Click to listen to the interview with Bishop Trimble
Calling the Washington Immigration Pray-in “a very powerful and very spiritual experience," Bishop Julius Calvin Trimble noted that everyone involved was “committed to a much more hospitable and inviting approach to the issues of immigration and the ways that we treat our neighbors.”
For Bishop Trimble “it was an important Christian witness for the church and for the Bishops and for the lay persons from around the country and from across denominations who were a part of it.”
“There are many people who have powerful stories that are being played out. There are many people who are suffering. Often these are people who have been in our communities, contributing, paying taxes, worshipping in our churches. I hear these heart-wrenching stories as I travel across Iowa, and beyond.”
For those involved in the Pray-in, “there was great consensus in the importance and power of prayer. People of faith have family members and neighbors who are sometimes on the margins of society and sometimes are made invisible to us.”
In the conversation about Immigration some “people are concerned about crime. The crime that we speak of is the crime that we don’t have a humane Immigration system that allows for persons who have come here, undocumented, to have a pathway to citizenship.”
“The churches’ role is to understand the biblical witness and our historic stance as United Methodists to welcome the stranger and in most cases they are not strangers to us.”
“Extending the hospitlity of inclusion and support and prayer and welcome will result in transforming leaders helping to transform the world. As we make disciples we have to demonstrate that we are disciples of Jesus Christ.”