.

Faith groups critical of reductions

Faith groups have been vocal opponents of the Trump administration’s reductions of the nation’s refugee cap. Shortly after Trump took office, he lowered the number of refugees allowed into the United States from 110,000 to 45,000. The president later reduced the cap to 30,000 people, the lowest figure since the refugee resettlement program started in the 1980s.

The reductions have taken a toll on the nine groups that partner with the federal government to resettle refugees, six of which are faith-based. Most have faced significant office closures and staff reductions under the Trump administration as a result of the changes—including laying off employees who are themselves current or former refugees.

Others have expressed concerns about whether Trump has broken his pledge to assist persecuted religious minorities abroad. President Trump told the Christian Broadcast Network in 2017 that he would make helping persecuted Christians a priority of his administration, but admissions of Christian refugees have only reduced under his presidency.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (RNS)—Connections between Christianity, Confederacy and civil rights—along with the history of slavery—are in plain sight here in Alabama’s capital.

Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church is known for its most famous pastor, Martin Luther King Jr., but one of its early locations was once a slave pen.

St. John’s Episcopal Church, where Confederacy President Jefferson Davis worshipped, is across the street from the building where Rosa Parks was tried after she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man.

Just beyond downtown, Old Ship African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, a congregation that dates to before the end of slavery, sits across the street from the memorial that opened in 2018 to remember more than 4,400 lynching victims.

As the nation marks the 400th anniversary of the forced arrival of Africans in Virginia—and Alabama has its bicentennial—a walk through Montgomery’s streets reveals the legacy of slavery in America.

“It is the cradle of the Confederacy and the birthplace of the modern civil rights movement,” said Kathy Dunn Jackson, volunteer historian of Old Ship AME Zion Church.

Telling the truth about lynching

Religion sometimes played a role in the violence that followed slavery, as seen at the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

Amid the 800 6-foot orangey-brown steel columns memorializing those lynched from 1877 to 1950—often by white Southerners—is an example of a religious ceremony being cited as a reason to kill.

“Arthur St. Clair, a minister, was lynched in Hernando County, Florida, in 1877 for performing the wedding of a black man and white woman,” reads a sign.

The memorial, on a 6-acre site, is described by its creators as “a sacred space for truth-telling and reflection about racial terrorism and its legacy.”

About a mile away, the EJI’s Legacy Museum, which traces history “from enslavement to mass incarceration,” features holograms of black men, women and children, held in pens singing spirituals like “Lord, How Come Me Here?” and speaking of missed loved ones from whom they have just been taken.

Like Dexter Avenue’s early location, the site of the museum was once a slave pen. “You are standing on a site where enslaved people were warehoused,” read words on a wall at its entrance.

Legacy of slavery

Another sign points out that in 1860 Montgomery, there were more places for trading slaves than hotels and churches.

The current site of the Montgomery church where King served was purchased for $270 in
1879, and that spot also has ties to slavery—specifically the heart of the Confederacy in 1861.

“It’s one block from the state Capitol,” said Montgomery historian Richard Bailey. “Jefferson Davis was inaugurated within sights of what became that church.”

At the time of Davis’ inauguration, slaves made up almost half (45 percent) of the state’s population, or 435,080 people, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Steve Murray, director of the Alabama Department of Archives & History, said the Capitol steps and that nearby church continued to be at the vanguard of major events a century after the start of the Civil War.

“At the bottom of those steps is where the Selma to Montgomery march culminated,” he said. “You pack an awful lot of really significant American history into a few square blocks.”

A half a century later, tour director Wanda Howard Battle pointed out the lectern in the red brick church’s basement that was placed on a tractor-trailer flatbed for King’s speech when then-Gov. George Wallace would not allow the civil rights leader to speak on the Capitol steps.

Christian faith inspired civil rights champions

Over the last 200 years, there has been a transformation on the street that changed from Market Street to Dexter Avenue and from slave markets to other kinds of commercial business.

The first pastor of the church that has been on one corner for most of that timespan was born a slave. The middle-class blacks who created the Second Colored Baptist Church changed its name twice, first to the street’s new name and then to honor King. Two blocks west, in an area where slaves were once confined, a fountain flows and signs recognize “outstanding Alabamans,” including King.

Curtis Evans, a historian of American religions at University of Chicago Divinity School, said the city’s changes particularly are striking because slave owners may have originally hoped to use Christianity as a “form of social control” but a century later many black clergy became active in the civil rights movement.

“What happened, ironically, is that many enslaved people adapted Christianity to their own circumstances and used it as a very different form of imagining justice in the United States—compared to, for example, white evangelical Protestants who have such different views about the role of government and political issues,” Evans said.

While historians call the overall change pivotal, Battle, a member of an AME Zion church, prefers to consider it providential.

“I just see it as God moving everybody into place,” she said.

A national coalition of Christians has launched a campaign labeling Christian nationalism as “a distortion of the gospel of Jesus Christ and a threat to American democracy.”

More than 3,000 people of faith signed an online statement, “Christians Against Christian Nationalism,” as of July 30. Baptists who signed the statement identified themselves as relating to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Southern Baptist Convention, Baptist General Convention of Texas, Alliance of Baptists and American Baptist Churches USA.

‘Provides cover for white supremacy’

“Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy,” the statement reads. “Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. We reject this damaging political ideology and invite our Christian brothers and sisters to join us in opposing this threat to our faith and to our nation.”

