Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ pastor says she “disagrees profoundly” with his zero-tolerance immigration policy, but is urging the denomination to stay unified despite widespread internal outcry.
“This week, we in the congregation have been surprised to find ourselves at the center of a firestorm over our nation’s immigration policy, more specifically the policy of separating undocumented immigrant children from their parents as they are apprehended after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border,” said Rev. Tracy McNeil Wines, pastor at Clarendon United Methodist Church, according to CNN.
“Some in our denomination are calling on us to distance ourselves from Sessions or to do what we can to get him to change,” she told her congregation during two Sunday sermons. “There has been an outcry about that.”
Since Tuesday more than 600 fellow United Methodists nationwide issued a formal complaint against Sessions after he defended his policy citing Romans 13, which is a Bible passage that urges Christians to obey governing authorities, secular or otherwise.
While there has been widespread disagreement on the validity of his view of the passage and how Christians should interpret it within the context of this situation, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has defended Sessions, saying, “It is very biblical to enforce the law.”
While the charges of the complaint could lead to a church trial, congregants are first asking for a “reconciling process that will help this longtime member … step back from his harmful actions and work to repair the damage he is currently causing to immigrants, particularly families and children.”
Wines admits that she agrees this is traumatizing vulnerable kids, but said, “This tension is not new in the United Methodist Church.”
“Remember we are the church, the denomination out of which both George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton came. … As United Methodists, we don’t require one another to march in lockstep. We engage in passionate debate over issues that sometimes divide us,” she continued.
