Conviction And Commitment

JOHN FIFE had been pastor of Tucson's Southside Presbyterian Church for 17 years when this article appeared. —The Editors

Sojourners: What kind of experience has the trial been for you, and how do you feel about it?

John Fife: The trial has lasted six months, four days a week, in that courtroom. It's been a very technical legal process, and those of us who are not attorneys don't have a solid understanding of what has gone on. I've dealt with it, these long six months, by trying to be involved, trying to learn about the practice of law, and trying to understand the fine points of what the attorneys are doing and what they're thinking strategically. That's the way I've dealt with it emotionally and in terms of boredom, day in and day out, just sitting in that courtroom.

The most difficult part about it for me was to realize at the beginning that there was absolutely nothing I could do. The attorneys were going to take the case, and we were going to sit there. It's difficult, when people are playing with your life, to just sit and watch all the maneuvering and strategizing that goes on in that arena, to realize that you're just a spectator and you don't have any control over your life during the many months it's going to take for this to play itself out. It's hard to accept that somebody else is really going to make a determination that's going to profoundly affect your life. I'm not one who needs to be in control, but I'd sure like to be a player.

Once I got comfortable with the fact that this one was out of my control totally, it was OK. I could then get involved with the people who were the players and observe how they went about the practice of law.

The other thing that's kept me in touch with my world reality, so I did not get totally absorbed by that disconnected reality of the courtroom, is the three days a week when I'm pastor of a congregation. That's where I've been grounded, where I've kept my balance. I can prepare for worship every week, meet with the community of faith that I've been with for 17 years, and do some pastoral work in between the trial. I find myself saying, "Hey, the ministry of the church goes on, and that's a part of my responsibility, something I can do." That's been very helpful.

What have been your impressions of the trial?

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has spent six months in a courtroom, nine months before that in an undercover operation, and two years before that in an investigation, trying to present its view of sanctuary. They claim this is a simple alien-smuggling case, that we are involved in a criminal conspiracy to violate the federal law. They say this is something the state civil authority, the courts, need to deal with strictly in terms of the finding of guilt and handing out of appropriate punishment, since that kind of activity in the midst of this society cannot be allowed.

The government view has been contrasted with our understanding of sanctuary being the church and synagogue in ministry. Sanctuary has been necessary because of the violations of the refugees' civil liberties by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. And those two very different visions are being played out before a jury that is struggling to see what is the truth here.

We've had a judge who has been determined not to allow any human emotion, or human suffering, or religious faith into that courtroom. We've watched the determination of our lawyers to get that before the jury, in spite of the frantic efforts by the judge and the prosecutor not to allow that. They wanted to present only their one-sided vision of sanctuary and our ministries to the jury. But our attorneys have been very skillful in holding up another vision, of faith and ministry, to that jury.

The judge has obviously become almost compulsive about our attempt, as he sees it, to subvert the processes of the court. I think he sees us as subversive of his highest value, which is the law, and the technicalities of the law. The prosecutor knows better; he knows that in order to get a conviction, he just has to keep out what he knows is true. But the judge is a different character; he has placed his reputation, his whole career as a lawyer and a judge, in jeopardy by his very compulsive, determined efforts to stop whatever he perceives as this terrible threat to the law and to society. And I confess that I don't understand that.

We have seen a judge who is deeply biased preside over a trial that has obviously been gerrymandered. It has not resembled in any way, shape, or form what a fair, open search for the truth and some measure of justice would demand.

You've spoken highly of your legal counsel. What has been your experience in working with them?

My first response is one of profound gratitude for the attorneys and their colleagues, who have given up six months and have obviously stretched their abilities in order to get before the jury as much information and truth as they could. The second thing that I'm delighted with is the way in which the attorneys and the defendants have stayed together and formed a community through this six-month period.

It's been the subject of all kinds of humor, but basically what you have in this case is a bunch of Jewish atheists representing a bunch of Christians. Now that's a caricature, but there's enough truth in it to express the incredible diversity of this group. We had to come together in a hurry, and in order to get through these six months, we had to be together and form a community grounded in faith. I think everyone's been transformed a little bit by this experience. It has been wonderful.

There were several attorneys who were openly and unabashedly Jewish atheists coming into this trial. Others had not darkened the door of a church for some time, even though their traditions were Catholic, Protestant, or whatever. They came together with defendants who were extraordinarily diverse—citizens of Mexico and the United States, Catholics and Protestants of various stripes and colors, Unitarians and Quakers, men and women, people of a wide age diversity. If we had come apart at the seams, alienated one another, or seen that our self-interest diverged at meaningful points in this whole six-month process, it could have been very disastrous.

Our unity was important for each of us spiritually and emotionally, as well as for the effort of defending that many people together in a courtroom. Lawyers with egos as big as all outdoors, experienced in being king of the hill—or queen of the hill—in their own bailiwicks, had to learn to function collegially and set their own egos aside for the good of the whole defense effort. There were people with very different faith understandings coming together, being together, and having to hold together through some very critical emotional and spiritual crises.

This trial has been an emotional and spiritual roller coaster. We've had some pulls and tugs, and we've had some magnificent arguments, but in the end everyone has understood, "We must be together in this." And when that has happened, it has been an absolute joy to see.

What has made it work?

Certainly one of the things has been the understanding that there had to be some common times of spirituality, that it wasn't just a legal project we were working on. Every one of those attorneys has showed up at Southside Presbyterian Church during the course of this trial.