The statement goes on to affirm the right and responsibility of people of all faiths and no faith to participate in the public square and to declare that government should not prefer one religion over another.

“Conflating religious authority with political authority is idolatrous and often leads to oppression of minority and other marginalized groups as well as the spiritual impoverishment of religion,” the statement reads.

“We must stand up and speak out against Christian nationalism, especially when it inspires acts of violence and intimidation—including vandalism, bomb threats, arson, hate crimes and attacks on houses of worship—against religious communities at home and abroad.

“Whether we worship at a church, mosque, synagogue or temple, America has no second-class faiths. All are equal under the U.S. Constitution. As Christians, we must speak in one voice condemning Christian nationalism as a distortion of the gospel of Jesus and a threat to American democracy.”

Baptist Joint Committee spearheads campaign

Baptists signing or endorsing the statement include Paul Baxley, executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship; Jeffrey Haggray, executive director of American Baptist Home Mission Societies; Marv Knox, field coordinator for Fellowship Southwest; and Mitch Randall, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics.

“The church of Jesus Christ exists by the power that parted the Red Sea and raised Jesus from the dead, and that power and authority is still at work within us and among us even as empires rise and fall. To suggest that the church needs the protection of the state in order to flourish and thrive is idolatrous,” Baxley said.

The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty joined other Christian groups in launching the campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of Christian nationalism.

“Christian nationalism is not new. It has ebbed and flowed over many decades, but we seem to be stuck at high tide now,” Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee, wrote in an article for ethicsdaily.com.

“For Christian nationalists, to be a true American is to be a Christian. Of course, that conclusion is at odds with our constitutional principles. The First Amendment protects religious freedom for everyone, and Article VI states that there will be no religious test for public office.

“Christian nationalism threatens religious freedom for all. It asks the government to show preference for Christianity over other religions or religion over nonreligion.”

Initially, Tyler noted, the Baptist Joint Committee approached the campaign as a proposed interfaith project.

“But we quickly learned that our partners did not have the same level of comfort in calling out Christian nationalism that we—as Christians—do,” she wrote. “That makes sense, though it is unsettling to think that by calling out a Christian nationalist, a Jewish or Muslim person may be placing themselves in harm’s way.”

The Baptist Joint Committee has produced a 10-week podcast on Christian nationalism, beginning July 31 and continuing through Oct. 2. The agency, in partnership with EthicsDaily.com and others, also is posting a series of YouTube videos on the subject.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  The 2nd paragraph was edited to provide updated information after the article originally was posted.  As of 8 a.m. on July 30, the total number of signers was 1,111.  By 4 p.m., the total had topped 3,000.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Soon after he was sworn in as president, David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network asked Donald Trump whether he would make the plight of Christians facing religious persecution abroad a priority of his administration.

“Yes,” Trump said. “They’ve been horribly treated.”

The president spoke about Christians fleeing violence in Syria, concluding: “We are going to help them.”

The U.S. State Department backed up Trump’s statement, recently convening its second ministerial to advance religious freedom, intended to draw attention to the plight of religious minorities all over the world.

But an increasingly vocal band of advocates and experts says the Trump administration’s policies have failed to address many of the challenges faced by Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities abroad—especially those in the Middle East.

Some argue the administration’s efforts to scale back refugee resettlement, deport Chaldean Christians living in the United States and potentially end temporary protected status for Syrians have only made their situation worse.

“I can tell you they feel completely abandoned,” Philippe Nassif, Amnesty International’s advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa and former executive director of the advocacy group In Defense of Christians, told Religion News Service. “They feel ignored, and in some cases, they feel used.”

Number of refugees allowed into U.S. slashed

Many critics point to the administration’s decision to reduce the number of refugees allowed into the United States from 110,000 under President Obama to 45,000 shortly after Trump took office. Trump later reduced the cap to 30,000 people—the lowest since the refugee resettlement program started in the 1980s. Reportedly, White House officials now are considering whether to eliminate refugee resettlement altogether.

The reductions have sparked outrage among the nine nonprofit groups that help the government resettle refugees, six of which are faith-based.

Matthew Soerens, U.S. director of church mobilization for the evangelical Christian organization World Relief, has tracked refugees coming into the United States and found that Christian refugee admissions have fallen as well.

“The numbers don’t lie,” said Soerens, whose group is among those that resettle refugees.

The number of Christian refugees entering the United States dropped from 37,521 in fiscal 2016 to 22,747 projected for the end of fiscal 2019—a 39 percent decrease, according to Soerens’ calculations using data from the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center.

Among countries that show up in the top two tiers of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s list of “Countries of Concern,” the decline is more drastic: 14,551 Christian refugees were resettled in the United States from those nations in fiscal 2016, compared with 5,457 projected for the end of fiscal 2019. That represents a decrease of 62.5 percent.

Only 87 are expected to be resettled this fiscal year from Iraq, one of 11 countries where officials have instituted additional vetting procedures for refugees. That is down from 1,524 Iraqis resettled as refugees in 2016.

There have also been reductions in the number of Syrian Christians: The United States took 68 Christian refugees from the country in 2016; this year, it is projected to resettle 37.

