October

Fridays might never be the same. On Friday, September 20, millions of young people filled city streets across the world demanding with one voice that those in power and influence act on global warming. This past Friday there were millions more. One, now famous, sixteen year old girl—began taking Fridays off of school to sit at a prominent place in her hometown, with placards warning against climate change and demanding grown-ups with power act. These young people are convinced that their future is in serious jeopardy. If you didn’t catch her address to the United Nations, please do yourself a favor, and look it up on YouTube. And I invite you to take some time to learn about other youth climate activists that are working to save the planet.

Where all this is going, I don’t know. There are a number of you who have heard the cry much earlier than I, and seek to call us to attention and action. I do know that a disastrous “tipping point” to which scientists are urgently attesting, does not come “in the final hour” during the last 5 or 10% of the time we have. When you fill a jar of water with sand, the point of no return or “spilling point” comes at 50%!

Insects, birds, and now the oceanic life, and in the UK the tree population are under watch. On the road to the Manchester Airport, as I returned from caring for my mother in convalescence, there was a chalked message across the highway bridge, inviting us to join the “Extinction revolution.” In a different time, we might say that’s something from a dystopian novel. 

We are the rich man in the mansion. And Lazarus lies at our gate, first to be afflicted by drought, floods, hurricanes, imperiled waters and food insecurity. And this is not politics, though we must look to those invested with our trust to use the power of our common resources to act, or move over and let others of more courageous will do so. It is more a matter of asking the question—how then shall we live? 

Listen to the prayer we uttered on Sunday, “You declare your Almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity…Grant us the fulness of your grace.”

Listen to the Scriptures we recited on Sunday, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” It entraps us in senseless and harmful desires. On the other hand, true gain is found in godliness, combined with contentment. And if we are blessed with riches through inheritance, or our creative spirit and skilled industriousness—then carry your wealth with humility; be rich in the good works your wealth affords you to do, and be ready to share, recognizing the real perspective of faith is the treasuring of God’s abiding presence and love.

Hypocrisy goes with the territory when handling this subject, but our lectionary has brought us to this consideration. We are the rich man in Jesus’ story in Luke last Sunday. Who is Lazarus? And how do we learn to see him?

At diocesan convention in a few weeks, we are aspiring to a theme of “The Simple Way.” We have invited a speaker, Shane Claiborne, who asks these types of questions. His aim in life is to follow Jesus and especially as His relationships and teaching connected with the poor and least in His society. I am assuming he will inspire some of us, and yet also challenge us. 

It’s good to recall that, at the point our lectionary has brought us thus far, Jesus was just revving up His confrontation with the religious establishment of his day, and challenging the behavior of those around Him. Lives of faith impact our relationship to the resources around us, and our stewardship of them and how we treat both people and material things. He moves onto dangerous ground and ultimately suffered the loss of His life because of it. We know that wasn’t the end of the story but we cannot let knowing of the resurrection lessen the significance of what irked the authorities to remove His menace. In fact there is a gift of hope that says we can be bold to shift from possession to sharing and releasing—precisely because loss and death is not the end of God’s story ever.

Some have wondered about the timing of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr; how did it become time to have him removed? What nerve was he hitting? It just happened to be at a moment in which he had begun to deeply engage economic inequality, had announced the Poor People’s Campaign 5 months before, and was bringing profound questioning to the military spending of the nation and about the effectiveness of the Vietnam War. 

Jesus had no doubt about where his meddling would take him. This has got to be part of the story of our salvation. Jesus died because He called us to share, and to do that we have to be willing to let God turn us inside out. He called us to share a common life (which His disciples attempted early on). He included orphans and widows, tax collectors and prostitutes in this shared life. He also died because He called us to share God and access to God with those very same people whose poor and tragic circumstances seemed to us to reflect an absence of the blessing and the Divine favor. He died because He saw no bounds to the sharing of God’s love for all whom God made; and He saw them as God’s children. 

