“They’re fighting their way through this crazy immigration system that is ineffective, illogical, and inhumane. … There’s a wideness in God’s mercy. Since when has anybody said mercy for some and not for all? … Fixing immigration is really different than blowing it up.  … This is not an impossible crisis to solve. … We need to not be divided by our political affiliations. As Christians, we stand with Christ, who critiques all human institutions.” (Alexia Salvatierra, from the episode)

The immigration crisis on US borders reveals a deeper crisis of humanity—another example of democracy at a turning point. What should be the Christian response to the current immigration crisis? How can the individuals and small communities take effective action? And who are the real people most affected by immigration policy in the United States?

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes theologian, pastor, and activist Alexia Salvatierra. She shares stories from the front lines of immigration justice.

Alexia Salvatierra is an ordained Lutheran pastor and a leading voice in faith-based social justice movements. She serves as assistant professor of integral mission and global transformation at Fuller Theological Seminary and has been a key organizer in immigrant advocacy for over four decades. She co-authored Faith-Rooted Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service to the World and works extensively with grassroots organizations to address the intersection of faith, justice, and policy.

Together they discuss:

• Personal testimonies and policy insights based on stories of real people facing the immigration system in the United States
• The challenges immigrants face under an increasingly unforgiving system
• How faith communities can respond with faithful courage and productive grief, instead of outrage
• The global nature of the immigration, refugee, and foreign-aid crisis
• The width of God’s mercy and the effectiveness of immigration and refugee public policy
• A call to action for Christians to become “gracious disrupters” and stand with the vulnerable

Helpful Links and Resources

• World Relief – Christian organization supporting refugees
• Lutheran Social Services – Organization falsely accused of money laundering

Show Notes

• Immigration policy and the church’s response
• The impact of executive orders on deportation and asylum seekers
• Faith-based advocacy for immigrants
• The role of Latino churches in immigrant support
• How Christians can move from outrage to courageous action
• Immigration reform
• Faith-based activism
• ICE raids on churches
• Asylum seekers and deportation
• Christian response to immigration crisis
• Latino churches and advocacy
• Political fear versus Christian courage
• The role of the church in justice
• Broken immigration system
• Policy changes under different administrations

Immigration Today: Stories and Case Studies

• An Assemblies of God pastor from Guatemala, facing deportation despite three qualifying cases for legal residency—South Los Angeles
• “ That’s what we mean by a broken system, is there’s all these little wrinkles in the system that don’t work.”
• Detention at a deportation facility called Adelanto
• ”They’re fighting their way through this crazy immigration system that is ineffective, illogical, and inhumane.”
• Asylum, ankle bracelets, and “legitimate fear”
• “ They said he was a criminal because he had entered without authorization twenty years before when he was a teenager.”
• ICE agents attempting to detain a man during a worship service
• ICE and “sensitive locations”—Is a church an ICE “sensitive location”?
• Hispanic Theological Education Association
• Latino Christian National Network
• “That arrest has  provoked intense fear. …  they’re terrified to go to church.”
• The impact of anti-immigration policies on church attendance and spiritual care
• A desperate mother of a special-needs child preparing legal custody papers in case of deportation
• The economic and moral contradictions in mass deportation efforts
• “Cities that have municipal sanctuary laws are threatened with suit by the new administration.”

The Global Immigration and Refugee Crisis

• “All around the world immigration is in crisis.”
• 1980 Refugee Act
• “All the countries who signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have to take refugees.”
• The concept of “Refoulment”—”which means that you’re sending someone back to die.”
• “Not only are all refugee programs stopped, but current refugees are not getting the support that they need.”
• “ Costa Rica is a five-million-person  country and they’ve taken two million refugees.”

American Immigration During the Trump Administration

• Elon Musk saying “ that Lutheran Social Services was a money-laundering machine.”
• Current administration’s policies as “ bold, unilateral, and so comprehensive and unnuanced”
• “If the Trump administration is successful at deporting ten million people, many of whom have been here over twenty years, thirty years, um, where will we find the labor that we need?”

Policy and Legal Discussion

• The end of Deferred Deportation under the Trump and Biden administrations
• Executive orders eliminating prioritization of deportation
• The freezing of USAID and refugee support programs
• “All foreign aid has always been strategic. It’s never not.”
• “Global warming refugees”
• “The current president of Venezuela loves gangs.”
• “Fixing immigration is really different than blowing it up. …  this is not an impossible crisis to solve.”
• The bipartisan immigration bill that Trump advised Republicans to block
• Historical immigration policies and their effectiveness
• “Policy does make a difference.”
• Objection to open borders: What about mercy for Americans? A false dichotomy. God’s mercy is wide.
• “We have a number of believers in Congress who are acting out of fear right now and not out of faith.”