‘A promise broken’

Soerens said he was “saddened but not surprised” by the reduction in Muslim refugees under Trump, who proposed a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the country during his campaign. But Soerens insisted the reduction in Christian refugees simply did not match the president’s own rhetoric on religious freedom.

“President Trump also promised to facilitate the resettlement of Syrian Christian refugees, which is a promise broken,” he said. “And the declines among other persecuted Christians, such as those from Iraq, Iran, Burma and Pakistan, are even more stark.”

The Trump administration has deflected criticism about the refugee admission reductions by pointing to efforts to rebuild the homes of displaced Christians in places such as northern Iraq, where their communities were ravaged by ISIS militants.

Speaking at this month’s second ministerial on religious freedom, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback argued that rebuilding efforts in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains are part of a larger attempt to assist persecuted Christians and religious minorities where they are.

“What we’re trying to do now is push on (with) being able to make places stable and safe for all people of faith,” Brownback told reporters at a news conference at the end of the ministerial. “I recognize some criticize them: ‘Well, wait a minute, what about the refugee numbers?’ I recognize and I hear that statement. But the effort really is to try to make the place safe, which I do believe honestly is a much better long-term solution to the situation.”

Security concerns in Ninevah Plains

The Nineveh Plains project was funded due to an intervention from Vice President Mike Pence and through partnerships with faith-based groups such as the Knights of Columbus.

But reports from the region suggest that while some Christians have moved back to those locations, others are unlikely to do so due to lingering security concerns.

“You get rid of ISIS, and then you have a situation where armed militias—some backed by Iran, others backed by the Iraqi government, others that are Kurdish armed groups—have filled in the void and have not allowed a lot of these communities to return to rebuild,” Nassif said.

“There are some communities where rebuilding has happened, but the majority of them—Christians and Yazidis—are still displaced.”

Stephen Rasche, counsel with the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Irbil and the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee, stressed that hard data about who has returned to the beleaguered region is difficult to come by. Even so, he estimated that fewer than half of the original inhabitants of Christian Nineveh—between 35 percent and 40 percent or 40,000 to 50,000 people— have returned or are attempting to do so.

Rasche said some towns were able to act quickly to keep homes from remaining vacant. Others weren’t so lucky.

“Other towns, more dependent on the much slower moving and more restrictive institutional aid providers, have faced a much slower and more difficult return, and their future as Christian towns remains quite uncertain as militias and power factions have moved into the vacuum,” Rasche said.

Still others, Rasche said, “remain so entrenched with fundamentalist mentalities, even post-ISIS, that they are no longer safely inhabitable for Christians. These Christians are essentially permanently displaced and are seeking to re-establish themselves either elsewhere in Iraq or in the diaspora.”

Nassif said some groups have called for a neutral United Nations presence to help provide stability for the region but said he has yet to see the U.S. government advocate for such a move.

“As the weeks and months go by, the prospects for rehabilitating any of these communities in northern Iraq—it’s grim,” he said.

Iraqi Christians in U.S. fear deportation

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has moved to deport Iraqi Christians already in the United States back to the region. Shortly after Trump introduced the initial travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained several hundred Iraqis in and around Detroit, Michigan. Many are Chaldean Christians, an ancient group of Catholics whose historic homeland extends from Turkey and Georgia through northern Iraq and Jordan.

Efforts to deport the detained immigrants were halted by a legal challenge spearheaded by the ACLU. Miriam Aukerman, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Michigan, explained that out of the roughly 1,400 Iraqi nationals who had final orders of removal, around 800 have criminal records.

But many of the criminal infractions are minor or years old and hundreds have no criminal record whatsoever.

What’s more, ACLU lawyers uncovered documentation indicating that the State Department actively negotiated with Iraq to secure the deportation of Iraqi nationals, including Chaldean Christians.

Aukerman said the administration has been “calling out Iraq (for religious persecution), but at the same time using every tool … to force Iraq to take back people who will be tortured or killed if they are repatriated.”

Officials at the U.S. State Department did not immediately return requests for comment on this story.

Chaldean Christians’ ‘complex’ relationship with administration

U.S.-based Chaldean Christian leaders have made similar claims, saying deporting people back to Iraq would amount to a “death sentence.”

Despite those pleas, the courts sided against the ACLU late last year. Lawyers are evaluating the possibility of escalating it to the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, Aukerman said, some Chaldeans have already been deported to Iraq.

Martin Manna, president of the Chaldean Community Foundation, said the threat of deportations has made his community’s relationship to the Trump administration “complex.”

He stressed that many of those at risk of deportation are winning their individual immigration cases and voiced appreciation for efforts to rebuild in northern Iraq, but he found the continued reduction of refugees and the threat of sending Chaldean Christians back to the region “upsetting.”

“This administration clearly has a focus on aiding and assisting persecuted Christians throughout the Middle East,” he said, noting that he attended last week’s Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. “The flip side of that is, besides the deportations, there’s been no refugee flow to the United States—this is an issue we continuously bring up.”

Manna added that so far more Chaldeans were deported under the Obama administration than Trump, but “that’s likely to change.”

Future of Syrian Christians in U.S. uncertain

As for the president’s concern for those fleeing Syria, religious groups and advocates are concerned about that commitment as well. Thousands of Syrians—including Syrian Christians— currently are granted Temporary Protected Status in the United States, but acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Kenneth Cuccinelli has yet to say whether the government will extend the status when it comes up for renewal in the next few weeks.

