Word from the UCC in Arizona

This is a post written by Eric Smith's good friend and Divinity School classmate Rev. Brian Frederick-Gray, who is serving Encanto Community Church (a United Church of Christ congregation) in Phoenix, AZ. We asked him to write an entry about the atmosphere in Arizona following the passage of the new immigration bill, and how faith communities are coming to terms with it. This is what he wrote:


I was at the Southwest Conference's Annual Meeting when we got word that Arizona Senate Bill 1070 had been signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer. SB1070 (as it has come to be known) is the harshest "immigration legislation" in the country. It requires state and municipality employed police officers, teachers, school administrators, school counselors, social workers, health care workers, and others to check the documentation status of anyone for whom they have a “reasonable suspicion” that they may be undocumented. Without proper documentation individuals may jailed or deported.

Many of us gathered at Annual Meeting had spent the days and weeks ahead of the meeting lobbying, praying, and organizing in hopes that Gov. Brewer would veto SB1070. When we heard that she had signed the legislation we immediately halted our opening business session for a time of silent prayer. The news was simply too gut-wrenching for us to continue our Conference-wide business.

In fact, the adoption of SB1070 dramatically changed the course of our Annual Meeting -- new amendments were added to resolutions, letters were drawn up to be sent to our political leaders as well as the 45 UCC congregations that make up the Southwest Conference, and we even abandoned plans to hold our 2011 Annual Meeting in Sun City in order to hold the meeting somewhere outside of Arizona instead.

After worship that first night I gathered with several friends and colleagues at a local watering hole where the conversation naturally centered around SB1070. Pastors from the border reflected on what their ministry will look like now, while folks from New Mexico talked about how stunningly different their state is from Arizona. Finally somebody asked me, "How will this go over at Encanto?"

For the last 20 months I've been serving as the Interim Minister at the Encanto Community Church, a small, revitalizing UCC congregation on the north side of downtown Phoenix. Church members are almost exclusively white, mostly retired, and not all that interested in hearing politics from the pulpit. "How will this go over at Encanto?" I answered as honestly as I could that night, "I'd be surprised if it registers with them at all."

Two days later I was back in the pulpit at Encanto. I preached a sermon called "The Work We Do" and focused on the "We" in that sermon title in order to preach about Annual Meeting and bring news of all the wonderful things that are happening in our Conference. I couldn't give a recap of the Annual Meeting without mentioning the central place SB1070 had in our deliberations and discussions.

And that is when this little church surprised me. In the handshake line after service and next door in the Fellowship Hall at Coffee Hour person after person came up to me absolutely heartbroken about the passage of this bill. I wasn't expecting that. But almost everyone in church has kids or grandkids who are part of the school system out here (either as students, teachers, or both). And when word started spreading through the schools on Friday that Gov. Brewer signed SB1070 any kid with dark skin started crying. They were freaked out and completely sure that the police were going to come into their classrooms that day, gestapo style, and drag them (or their parents, or their brothers or sisters, or their best friends) out of the country. It is simply appalling and downright scary.

I'm currently considering signing a pledge of non-compliance. The trouble is, non-compliance can itself be seen as an offense in SB1070 and could be enough to earn jail time.

Personally, I continue to hope and pray that this legislation will never go into effect. Injunctions and lawsuits have already been filed, and the Department of Justice worked through the weekend to address it. But then again, I was the same guy who had my doubts that Gov. Brewer would ever sign it in the first place. So I've been wrong before.