Notes from the Frontlines highlights the stories, needs, and solidarity of organizations on the frontlines in the struggle for a multiracial and equitable democracy in the United States. Each installment will explore how organizations are responding to the current political landscape—and what the entire nonprofit and philanthropic ecosystem can do to support them.
In March of this year, Bill Mefford—the executive director of The Festival Center, a social justice community hub in Washington, DC—received word about an immigration enforcement action taking place at a nearby elementary school in the neighborhood. After school officials demanded identification and a warrant, the federal agents left. Still, the incident shook up the community of predominantly Black and Latinx residents.
Mefford, a longtime activist who has served in various faith-based organizations, mobilized quickly. He reached out to clergy and community organizers with a simple ask: to gather for a prayer walk around the neighborhood to reclaim it as a site of care and connection.
“I wasn’t sure if anyone would show up on short notice, but about 25 people gathered,” Mefford told NPQ. “We prayed, read poems, and made statements while walking around the neighborhood to show our solidarity.”
Across the country, in Los Angeles and Orange County, the Godmothers of the Disappeared—modeled after Mothers of the Disappeared groups in Latin America—hold weekly vigils outside federal detention centers to pray for the return of those detained and deported.
“These are women of faith who sing, pray, and stand in solidarity with the folks who may be able to see and hear us through the little slits in the windows of the detention center,” said Jennifer Gutierrez, a pastor and executive director of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), in an interview with NPQ.
CLUE’s faith-based organizing approach is rooted in the legacy of one of its cofounders, James Lawson Jr., a civil rights leader who championed nonviolent action. Today, CLUE members embody that legacy through the practice of accompaniment: standing alongside vulnerable community members and emphasizing care and connection over confrontation and conflict.
“We are accompanying workers as they fight for justice,” Gutierrez said. “We are accompanying African American and Latino community members as they fight for police accountability.”
Currently, CLUE volunteers attend immigration hearings to provide support and to signal that community members are watching the proceedings. “Our presence doesn’t prevent detention—though in some cases, when we are present in court, the judge will go out of their way to share the process and next steps,” Gutierrez said. “By us being there, it means that people have somebody walking with them at this very scary time, and praying for them, and getting in touch with their emergency contacts.”
Scenes like these are increasing in the wake of policies targeting vulnerable communities, and alongside a broader conversation about the role of Christianity in government and policy.
As authoritarian movements seek legitimacy by invoking a “Christian America,” a growing number of faith leaders and faith-rooted institutions are pushing back more loudly and visibly. Their interventions, solidarity practices, and organizing models seek to oppose the attempts of the Christian nationalist movement to merge theology and state power.
Christians Against Christian Nationalism defines Christian nationalism as “a political ideology that seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy.”
The stakes are high; many recent efforts by the Trump administration blur the line between religion and the state and elevate a narrative of Christian persecution. For example, the Department of Education’s expected guidance to promote and protect prayer in public schools, the integration of religious symbolism and language into public events such as the memorial for Charlie Kirk, and the White House task force on ending anti-Christian bias are alarming to many Christian leaders.
“We reject the proposition that there is widespread persecution of Christians in the United States,” Christian leaders wrote in a letter opposing the White House task force. “We fear that the ‘Anti-Christan Bias Task Force’ will be weaponized to privilege one tradition within Christianity over others….We are also aware of how claims of ‘anti-Christian bias’ are shown to provide cover for white supremacy.”
Over 40,000 Christians have signed a statement of principles rejecting the political ideology of Christian nationalism.
The Interfaith Alliance, which organized the letter, has also filed federal agency information requests along with watchdog group Democracy Forward to glean additional details about the activities of the task force.
Founded in 1994 to counter the conservative political organization Christian Coalition, the Interfaith Alliance organizes faith groups and leaders to join the pro-democracy faith movement and to reject religious extremism, including Christian nationalism. “In our culture, there used to be sort of this approach of ‘don’t talk about religion’…but now we’re having a robust public conversation,” Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, the vice president of programs and strategy at the Interfaith Alliance, shared with NPQ.
“All around the country, communities are having conversations about Christian nationalism, democracy, and theocracy,” he noted. In fact, over 40,000 Christians have signed a statement of principles rejecting the political ideology of Christian nationalism.
“We believe that the people leading the work should be those closest to the pain.”
Sustaining the pro-democracy movement from a faith standpoint will require resources, partnerships, and institutions.
Graves-Fitzsimmons shared the importance of filling the resource gap in particular. “The demand for a pro-democracy faith movement across the country greatly outstrips the available resources from philanthropy,” he told NPQ. “The broader progressive movement is finally understanding the power of faith and faith-based organizing as one component to effectively counter authoritarianism.”
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Philanthropic support for faith-based organizing must also include investments in solidarity across multifaith and multiracial communities. Deth Im, director of faith leadership strategies at Faith in Action, the largest grassroots global faith-based organizing network, knows the importance of solidarity practice firsthand. Over the past year, he and other team members have been invited by grassroots leaders in Washington, DC, and Los Angeles to accompany their mobilizing efforts on the ground.
“We believe that the people leading the work should be those closest to the pain,” Im explained. “We are standing up for vulnerable families, we’re standing up for immigrants, we’re standing up for LGBTQ folks, we’re standing up for formerly incarcerated people.”
Solidarity practice, Im added, must also go beyond the short-term crisis. “What’s our longer-term strategy? One of the goals of the onslaught of these assaults…is to keep us thinking about today and tomorrow only, and we’re not thinking about down the road.” Thinking long-term requires deeper collaborations and locally rooted partnerships across communities of faith.
“Faith communities are one of the few places where people are in regular relationship in a multigenerational, multicultural setting with people who are not your family.”
Nina Fernando serves as the executive director of the multifaith Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign, with the mission to equip and mobilize faith communities “as strategic partners in countering and preventing anti-Muslim hatred, discrimination, and violence.”
“Solidarity is not a one-size-fits-all response,” Fernando told NPQ. “We have to cultivate the mindfulness and the patience and the willingness to…meet people where they’re at.”
One of the lessons from Shoulder to Shoulder’s work is that solidarity building often occurs outside of the public realm. “The behind-the-scenes is not as flashy, not as easy to get funding for, not something you can always report, but it’s essential,” she emphasized. “That relational work—confidential, one-to-one conversations with clergy on very different sides of the spectrum—is what builds trust.”
Fernando pointed out that congregations themselves are a kind of built-in civic infrastructure that is ripe for organizing. “If you’re in a congregation and going to church every Sunday, there’s an opportunity to connect on a spiritual level, to be in community, and to hear how people are making sense of the moment,” she explained. “Faith communities are one of the few places where people are in regular relationship in a multigenerational, multicultural setting with people who are not your family. It’s a true practice of humanizing.”
It’s a reminder, as Mefford put it, to step into the breach, to accept discomfort and press on anyway. “The calling for activism is seen in the willingness to repeatedly enter into the gap between injustice and the action that is needed to repair that injustice,” he said.
Around the country, faith leaders are doing just that to offer connection, community care, and moral clarity during a time of intense polarization and chaos.
For More on This Topic:
After Trump Orders, Faith-Based Groups See Mass Furloughs
Connecting Faith Organizations to Capital
Faith as a Pathway to Climate Action
Deepa Iyer is a South Asian American writer, lawyer, and activist. She is the Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at Building Movement Project, where she curates a project called Solidarity Is which provides trainings and narratives to build deep and lasting multiracial solidarity. Deepa was the former executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) for a decade, and has held positions at Race Forward, the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center, and the Asian American Justice Center. Deepa’s first book, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future (The New Press 2015), received a 2016 American Book Award.
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