“Acting Director Cuccinnelli must re-designate Temporary Protected Status for Syrians of all faiths who want nothing else than to return home to a safe and secure Syria when that option is available,” said Jameson Cunningham, policy and public affairs strategist for the advocacy group Americans for a Free Syria.

The predicament of exiled Syrian religious minorities is especially dire, said Asaad Hanna, a journalist, activist and Syrian Christian based in Turkey, because they belie Syrian President Bashar Assad’s claim that he is their protector. “The regime doesn’t like to see minorities standing against him,” said Hanna.

Soerens noted that Canada has also restricted refugee admissions since 2016, and the European Union struck a deal with Turkey in 2016 to stop hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants from traveling into Western Europe.

Refugees who once looked to Brazil for shelter have been discouraged by the election there of Jair Bolsonaro as president. Bolsonaro has referred to refugees as “the scum of the earth.”

“As the U.S. does less to offer protection to those fleeing persecution, other countries are doing less, too,” Soerens said. “Persecuted people—including those persecuted for their faith—have fewer places to turn for refuge.”

Oval Office meeting with Yazidi activist

Trump was directly confronted with the ongoing suffering of religious minorities last week in the Oval Office, when he met Yazidi activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad as part of a delegation of survivors of religious persecution. Murad, who was kidnapped from her home in northern Iraq and held by ISIS for three months, pressed Trump to help her homeland become safe again.

“Our home is destroyed,” said Murad, who said she now lives in Germany with as many as 95,000 other Yazidis who fled there and to other parts of Europe in recent years. “Now there is no ISIS, but we cannot go back because there is Kurdish government and Iraqi government—they are fighting each other (over) who will control my area.”

She named French President Emmanuel Macron as a leader who helped pressure the Iraqi government to address the security issue. As she stressed that she and others cannot find a safe place to live, she referenced the deaths of her mother and brothers.

“Where are they now?” Trump interrupted, as Brownback and Paula White—an evangelical pastor and one of the president’s closest spiritual advisers—stood nearby.

“They killed them,” Murad replied. “They’re in the mass graves of Sinjar. … Please do something.”

Adelle Banks of RNS contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Faith-based groups that help the U.S. government resettle refugees fear the future of their work is in jeopardy, after learning that the Trump administration is considering shutting down refugee resettlement for the coming fiscal year.

That move, advocates say, would dismantle an already weakened—and largely religious—refugee resettlement infrastructure dedicated to helping immigrants.

On July 18, Politico reported that Trump administration officials are mulling the option of setting the annual ceiling for refugee admissions to zero.

The shift could devastate the refugee resettlement program, which is largely operated by religious groups. Of the nine non-profit organizations that currently partner with the federal government to resettle refugees, six are faith-based.

Advocates urgeTrump to consider consequences

Jen Smyers, director of policy and advocacy for Church World Service, criticized that possible move. She and other experts argued that ending refugee resettlement would not only leave thousands of refugees stranded but also demolish a refugee resettlement program—one that includes Church World Service—designed to help people facing persecution.

“I think we would appeal to the president, the vice president and really everyone in the administration who professes to be a person of faith to look at the consequences that this would have and to really go back to basics in terms of the commandment to welcome the stranger,” she said.

Smyers was echoed by Anne Richard, the former assistant secretary of state for the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

“I think it’s pretty clear that the Trump administration is trying to drive the U.S. refugee resettlement program into the ground,” Richard said. “The Trump administration is trying to ruin a successful public-private partnership.”

Politico reported that officials also are considering reducing the refugee cap to 3,000 or 10,000 instead of zero. Either would be a drastic reduction.

Resettlement already drastically cut

During his first year in office, Trump lowered the refugee cap from 110,000 under Obama to 45,000. He later reduced the cap to 30,000 people—the lowest in the history of the refugee resettlement program, which started in the 1980s.

Cutbacks already have decimated the largely faith-based resettlement program, forcing office closures and significant layoffs of staff at various organizations. Advocates say the changes are hurtful not only to refugee communities seeking entry into the United States, but also ones who already make the United States their home, as refugee resettlement programs often hire former refugees to help with the work.

‘Failure of moral leadership’

Jenny Yang, senior vice president of advocacy and policy at the evangelical Christian organization World Relief, said even considering reducing the number of refugees to zero amounts to a “complete failure of moral leadership” on the part of the State Department. She said it was out of step with the department’s recent Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, which convened this week.

The ministerial sought to draw attention to the plight of persecuted religious minorities worldwide, some of whom seek refugee status in the United Sates.

“It undercuts their international religious freedom agenda,” she told Religion News Service. “They’ve been meeting this entire week … promoting religious freedom abroad, yet they’re shutting the door on even (allowing) persecuted Christians and other religious minorities to come into the United States.”

She added: “I think we need to practice at home what we’re preaching abroad and not shut the door on those who are fleeing religious persecution.”

Lawmakers consider remedies

Yang and other advocates are urging Congress to pass legislation known as the GRACE Act, which would set the floor for refugees at 95,000. The Senate version of the bill currently is cosponsored entirely by lawmakers who caucus with Democrats. But after news of the potential refugee reduction broke, Republicans are expressing support for refugees as well.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., tweeted about the issue: “The US has a strong history of welcoming refugees, who go through the proper channels of admittance into the US, as they flee persecution. Nat’l security & humanitarian assistance are not conflicting goals. We should continue to welcome those most in need who do it the right way.” (https://twitter.com/SenatorLankford/status/1152228664685277184)

Church World Service also organized a rally outside the White House to oppose what activists described as a “potential refugee ban.”