God shows power chiefly through mercy and pity. Chiefly! Sometimes God also simply lets people like the rich man abide with the consequences of their behavior and attitudes. They say that we are at the tipping point with the consequences of our actions towards the planet. Maybe we are at a tipping point with God’s readiness to show continued mercy and pity. God let Lazarus die; so did the rich man. And then, in the perspective of eternity, the real gap between them appeared. 

Jesus told the story with the hope that hearts of his listeners may be pulled into God’s love. It is never too late to have ears that hear; or hearts that respond with openness; or voices that offer prayers that God might grant us the fulness of grace in how we live. That fulness sees Lazarus; and finds strength to take him in. What will we be doing next Friday?   

In the peace and love of Christ,

+Alan

The Rt. Rev. Alan Scarfe, Bishop of Iowa

September 2019

Over Labor Day weekend a group of young people from the diocese met in Council Bluffs to create Happening # 47. Happening is peer led. It is an invitation to take time away from the normal routine (including cell phones), and to delve in a deep and focused way into our relationship with God, with one another and with one’s own blossoming sense of identity. Key to the experience are the testimonies or presentations of the Happening team young people on different aspects of living the Christian life. The few adults present are there for support—in providing meals, offering spiritual counsel and sacramental worship (my role this weekend), helping with tech support, schedule coordination, and what might be called “gopher” (go for this or that) work. Two young people serve as Co-Rectors and are in charge of all proceedings. The days are long and the outcomes always rewarding.

The participants form small groups to reflect together on the various topics of faith development that are presented. And they make up a name for themselves. One group, this weekend, got stuck on finding a specific name that appealed to them all, and so they called themselves by the initials of their first names—MGCSK! And since none of them were Polish, they worked out an acronym – My God Can Save Kindness. Now, I may have been susceptible to sleep deprivation and jetlag, having just flown back from England, but the name, and the prophetic statement behind it, intentional or not, blew me away!

My God can save kindness—a commodity in increasing short supply, it would seem, these days. And please note that we were cocooned during the weekend, and not fully aware of the hurricane hanging over the Bahamas or of the shooting sprees in Odessa, Texas.

We were inviting these young people to shape their identity and commit their life’s meaning and purpose on the person of Jesus Christ, and to explore what it is to follow Him at this time in history and in their lives. We presented words as seeds, which we pray will bear fruit in their time. But the endeavor shifted something in me—though probably not for the first time, but certainly as if for the first time, to use a phrase from Marcus Borg.

While the second most ferocious storm was hanging off the coast of Florida, a different one was coming together within me. On Sunday morning I took time away from the group downstairs at St. Paul’s, Council Bluffs and presided over their weekly Eucharist. The Hebrew Scripture from Jeremiah proclaimed that the people of God had forsaken God, “the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer 2:13). The spiritual revolutionary self of my teen years had seized on this sentence of Scripture more than fifty years ago and let it drive me, all the way back then, in calling for institutional reform, especially in the Church. Suddenly it had burst into flame once more, only this time it seized  me through the eyes of this generation’s teens.

How do young people shape identity in the world we are creating? To whom do they turn for role models? We have built a system of cisterns that are cracked, including in the Church—created for power, control, self-preservation, and self-aggrandizement, and tailored to make sure we remain ahead of the game while the devil can take those lagging behind. In such a world kindness is a strong impulse, and a rare one. It gives itself away; it exposes itself to be vulnerable; it walks with the prisoners and tortured as if in prison (and tortured) ourselves ( as the writer to the Hebrews reminded us this very same weekend). The Way of Love cannot be a sentimental, feel-good hashtag for our life and faith. It has to have sacrifice—self-offering—behind it, because it comes to us proclaimed in the hard form of the Cross. Jesus died in love with us all, not just as Love. And such love’s source flows from a fountain of living water. It is not stored in broken cisterns. If we are not giving ourselves away, we are drying up. And one powerful sign of our bankruptcy is when kindness strikes us as the thing my God can save.