Also, we constantly kept reminding ourselves the whole way through that what we were doing was not nearly so important as the refugees' needs. If we ever strayed from understanding that what we were doing in the courtroom was a way of serving refugees, then we'd lost it. If there's anything that kept calling us back to reality, to go beyond ourselves in terms of our own understanding, it was the refugees themselves. Whenever things would begin to come apart at the seams a little bit, someone would remind us, "Look, what we're doing here is trying to find how this trial and this effort, this lengthy emotional and spiritual ordeal, can serve the refugees and their needs at this moment in time." I think that's probably been the single most important factor that was common to everyone.

How have you been transformed by this experience?

For the first time in my life, I have had to get comfortable with the fact that I was not in control of my life, that somebody else—a lot of "somebody elses"—were in charge. That was a brand new experience for me. I had to come to terms with that somewhere deep inside my soul—as well as in my stomach. I found that I could trust other people to play around with my future and not be anxious about that. And that amazed me.

The other thing that happened over that six-month period to me personally was that the verdict became less and less important. It was critically important to me at the time of the indictment, the period of organizing and preparing for the trial, and when the trial started. Yet as the six months have gone by, I have the sense that no matter what the verdict is, it's going to be the appropriate thing. Whatever happens, it is not going to be either the beginning or the end of the world, because both the sanctuary movement and I personally will get on with life.

Another thing that's quite obvious and oftentimes comes off sounding like a platitude, though it really isn't, is that one finds a deeper sense of meaning in times of crisis. When you reach down deep and find this absolutely amazing experience of faith, it's a very profound moment. It was there all the time, but you've never really probed the dimensions of it. You get in touch with the reality and the deep meaning of the experience of God and faith in the midst of a time like this.

To experience those times and to have the opportunity to preach about it, to talk about it and share it with the community of faith, the people that you've grown to love and have been through 17 years with, is a wonderful faith experience that I am glad I've been able to be a part of. I'd rather do it some other way than spending six months in a federal court under indictment, but that's OK.

How has the trial affected your family life?

During the years 1981 through 1984, as I became more and more deeply involved in the border ministry and more aware of the refugees' agony, it was a most difficult time in the family's relationship. I was gone day and night, and I was exhausted when I was here. The refugees literally set the agenda for my life and ministry.

Then Marianne and the kids sat me down and said, "Look, we want some time, too." And so we began to make some adjustments. But it was always a very difficult set of pulls and tugs around those very important things in my life.

Then the indictment came down, and that was a terrific experience in terms of my family and my marriage. We were going to go to trial, and we had to sort out what that meant for our family, whether we could handle a prison sentence. Since the indictment, and during the period of the trial, we have been able to really come together as a family. This year-and-a-half period has been a time of restoration and renewal for all of us, I think.

What impact do you think the trial is going to have on the sanctuary movement, and where does the movement need to go?

We're in the relaxed and delightful position of having the sanctuary movement moving ahead, no matter what the verdict is. If it's a guilty verdict, then it will mean that the judicial system has been perverted, that there has been no fairness in that process. It will mean that we will have to go pay some dues for that; we may go off to prison for a while.

Every spiritual movement has been renewed by martyrdom, by people having to do some suffering for their commitment. And if a bunch of us are sentenced to prison, it will have that kind of effect on the sanctuary movement. So if there is a conviction, it will be one of those times of testing for the sanctuary movement, and I have no question—the movement has demonstrated it over and over again in the last five years—that it can deal with that very effectively.

The indictment, or just the threat of conviction and prison, has meant that 18 cities, and even a whole state now, have declared themselves sanctuaries. And numbers of other congregations have also joined the movement. It has been the most important time in the sanctuary movement for renewal, strengthening, and broadening. I think the government may have finally figured that out by now. They helped us more with this trial than we could have ever helped ourselves.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

My basic thought at this point in time is just how deeply grateful I am to everyone I've come in contact with over the last year and a half. I think back on where we were a year and a half ago when 16 people were indicted on a whole array of 80 federal, criminal charges. We had no resources at all. In fact, I was trying to scrape up enough money to keep some folks who were ministering to refugees in Mexico going. We had nothing, and the whole INS and Justice Department apparatus was after us. We had to take them on all of a sudden in an enormous effort.

But then the attorneys came and offered their services. People involved in the sanctuary movement came together and organized an enormous fund-raising effort, and people responded. Thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people heard we were in trouble and said, "We'll help." The time and energy and commitment that have been poured into our defense in this very brief period of time is just overwhelming.

Beyond that, churches and faith communities have understood that now is the time to make a commitment, and they have become a part of the sanctuary movement. I have piles of letters and communications from people around the world who simply say, "We've been praying for you. We are with you." There aren't words to express how that feels.

I've received three early-morning calls from a pastor in South Africa whom I had met at a general assembly of the Presbyterian Church. He has called and said, "We want you to know that we are thinking about you and praying for you."

My response each time has been, "Why are you calling me? With all of the problems, all of the threats, and all of the deaths that you and your people are suffering in South Africa, why are you calling me?"

He responded simply, "Because we have been praying for you." And then he said something that startled me the most: "Haven't you been praying for us?"

Of course we had been, but it had been because of our profound concern for the agony and suffering of the people of South Africa. We never understood that in the midst of their suffering, they would be praying for others as well.

It's that relationship of communities who are under some threat, who are engaged in a time of trial and testing because of their faith, and who are suffering to whatever degree that has brought us together. In that spiritual communion of faith, we have a commitment to each other, to pray for each other. That is difficult to describe, but it is going to change the world dramatically.

This interview is one in a series of interviews with sanctuary trial defendants conducted in Tucson by Vicki Kemper two weeks before the verdict.