In the News
More than two-dozen Christian and Jewish groups representing millions of Americans — ranging from the Episcopal Church and the Union for Reform Judaism to the Mennonites and Unitarian Universalists — filed a federal court lawsuit Tuesday challenging a Trump administration move giving immigration agents more leeway to make arrests at houses of worship.
2/11/2025: NYTimes: Religious Groups Sue Homeland Security Over Immigration Arrests
A collection of Christian and Jewish groups sued the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday over its policy of conducting immigration enforcement actions at places of worship.
2/11/2025: NPR: 27 religious groups sue Trump administration over immigration enforcement policy
More than two dozen religious groups are suing the federal government in response to the Trump administration’s policy giving immigration agents more leeway to make arrests at “sensitive locations,” including houses of worship.
More than two dozen Christian and Jewish groups have filed a federal lawsuit over the Trump administration’s decision to overturn a long-standing policy that broadly restricted immigration agents from making arrests at churches and other “sensitive locations.”
2/11/2025: Slate: Trump Is Siccing ICE on Churches. The Pastors Are Fighting Back.
You know that you have well and truly stepped in it when you have pissed off the Mennonites. In a federal suit filed in D.C. on Tuesday, a number of faith groups that in the aggregate represent millions of religious Americans challenged the new Trump Department of Homeland Security policy allowing for the arrests of undocumented worshippers in their houses of prayer. Relying on the affirmative religious protections afforded by the First Amendment and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the suit claims that faithful Americans cannot perform their work of ministry under constant fear of raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
2/11/2025: RNS: Faith-based groups challenge Trump orders in two court cases
More than two dozen religious groups pushed back on President Donald Trump’s actions and executive orders, filing two lawsuits a day apart challenging the president’s attempt to effectively freeze the federal refugee resettlement program and defending a rule that prevents immigration law enforcement agencies from raiding houses of worship and other sensitive locations.
1/1/2025: Washington Post: For Jimmy Carter, faith was inseparable from politics and life
Even in the face of a humiliating defeat, Carter’s religious faith never wavered. Rather, it continued to give him purpose and direction, said Jim Wallis, an evangelical theologian who founded and edited Sojourners magazine and is now the faculty director of the Georgetown University Center on Faith and Justice.
12/30/2024: Jimmy Carter’s Legacy
White evangelicals are now a Republican constituency. But Carter—a Democrat—was the first one in the Oval office. (Podcast)
12/29/2024: Politico: Jimmy Carter: The Last Progressive Evangelical
Carter’s election was also abetted by the brief resurgence in the 1970s of progressive evangelicalism, the particular stripe of the Christian faith that he embodied. Others have tried to keep the tradition alive — people like Jim Wallis and William Barber II and institutions such as Sojourners and the Black church — but progressive evangelicals have never been able to match the media megaphones of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or Franklin Graham.