Our convention theme this year is “Finding the Simple Way.” It’s a call to imagine our faith as if for the first time, to forsake broken cisterns that do not fulfil God’s life-giving purpose, and to recover the fountain of living water, the Spirit to whom we are connected in Christ at baptism. It’s what the war-torn and poverty stricken migrant culture of our world is demanding. It’s what the incessant pounding of destructive hurricanes and other as yet unseen impacts of our breaking, fragile home of a planet is demanding. It’s what the tragic consequences of our idolatrous loyalties to ourselves apart from others is demanding. It’s what the endless stream of new generations seeking nurture, direction and their becoming is demanding. And it is what my God (who) can save kindness is demanding.

In the peace and love of Christ,

+Alan
The Rt. Rev. Alan Scarfe, Bishop of Iowa

More news of mass shootings

No one wanted to wake up this morning to the news of more mass shootings, this time in Dayton and El Paso. And certainly not after a joyous wedding celebration the night before of our friend Mel Schlachter and his new bride Ellie Butz.

I can assume that we are directing our prayers into our worship this Sunday. But do we call our senators back to do their duty in passing legislation sitting on their desks for universal background checks? Do we seek the resuming of bans of military-style weapons?

“Guns don’t kill people; people do” and if so, then let’s detach people from the guns and do the reputation of the guns a favor. Other nations do it well while also honoring the recreational use of guns.

There are deeper issues as well that relate to our addiction to violence and the cultural conditions that stoke racial hatred and create mental imbalance and alienation.

Even as a news show was focusing on the shootings this morning, we switched from a serious interview to a commercial in which a personified “Mayhem” vandalized a person's property and car! While Mayhem laughed as he drove away, the hapless victim was encouraged to buy insurance. It’s time for All State to ban Mr. Mayhem and for us to insist that violence is neither trivialized nor normalized in the media.

And it is time to prioritize the emergency that our own version of terrorist cells of white nationalism pose in our midst. Of course, we could begin to profile young white men but that would only continue to stoke the racial divide that the terrorists seek to promote until a race war breaks out. For a member of an inter-racial family as I am, that’s the worst of all worlds.

And I realize I haven’t mentioned Jesus as yet. Maybe that’s because I think he weeps. Because he knows the resolution to all of this is in our own hands. May we deploy the Spirit of our baptism that is “not of fear but of resolve (or power), love, and sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).

In the peace and love of Christ,

+Alan
The Rt. Rev. Alan Scarfe, Bishop of Iowa


For resources on addressing gun violence visit https://www.iowashare.org/gun-violence-prevention

Gun Violence Archive lists 252 mass shootings in 2019 (defined as any incident in which four or more people were injured or killed by a gun, without including the shooter).

August 2019

In my former years of engaging the government, media, and the public on behalf of religious freedom in Romania and other countries, I learned that journalists called August the “silly season.” A favorite story of what could happen in August was of a British reporter assigned to Czechoslovakia who was at a loss for news-worthy content that month. He made up a story that an entire “lost” brigade of Napoleon’s army had been found at the bottom of a frozen lake! Everything had been preserved by the ice. He made up a detailed accounting of the lost brigade that had wandered off-route heading to or returning from Russia! To his shock, he received a wire from head office indicating “Photographer being dispatched immediately.” To which he as quickly replied, “Lake in forbidden military zone!”

Of course, we don’t need a silly season any more. It seems that our newsfeed is in constant motion,
throwing up “the precious and the vile” as Jeremiah would say it. Discernment between the two is
becoming a daily spiritual practice. Our prayer for people who impact public opinion is helpful in setting
out our values as people of faith: “Almighty God, you proclaim your truth in every age by many voices: Direct, in our time, we pray, those who speak where many listen and write what many read; that they may do their part in making the heart of this people wise, its mind sound, and its will righteous; to the honor of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen” (BCP, page 827).

In a time when we all have access to impact public opinion, this prayer assumes a personal significance
for each of us. And it is often in the silence of God’s Spirit accessible in our own hearts that we better discern that direction—more than in the clamor of the whirlwind, or the shaking of the earthquake. We are all capable of indulging in silly seasons, but for those who work for the Church, it is not in August.

In August, our congregations are often preparing for formation classes and program offerings for the year. The month of August is always taken seriously in diocesan affairs as well. It’s a turning point, as we as a staff along with Convention Committee Chairs, turn to preparations for Diocesan Convention, and making sure everything is lined up so that we can take our various vacations and be set for the two-month run-up to Convention after we all re-gather after Labor Day.