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on this story.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Pastor Andrew Brunson, who was detained in Turkey for two years on terrorism and spying charges before being released in October, said he is enjoying the simple things in life.

“For me to be back with my wife and my children, this is what I wanted,” said the Evangelical Presbyterian minister in an interview July 17 as he attended a three-day State Department summit on religious freedom.

Brunson, whose case was a focus of last summer’s inaugural Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, is something of a celebrity at the State Department’s second summit, which organizers have said is the largest such gathering on religious freedom in history.

Brunson said his experience made him value his own religious liberty more deeply.

“I was isolated. I was the only Christian there, so to be back with other Christians is so important,” he said.

The former pastor of a small church in the coastal city of Izmir was scheduled to speak briefly to foreign dignitaries at a luncheon on the last day of the summit.

“It’s wonderful that I can be here in person and I’m free,” he said. “And I’m very grateful for that.”

Last year, his daughter was, as he put it, “the face of the family” at the summit. At the 2018 gathering, Vice President Mike Pence threatened Turkey with sanctions if it did not release Brunson.

‘My goal is to tell people about Jesus’

Brunson said he doesn’t know how his arrest, which came as part of a roundup of thousands accused of taking part in an attempted coup in July 2016, could have been avoided.

“I don’t think anything could have been done to prevent the initial arrest,” he said.

They were guests in Turkey, a Muslim-majority nation, so they knew they could be deported, the pastor’s wife, Norine Brunson, noted.

“We recognized that that was always an option,” she said.

Andrew Brunson said he was told he would be deported at first, before authorities instead detained him to “make an example of me to intimidate other missionaries and local believers,” he told Religion News Service.

Eventually, he became a center of what some called hostage diplomacy as Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, made a bid to exchange Brunson for an exiled Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gülen, who lives in Pennsylvania.

Brunson, who said he is relishing walks with his wife this summer while re-acclimating to his native North Carolina, said his love for Muslims and Turkey, where he spent more than two decades, is undiminished. He added that his experience has not deterred him from his life’s work.

“My goal in life is to tell people about Jesus,” he said. “So, that will continue.”

WASHINGTON (BP)—The U.S. State Department’s new Commission on Unalienable Rights underscores the nation’s commitment to religious rights internationally, Tony Perkins said in his new role as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

“We applaud the creation of this commission as another way of ensuring that the protection of these fundamental rights—the most foundational of which is freedom of religion or belief— is a core element of strategic policy discussions,” Perkins said.

The diverse bipartisan commission will advise U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on human rights, Pompeo said in announcing the group in a July 8 press briefing.

“It’s a sad commentary on our times that more than 70 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, gross violations continue throughout the world, sometimes even in the name of human rights,” Pompeo said. “The time is right for an informed review of the role of human rights in American foreign policy.”

Scholars and advocates named to group

Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon, a pro-life advocate and former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, will chair the 12-member group. Pompeo described Glendon as a “world-renowned author, beloved professor, an expert in the field of human rights, comparative law and political theory.”

Other commission members are Stanford professor Russell Berman, Stanford political scientist Peter Berkowitz, Notre Dame law professor Paolo Carozza, Sunni leader Hamza Yusuf Hanson, Harvard sociologist Jacqueline Rivers, Orthodox Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, former USCIRF chair Katrina Lantos Swett, philosopher Christopher Tollefsen and University of California professor David Tse-Chien Pan.

Kiron Skinner, the state department’s director of policy planning, is the committee’s executive secretary, and attorney Cartright Weiland will serve as the commission’s rapporteur, Pompeo said.

“These individuals will provide the intellectual grist for what I hope will be one of the most profound reexaminations of the unalienable rights in the world since the 1948 Universal Declaration,” Pompeo said. “I hope that the commission will revisit the most basic of questions: What does it mean to say or claim that something is, in fact, a human right? … Is it, in fact, true, as our Declaration of Independence asserts, that as human beings, we—all of us, every member of our human family—are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights?”

Support pledged for advisory group

Perkins, at the helm of international religious freedom commission since June 17, pledged to support the new commission by providing advice and recommendations regarding international religious freedom. Perkins is an ordained Southern Baptist minister and head of the Family Research Council.

USCIRF Vice Chair Gayle Manchin also applauded the group.

“To the degree that this new commission within the State Department can help further communicate from Washington to the department’s farthest outposts the importance and urgency of religious freedom concerns as a fundamental human right, we believe this will lead to higher impact negotiations on behalf of the more than 70 percent of the world’s population that is currently suffering persecution or abuse,” Manchin said.

The advisory group is expected to meet at least monthly, and at other times as needed, according to the U.S. government daily journal, The Federal Register.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo both addressed a Christian pro-Israel group July 8, lifting up the U.S. ally as a bastion of inclusivity and railing against Iran.

Pence and Pompeo delivered their remarks at the annual summit of Christians United for Israel, a conservative Christian organization led by John Hagee, founding pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio. Christians United for Israel claims more than 6 million members.

