Social Justice and service Committee Meeting July 21, 12noon-1pm
Suggested language for motion to Council
Preamble
The world is experiencing multiple global crises due to wars, famine, pandemics, and global climate change, all creating untold suffering and death. Mass displacement of humans is taxing the resources needed to respond to the resulting humanitarian needs.
We are a wealthy nation and people and are called by our faiths to welcome the refugees to our community. This requires us to share our wealth and be advocates for just and generous treatment of these strangers.
We must also be a voice and a force for diplomacy and non-violent responses to violence, in all its forms.
This is a challenge of epic proportions, but it is at the heart of our Christian faith.
Our immediate opportunity is in response to Ukrainian refugees coming to Juneau. A more comprehensive and discerned response requires church and community conversation.
We therefore recommend to Council this motion,
- Work cooperatively with other communities of faith – specifically Congregation Sukkat Shalom (fiscal agent for current refugees), Douglas and Aldersgate United Methodist congregations, and other faith groups and community members, to raise $50,000, by January 2023 for housing and transportation support for two or more Ukrainian families.
- Help our congregation and the wider community understand the dimensions and needs of the current crisis.
- Council endorses a process that leads to a Kuneix Hidi NLUC policy that responds to the growing refugee crisis.
Background
UMC and PCUSA Statements on Ukrainian and Global Crisis
UMC – “Global migration is a phenomenon impacting countries around the world at historic highs. Anti-immigrant rhetoric, attitudes, and actions are turning communities into places of inhospitality and exclusion on local and national levels.
The United Methodist Church upholds practicing hospitality to immigrants, refugees, and asylees without regard to race, status, nationality, or religion. We affirm that all people, regardless of country of origin, are members of the family of God.
United Methodists understand that “at the center of Christian faithfulness to Scripture is the call we have been given to love and welcome the sojourner. We call upon all United Methodist churches to welcome newly arriving migrants in their communities, to love them as we do ourselves, to treat them as one of our native-born, to see in them the presence of the incarnated Jesus, and to show hospitality to the migrants in our midst, believing that through their presence we are receiving the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
United Methodists focus on three priorities in immigration: welcoming the stranger, human rights and keeping families together.”
PCUSA –
“ACT: Urge the U.S. government to support generous aid for refugees and civilians suffering in Ukraine and call for engaging a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
PRAY: May we undergird our prayers with tangible resources to help. May we reach deeply, give generously, and welcome extravagantly. May we lift our voices in a strong and unified advocacy. May we all, even as we breathe in lament, breathe out mercy, hope and peace. And in this Lenten season, when we walk the way toward death and resurrection, repent our complicity in cultures of violence and renew our efforts toward justice and peace.”