bible studies
Illustration by Jeffrey Smith
AFTER CARMEN AND her son, William, were set on fire by gang members and then rescued by a passerby, they fled El Salvador to seek refuge in the United States. In a caravan headed north through Mexico, by chance they met five family members: Carmen’s sister, Cecilia; Cecilia’s husband, Oscar; and the couple’s three teenage children—twin daughters and a son.
When they reached the end of their 2,800-mile trek to the U.S. border outside Tijuana, Mexico, the entire family surrendered to U.S. immigration officials.
That’s where, in November 2018, they met Monica Curca, founder and director of Activate Labs, a nonprofit organization focused on peacebuilding and human-centered “peace design.” The family members (surnames withheld for their safety) were among 30 immigrants for whom Curca’s organization provided advocacy and accompaniment and arranged financial sponsorship upon their entry into the U.S.
Once in the immigration system, the men and women were separated and sent to federal detention centers in Arizona and California; the men were detained for eight months and the women for five. William was separated from the family entirely, Curca explained. He ended up detained in Ferriday, La., in the former River Correctional Facility, a prison converted into an immigration detention center. Having been left for dead in El Salvador, he could have qualified for asylum—a form of legal protection for refugees who fear persecution in their native countries. But the activists working with him could not procure a lawyer, said Curca, and he was so miserable he chose deportation rather than prolong the suffering.
When I applied for a job at CNN in the 90s, and told the interviewer that I had interned with an evangelical magazine called Christianity Today, his response was, "If it's Christian, it isn't journalism."
Over the years that expanded to, "If it's evangelical, it's Republican. Or Jerry Falwell. Pat Robertson. The Tea Party. Wrapped in a Patriotic Flag. White People. Derivative, cheesy music. Big Money. Big Hair." Fill in the rest of the blanks.
Are those labels a distortion of what it means to be an evangelical? Of course they are. Yet they are how evangelicals are perceived, rightly or wrongly (I personally think it's a mixture of both), in our society.
This video features three heroes of mine and courageous Christian leaders, Desmond Tutu, Wangari Maathai and Rev. Dr. Samuel Kobia, talking about the importance of climate justice for the poorest of the poor right across the continent of Africa.
This clip gave an Aussie kid like me who grew up on Midnight Oil goose bumps (embarrassingly I cried despite the cringe factor) and was very popular with students in our workshops because of the big name stars. ... 