Both politicians used the opportunity to defend the administration and champion what they argued were President Trump’s successes.

Pence fires back at AOC

Pence spoke first, taking time to push back against recent comments by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez comparing detention facilities used to house undocumented immigrants to concentration camps.

“To compare the humane work of the dedicated men and women of Customs and Border Protection with the horrors of the Holocaust is an outrage,” Pence said. “This slander was an insult to the 6 million killed in the Holocaust, and it should be condemned by every American of every political party everywhere.”

Pence also framed the United States’ support for Israel in theological terms.

“We stand with Israel because we cherish that ancient promise that Americans have always cherished throughout our

Anti-Zionism equated with anti-Semitism

The vice president was followed later in the day by Pompeo, who, like Pence, championed the Trump administration’s various actions on Israel, such as recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

“Thank God we have a leader in President Trump and an immovable friend like Israel,” he said, adding that his own job as secretary of state is “to turn that commitment into real action.”

Pompeo also condemned anti-Semitism and echoed other speakers at the conference by arguing that “anti-Zionism is indeed anti-Semitism. Period. Full stop.”

Similarly, he said the Trump administration had put the United Nations “on notice” for what he called “anti-Israel bias.”

As Pompeo closed, the crowd rose to its feet in a standing ovation.

Pence and Pompeo’s religious references resonated with Garmon Smith, a summit attendee from Oklahoma.

“They both are strong Christian men, and they receive what the Bible has to say about blessing Israel,” he said.

Marylin Henretty, who said she got to know Pence and his wife before he became the governor of Indiana, also lauded the appeals to Scripture.

“Mike has always shown up at all the events supporting Israel. What he’s saying we have heard many times,” she said. “We believe what the Bible says concerning Israel. To have a president openly professing that the land belongs to Israel—that’s what Scripture says.”

Injustices against Palestinians

In a guest opinion article published by Religion News Service, a rabbi and a Protestant minister offered a significantly different view.

Lynn Gottlieb, board chair of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity and member of the Rabbinic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace, and Graylan Hagler, senior pastor of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C. and director of Faith Strategies, said organizations such as Christians United for Israel and the policies the group promotes “pose a grave danger to the safety and well-being of both Jews and Palestinians.”

“How can a political and theological agenda refuse to see the humanity, sacredness, and suffering in the other and yet still claim to be religious?” they asked.

“This is what CUFI does. It supports Israel at all cost, without question or criticism, while ignoring the great injustices against Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories based upon the anti-Semitic theological/political idea that Jews must be restored to ‘their homeland’ in order for the Second Coming of Jesus to occur.

“As clergy and people of deep faith and conscience, we do not know a God that ignores or justifies the suffering of one group of people for the security and comfort of others. We do not know a God that justifies in any form or fashion the oppression and subjugation of others. We call on Americans of all beliefs to stand in support of Palestinians struggling for their long-denied freedom and against the kind of dangerous pseudo-religious extremism that CUFI represents.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—In the wake of a Supreme Court decision permitting a cross on public land, the Department of Veterans Affairs has revised its policies on religious symbols in displays at VA facilities.

VA Secretary Robert Wilkie announced July 3 the new policies will reduce inconsistencies among VA facilities.

“We want to make sure that all of our veterans and their families feel welcome at VA, no matter their religious beliefs. Protecting religious liberty is a key part of how we accomplish that goal,” he said in a statement.

“These important changes will bring simplicity and clarity to our policies governing religious and spiritual symbols, helping ensure we are consistently complying with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution at thousands of facilities across the department.”

The revised policies “allow the inclusion in appropriate circumstances of religious content in publicly accessible displays at VA facilities.”

They also permit patients to request and be provided with sacred texts, symbols and religious literature during treatment at facilities or visits to VA chapels. And they allow the VA “to accept donations of religious literature, cards and symbols at its facilities and distribute them to VA patrons under appropriate circumstances or to a patron who requests them.”

Impact of Supreme Court decision on WWI cross

The announcement noted the Supreme Court’s June 20 decision, in which it permitted the “Peace Cross,” a World War I monument in Bladensburg, Md., to remain in a traffic circle. The VA said the case “reaffirmed the important role religion plays in the lives of many Americans and its consistency with Constitutional principles.”

The policy revisions come two months after a U.S. Air Force veteran filed suit against the director of the Manchester (New Hampshire) VA Medical Center, seeking the removal of a Bible from a POW/MIA table at that facility.

“As a Christian, he respects and loves all his military brothers and sisters and does not want to be exclusionary by the placement of the Christian Bible,” the suit states.

Competing views expressed about policy

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which the suit says received complaints from 14 other veterans about the display, decried the VA’s revamped rules.

“These brand-new VA policies—clearly based upon the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent, idiotic decision in the Bladensburg Cross case—are nothing more than a transparent and repugnant attempt to further buttress and solidify fundamentalist Christianity as the insuperable official religion of choice for the VA, our Armed Forces, and this country,” said Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

His organization has previously complained about similar Bible displays at other locations, such as a naval hospital in Japan and a Wyoming Air Force base.

First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit legal organization that sent a letter in May to Wilkie requesting “a VA-wide policy that permits Bibles to be included in POW/MIA remembrance displays,” applauded the VA’s revamped policies.