Our theme for Convention and for the year ahead is “Finding the Simple Way.” It seeks to build on what we anticipate to be the inspiration from our keynote speaker, Shane Claiborne, who lives in a community which is called “The Simple Way.” I have been encouraging us to prepare for his presence with us by entering into a Summer read of his book, The Irresistible Revolution. We also hope to welcome the new Bishop of Nzara, Richard Aquilla, whose people certainly know how to be a vibrant Church on so many fronts in the simplest and most gracious of ways. Bishop-elect Richard will be consecrated on August 10th, as the whole House of Bishops of the Church of South Sudan converges on the Cathedral compound of All Saints, Nzara. The Diocese of Iowa will be represented by Elizabeth Popplewell, President of the Standing Committee, together with her husband Dennis, and also Bob North. We look forward to their joyous report as well as greeting Bishop Richard in person in Iowa.

For this Convention I am also inviting each church to report on our diocesan vitality at the congregational level. We have celebrated so many wonderful ministries this year through Engaging All Disciples, and I would like us to capture it in one document. Please look at the vitality survey, and find the appropriate person or persons to submit your report. It is our hope that the report will help us celebrate together, share our challenges, and inspire us by catching a glimpse of the Spirit at work across our diocese.

I give thanks to God for each of you for all you bring to the life of the Church, and wish you rich blessings as you move more deeply into the late summer days of August.

In the peace and love of Christ,

+Alan
The Rt. Rev. Alan Scarfe, Bishop of Iowa

The Plumb Line

My sisters and brothers in Christ,

A plumb line hangs in St. Peter's Episcopal Church
 in Bettendorf, IA

“This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said ‘A plumb line.’ Then the Lord said ‘See I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by…’” (Amos 7:7-8).

You may recall these words from Sunday’s Hebrew Scripture reading. The phrase “never again pass them by” was the link with the Gospel passage for the day—the story of the Good Samaritan. That is probably one of two parables of Jesus most of us can tell ourselves; and, if we are honest, tell on ourselves. The question, who is our neighbor, was dropped over the plate in every pulpit across the Church, on a weekend when the entire nation was asking that very same question. The image of the plumb line and of God standing, interestingly “beside a wall,” begs another question: how upright is this society we are building? Against the backdrop of the demands of justice, the upholding of the dignity of every human being, the seeing Christ in each other, the insistence of the Way of Love, against this plumb line of baptismal promise—how does what we are building fare?

We all face moments, situations and people which we pass by at our peril. One such moment was created this very same weekend, with the President’s outrageous and race-baiting calls for four elected Congresswomen of color to go back to where they came from, and the very public, fear-mongering declaration of increased deportation activity, specifically in ten American cities. Of course, the Congresswomen are citizens of the United States and this is their home. And the fear-mongering was precisely that, fanning the divisions among us as we try and work out a just approach to the inevitable movement of people in a world ravaged by war, crime and climate displacement. 

Last Friday evening, I stood with more than three hundred others outside the Polk County Jail, participating in a vigil for those who have died in detention centers as they sought asylum in the United States. We heard written testimony of those who were experiencing life separated as families, or vulnerable in under-resourced and overcrowded centers. High School students cited their own poetry about the inner and outer conflict faced as Mexican Americans in a country that “loves tacos but hates the people who make them or serve them.” Standing next to me was a clergy person from the Diocese whose placard read “Prophet not Profit.” And this is the Good Samaritan challenge for us as Christians—dare we hold God’s plumb line in our hands and ask the question it begs of our representatives, institutions and of one another?

We as a Diocese are not untouched by the stuff that is swirling around us. At one Convention, I had guests at the banquet table including the Bishop of Nzara, the retired and current bishops of Swaziland, our guest speaker, an African American Bishop of the United Methodist Church, and my wife and daughter. “Looks like you have to be black to be at the bishop’s table,” someone was overheard quipping. If I had heard, my response would have been, “And you have to be black to be a member of my immediate family.” Being told to go back home can come from any direction—I have received such invitations from the liberal side for not following their form of correctness, and I have received them from conservatives for my “liberal ways” and especially my approach to gun safety. 