“This new VA policy is a welcome breath of fresh air,” said Mike Berry, director of military affairs for First Liberty Institute, which also helped defend the Maryland cross monument.

“The Supreme Court recently upheld the constitutionality of religious displays with historic roots such as those commonly found in VA facilities. We commend the VA for taking this necessary and positive action.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The head of the largest Hispanic evangelical Christian network in the United States announced it will offer to work with the Trump administration to provide resources and shelter to migrant children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Speaking during a call with reporters July 1, Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said his organization plans to launch a campaign to offer aid to immigrant children held in detention centers at the border.

The effort, which organizers are calling the “For His Children” campaign, will involve sending “shipments and cargo and truckloads of resources to the border,” including shoes, clothing and hygiene products, Rodriguez said.

“We have boots on the ground literally now working with our current administration in addressing some of the needs of these children coming over,” he said.

When asked if the campaign would involve churches providing shelter or foster homes for migrant children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, Rodriguez said yes.

“That’s part of what we have in the rollout of the campaign,” he said. “It’s part of it.”

Details to be worked out

It was not immediately clear how many—or which—children the group might be able to take in. No details were available about what kind of government approval the process would require. It also was not clear whether the children would be housed just in churches or also in homes.

The Kairos Company, the communications firm that organized the call, said churches who participate in the program plan to offer housing to children who otherwise would end up in detention centers, but noted they have not yet secured approval from the U.S. government to do so.

“In the meantime, the churches will provide the necessary basic necessities, and we are opening up churches to accommodate just in case the detention centers cannot hold the children or their families,” a spokesperson said in an email. “The church becomes a temporary housing facility for those seeking asylum or coming over the border undocumented and were captured in the process.”

The spokesperson also noted that the initiative will be led by the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, but not limited to their network.

When asked about the potential program, the U.S. State Department deferred to the Department of Homeland Security, who also did not immediately respond. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—which assists with similar programs—also did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Rodriguez said For His Children is “revamping” a previous partnership with the humanitarian organization Convoy of Hope. That partnership began in July 2014 when unaccompanied children arrived in the U.S. under former President Obama.

“Our preferable choice is for people to come here legally, not illegally. We want to stop all illegal immigration for a number of reasons, including the humanitarian reason. My heart broke when I saw these kids. I don’t want these kids to be in danger or to suffer at all,” Rodriguez said.

“If they do come here, we want to be a blessing to them. We really want to help them.”

Rodriguez listed as potential partners Gus Reyes, director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas’ Christian Life Commission, and Eli Bonilla, lead pastor at Bethel Christian Church in Orlando, Florida.

“We are committed to the mandate of Matthew 25, and we are care about children and those who are most vulnerable,” Reyes said. Texas Baptists hold a variety of opinions about immigration policies but share a common commitment to ministering to people in need, he added,

Texas Baptist churches already are involved in a variety of ministries to help vulnerable immigrant children and their families when they are released from detention, Reyes noted, as well as working with churches in northern Mexico to help families waiting to apply for asylum.

Rodriguez:  ‘Summer camp environment’

Rodriguez asserted he saw something “drastically different from the stories I’ve been hearing in our national discourse” when he requested a visit to a detention facility last week in El Paso.

“I was shocked at the misinformation of the crisis at the border,” Rodriguez said.

He and a delegation of pastors from the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference had full access to the facility, which they toured for at least an hour, he said.

It appeared to be a “summer camp environment” where children had television and snacks and cordial relationships with guards, Rodriguez said. No one was sleeping on floors or cement, and storage areas were full of clothing and hygiene products.

Rodriguez said guards emphatically told him they had not altered the center for the visit but acknowledged he was not allowed to speak with the children.

James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, similarly grabbed headlines last week with a newsletter documenting his visit to the border at McAllen, alleging “the media and leftist politicians have not been truthful about what is going on there.”

Both Rodriguez and Dobson are represented by The Kairos Company.

Evangelical Immigration Table

The Evangelical Immigration Table also visited the U.S.-Mexico border in late June, as revelations about the dire conditions of children within detention centers made the news. Its delegation included the National Association of Evangelicals President Leith Anderson and World Relief President Scott Arbeiter, as well as representatives of Bethany Christian Services, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and the Assemblies of God.

The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference is a member of the Evangelical Immigration Table.

Afterward, the Evangelical Immigration Table sent a letter addressed to President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of Congress.

That letter asks for immediate funding for border facilities, urges the United States to respect its own laws regarding asylum seekers and expressed concern about Trump’s so-called “Remain in Mexico” program.

In a recorded press call about the letter, Anderson said there are churches throughout the United States that are “eager to welcome families and provide for them.”

“We just need federal policies that would allow them to be able to do that,” he said.

Anderson also asked Congress to “find a bipartisan solution to this tragic situation.”

One issue preventing churches and faith-based agencies from helping asylum seekers is the “Remain in Mexico” program, which is sending asylum seekers back over the border to Mexico while they wait for their cases to be heard in U.S. immigration court, according to Matthew Soerens, national coordinator of the Evangelical Immigration Table and U.S. director of church mobilization for World Relief.

Another issue is that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has run out of resources to place children with agencies like Bethany Christian Services that are authorized to provide foster care for children until they can be reunited with family, Soerens said.

Also, churches would need government approval and oversight to take in children. Not just anyone can show up and offer to foster a migrant child who has been separated from his or her family at the border, he confirmed—and that’s “for good reason.”