So, where and how do we hold the plumb line? How do we find the courage not to pass by the suffering on the road? Love is an act of will not emotion. And one simple act of love for the human condition is not to let this moment pass us by. 

There are people who can help us. One of the most impactful diocesan institutions to be established in recent years is the Beloved Community Initiative located in Old Brick, Iowa City. Its founders, Meg Wagner and Susanne Watson-Epting, have gathered a broad range of advisors from the diocese and the community to create a multi-faceted community initiative that embraces our racial past, asks the questions of reconciliation and reparation to native and former enslaved peoples, and seeks to educate the Diocese on how we might work at dismantling racism. Visit their web-site and see their great work. Sign up for the dismantling racism workshops when they come to your Chapter. Others, like young people at the Cathedral in Des Moines, have joined hands with partners like the American Friends Service Committeewho were the chief organizers of the vigil last Friday. Or look out for the next “We are Church Confessing” gathering. These young people from the Cathedral simply offer to accompany members of the community on their appointments to the immigration office. Visit IowaShare.org for resources to support you and church in action.

Some of you joined me in 2016 as we gathered in chapters around my visitation schedule to look at how totalitarian states on the right and left, in the Twentieth Century, coopted the mainstream Churches and national traditions and pride for their own end. We studied the thinking and evolving response of men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who were setting up a plumb line for their time. The teaching may have seemed alarmist, and its implication to be a lack of trust and understanding of the power of democracy. But it was and remains a plumb line; and one which marks the current state of affairs to be tilting dangerously. 

Jesus responded to every question of the lawyer who wanted to know how to live the perfect life with his own question. He asked the lawyer to delve into what he already knew—what does the law say? “Love God with all of your heart. And with all of your soul, and with all your strength, and with all you mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” This was what the lawyer’s own understanding already told him. These were his values; but they were limited through partisanship. Hence when Jesus affirmed his initial response, he gave his bias away by asking, “Who is my neighbor?” We are all each other’s neighbor across the planet, not just across our backyard fence or in the PTA or at Church. Those are the places we may nurture our capacity to neighborliness, but the range of the invitation is much vaster. 

The early Church knew what they were doing when they called Jesus “Lord.” They lived in a time when only one person was entitled to that name—and that was the Roman Emperor. He was a man who ruled by fear, kept politicians in his back pocket, loved triumphal processions, and distracted the people by encouraging them to enjoy as sport seeing their enemies and their despised denigrated and destroyed in the amphitheater. To say “Jesus is Lord” was to hold up another standard by which even the Emperor was to be judged. It also got you into that amphitheater.

God did not pass by, neither did God’s people; nor does God today nor, can we. In the end Jesus made the lawyer a simple request. Having clarified who was his neighbor, and having identified him, through story, to be the anyone, regardless of where he came from and his personal identity who acted in compassion and mercy to the anyone, regardless of where he or she came from, found beaten and discarded at the side of the road, Jesus said “Go, do likewise!” And so He says to us—you know what is written, to what you have promised, now go do likewise! 

In the peace and love of Christ, 

+Alan

The Rt. Rev. Alan Scarfe, Bishop of Iowa

July 2019

“Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There shall no more be anything accursed…” (Revelations 22: 1-3a)

This was John’s invitation to walk the heavenly streets in the midst of bloody times at the turn of the first century. The shameful and angry images that cover our air waves and social media pages today remind us that behaviors which we would wish to think are things of the past can very quickly rise again to the surface and bring their hatred, violence and disruption.

On the eve of the celebration of this people’s independence from monarchical rule, we are invited to our own walk in the heavenly streets, through the gift of the expression of the values we embrace in our prayers for this nation, each of which is in itself a call for vigilant and constant action.