He added, “You have to protect children.”

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court ruled a 40-foot cross erected as a World War I memorial can remain on government property in Bladensburg, Md.

In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision in The American Legion v. American Humanist Association.

Holly Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, noted the Supreme Court’s decision “relies heavily on the particular history of that memorial.”

She further observed, “The splintered decision shows how difficult it is to reconcile the government’s promise of religious liberty for all while upholding a massive Latin cross on government land.”

Cross as secular symbol?

The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals had ruled the “Peace Cross”—dedicated in 1925 to honor local veterans who died in World War I—violated the Establishment of Religion Clause of the First Amendment. However, Chief Judge Roger Gregory filed a dissenting opinion, asserting the cross could be interpreted in a nonreligious way as a war memorial.

The Baptist Joint Committee joined in a friend-of-the-court brief that took issue with Gregory’s assertion.

“Our brief makes plain what should go without saying: The cross is the most recognizable symbol of the central promise of Christianity,” Hollman said in February, when the court heard oral arguments on the case.

“While Christians commonly display the cross to promote Christian teachings as revealed in Scripture, the government should not. The cross is a symbol that is specific to Christianity, and the government’s efforts to claim otherwise are hollow and offensive.”

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission signed onto a brief arguing the presence of the Bladensburg Cross does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The brief asserted questions of establishment “should be discerned by looking to historical practices and understandings at or near the founding period.”

“A government action should be sustained against an Establishment Clause challenge unless history confirms that the founding generation understood such an action as an establishment of religion outright—such as the official formation of a national church—or as a legal attribute of a religious establishment—such as a law intruding into a church’s ecclesiastical affairs,” the ERLC brief argued.

Focus on historical significance

In overturning the Fourth Circuit decision, the Supreme Court did not completely annul the so-called “Lemon test.” Based on the court’s 1972 Lemon v. Kurtzman opinion, the three-pronged test evaluates whether government action violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. To pass muster, it must have a secular purpose, not primarily promote or restrict religion, and not create “excessive entanglement” with religion.

“After our earlier victory, our opponents took this case to the post-Kennedy Supreme Court hoping for a complete upheaval of the separation of church and state,” said Monica Miller, senior counsel at the American Humanist Association. “Fortunately, the Lemon test and decades of precedent have not been overruled in the vast majority of relevant instances.”

Instead, the Supreme Court’s majority focused on historical significance and avoiding the appearance of hostility toward religion.

“Retaining established, religiously expressive monuments … is quite different from erecting or adopting new ones,” Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote.

“The fact that the cross is undoubtedly a Christian symbol should not blind one to everything else that the Bladensburg Cross has come to represent: a symbolic resting place for ancestors who never returned home, a place for the community to gather and honor all veterans and their sacrifices for this nation, and a historical landmark,” Alito wrote. “For many, destroying or defacing the Cross would not be neutral and would not further the ideals of respect and tolerance embodied in the First Amendment.”

Michael Carvin, lead counsel for the American Legion, praised the decision as a “historic victory for the First Amendment.

“The decision simply affirms the historic understanding of the First Amendment that allows government to acknowledge the value and importance of religion,” Carvin said.

The Baptist Joint Committee “is pleased that the court did not accept the extreme arguments put forth by the government and its allies,” Hollman said.

“The court did not abandon the First Amendment’s promise of neutrality among faiths. It also specifically acknowledged the cross as a Christian symbol, not a universal symbol of sacrifice,” she said. “Important for our pluralistic society, the decision does not support the constitutionality of Christian-only monuments sponsored by government today.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The Freedom From Religion Foundation has dropped its long-running fight against the clergy housing allowance permitted by the U.S. government.

“We have full confidence in the legal merits of our challenge of the discriminatory pastoral housing allowance privileges,” the Wisconsin-based atheist watchdog announced June 14. “We did not feel the same confidence, however, in how the current Supreme Court would rule in our case, had we appealed. After ‘counting heads,’ we concluded that any decision from the current court would put the kibosh on challenging the housing allowance for several generations.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation said it hopes its strategy will allow the issue to be reconsidered when the high court has a different makeup.

In March, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the allowance was constitutional. A lower court had ruled in the atheist group’s favor. But a three-judge circuit panel reversed a Wisconsin judge’s decision.

“Any financial interaction between religion and government—like taxing a church, or exempting it from tax—entails some degree of entanglement,” wrote Judge Michael Brennan. “But only excessive entanglement violates the Establishment Clause.”

He added that the allowance also is not forbidden by the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

Under IRS regulations that date to 1954, clergy do not have to pay taxes on housing that is supplied in a parsonage by their congregation or on the portion of their salary that they use for housing expenses.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation also challenged the housing allowance in 2013, winning in a lower court. But an appeals court also overturned that ruling.

Becket, a nonprofit law firm that focuses on religious liberty, celebrated the The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s dropping of its legal fight over the parsonage issue. It had represented a Chicago church and religious leaders who supported the allowance.

Luke Goodrich, Becket’s vice president and senior counsel, said the tax code exempted ministers as well as members of the military and others in special categories.

“The court rightly recognized that providing this kind of equal treatment to churches is perfectly constitutional, and churches should be allowed to serve the neediest members of their communities without the tax man breathing down their neck,” he said.