“Lord God Almighty, you have made all the peoples of the earth for your glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace; Give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.” (BCP 258)

Even for our enemies, we pray, “O God the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty and revenge; and in your good time enable us to stand reconciled before you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen”(BCP 816)

For those serving in places of incarceration or detention, we pray these values: “When any are held unjustly, bring them release; forgive us and teach us to improve our justice. Remember those who work in these institutions; keep them humane and compassionate; and save them from becoming brutal or callous.”(BCP 826) 

And finally, in our thanksgiving litany for this national life of ours, we conclude, “Help us, O Lord, to finish the good work here begun. Strengthen our efforts to blot out ignorance and prejudice, and to abolish poverty and crime. And hasten the day when all our people, with many voices in one united chorus, will glorify your holy Name. Amen.” (BCP 839)

In the peace and love of Christ,

+Alan

The Rt. Rev. Alan Scarfe, Bishop of Iowa

Humanitarian Needs at the Border

My sisters and brothers in Christ, It seems as if more information is being made public each day about the inhumane conditions that exist in seriously overcrowded ICE detention facilities. We know that children and families who are coming to our country looking for safety and protection are becoming sick and dying while in detention. We know that governmental lawyers are arguing that children do not need to be provided toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, or bedding in order to be called “safe and secure” in a government detention center. And we know that politicians in Washington are currently debating over how to release resources to address the urgent humanitarian needs of the people who are being detained.  Our Presiding Bishop has joined with a diverse group of faith leaders in a statement to express our collective outrage and pain over the treatment of those seeking asylum at our borders, and urging the Administration “to maintain its commitment to international law and defend human rights by implementing safeguards to ensure the safety and health of all of those seeking protection in our land, especially those children who fall under our care.” How best can we respond from Iowa, as followers of Jesus who says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of the sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19)? As I did a year ago, when news broke about families being separated at the border, I commend the list of resources at IowaShare.org to you and your congregation as you look for ways to take action. In 2016, a Pew Research Center report indicated that there are 50,000 undocumented immigrants here in Iowa (accounting for about 2.2% of our workforce). On IowaShare you will find resources to help your church to welcome, support, engage, and serve those families in your midst. Included in this email are other resources to assist you and your congregation in advocating for people currently in detention.  The photo of the young father and his daughter from El Salvador who drowned arm in arm at the edge of the Rio Grande heartbreakingly illustrates the desperation of families seeking asylum in the United States and the danger they face. As hard as it is to look at that photograph, we must, reminding ourselves of Jesus' words, that what we do to the least among us, we do to our Lord. May God give us the courage to follow the Way of Love, speak out against injustice, and find ways to welcome and serve those seeking to be our neighbors. In the peace of Christ,  +Alan The Rt. Rev. Alan Scarfe, Bishop of Iowa Little children, let’s not love with words or speech but with action and truth. This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts in God’s presence. —1 John 3:18-19 (CEB)

RESOURCES FOR ACTION

FOR INDIVIDUALS 10 actions you can take to accompany undocumented immigrants. Contact Iowa representatives and senators to thank them for taking up an aid bill and urge them to reach an agreement to provide humanitarian aid for those being detained and immediately address the unsafe conditions at detention facilities. Learn more about border ministry and advocacy and how The Episcopal Church is responding to humanitarian needs at the border by registering for this webinar. Become a member of Partners in Welcome: a network and learning community dedicated to welcoming newcomers, empowering advocates, and supporting local ministries. Donate to funds like Iowa Justice for Our Neighbors or the Eastern Iowa Community Bond Project that assist community members in need of legal bond, representation, or legal counsel. Bonding out our neighbors detained by immigration and connecting them with lawyers gives them the best chance at remaining members of our community and helps keep families together.  FOR CHURCHES Share with your congregations the wide variety of resources available from the Office of Government Relations. Use the resources from Episcopal Migration Ministries in adult forums. Check out the resources for church leaders on IowaShare.org. Explore the small group curriculum, Discovering and Living God’s Heart for Immigrants: A Guide to Welcoming the Stranger, available from World Relief. Share this list of resources for immigrant families in your midst. Examine the toolkit from Detention Watch Network and the Immigration Detention Transparency and Human Rights Project to help groups organize and advocate for an end to abusive detention practices.

Do you have a resource to share that you or your congregation have found useful? Let us know at communications@iowaepiscopal.org