Call to Action

• How faith communities can support immigrants
• “Immigrant churches are taking the brunt of this.”
• Why outrage doesn’t help the process
• Ways to engage with legislators and advocate for reform
• The importance of standing with immigrant churches in this moment
• Supporting organizations like World Relief and Lutheran Social Services
• “The bulk of the people in the United States, the majority, have not had to grieve on this level. Not had to grieve with this intensity, with this constancy. Our spiritual muscles are weak—in terms of knowing how to grieve and keep going and trust God. ‘Though he slay me, I will worship him.’”
• “Encourage literally means ‘to get more courage.’ You know, to give courage, to get courage. And so I just would want everybody to stop being outraged and start being courageous.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“If I'm actually seeing you and then I'm hearing you, then it doubles the thickness of that communication moment.”

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton reflects on the full-bodied, empathetic nature of listening and the communication process. He reflects on good listening, the empathy it requires, and what it means to truly recognize and successfully understand each other.

Listening and perceiving are bound up together in a fundamental way, offering us an opportunity to enter into another’s experience, truly seeing and recognizing them and receiving who they are.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• “Listening is almost always seeing.”
• Full-bodied listening and how perception adds to our understanding of each other
• “If I'm actually seeing you and then I'm hearing you, then it doubles the thickness of that communication moment.”
• Examples of bad listening: “pinning words on the speaker.”
• Recognition for the speaker: “My listening reflects that I'm actually perceiving them.”
• The fun and joyful work of communication
• Total body experience of listening and perceiving is about empathy.
• Empathy and entering the speaker’s world and experience
• The difference empathy makes
• “Empathy, even when you're wanting to give it doesn't make it automatic.  It often has to be something that emerges out of the communication experience itself.”
• Hearing, perception, and full-bodied communication
• “How we see and receive another person’s being…”
• Achieving a communication breakthrough: “Oh, I see!”
• ”It is like amazing grace is playing in the background. And I want to say ‘I once was blind, but now I see’ that's what it feels like a real revelatory discovery.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“‘To whom much is given, much is expected.’ …  That is the core of our Christian belief.”

“I hope that people who are both patriotic and Christian are not being painted with a broad brush.”

(Condoleezza Rice, from this episode)

In this episode, Condoleezza Rice joins Mark Labberton to discuss the state of US foreign and domestic policy in light of Christian moral convictions. Secretary Rice served as the 66th US Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, has been on the faculty of Stanford University since 1981, and is currently the director of the Hoover Institution.

Together they discuss:

The state of US foreign policy and international relations

How to think about American involvement in global politics

The importance of US foreign assistance

American patriotism and Christian devotion

And Condoleezza Rice’s prayers for American leaders right now: discernment, judgment, compassion, and policy that reflects the dignity of all human beings.

About Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. She is the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel, LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.

From January 2005 to January 2009, Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first black woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) from January 2001 to January 2005, the first woman to hold the position.

Rice served as Stanford University’s provost from 1993 to 1999, during which time she was the institution’s chief budget and academic officer. As professor of political science, she has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the university’s highest teaching honors.

From February 1989 through March 1991, Rice served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staff. She served as director, then senior director, of Soviet and East European Affairs, as well as Special Assistant to the President for National Security. In 1986, while an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice also served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

For more information, visit her profile at the Hoover Institution.

Show Notes

• The state of US international relations
• “ The beginning of any administration is a bit chaotic”
• “I continue to hope that we will find a way to help Ukraine so that Vladimir Putin doesn't benefit from the aggression that he committed.”
• “The United States will undoubtedly play a different role. … That is the outcome of what's been eighty years of post World War II American engagement. … And so we need to ask, what are our values? What are our interests? And I think we're going to, we're going to see a good, solid American role in foreign policy.”
• Is the world order in the process of receiving a shock treatment?
• “ We really do need to rebuild our defense industrial base.”
• USAID: “ I'm a great believer that foreign assistance is one of the important tools in our toolkit of foreign policy.”
• “ I actually am one who believes that the absorption of USAID into the State Department is the right answer.”
• On US foreign assistance
• “A lot of what we do is purely humanitarian, purely life saving. We should. Just do that. Some of what we do is also strategic. What countries do we help to develop to be less fragile so that they don't become hubs for terrorism? …  And sometimes our assistance is to stabilize places in the world so that we don't face a security problem down the road.”
• Developing infrastructure
• “Am I patriotic? Do I love my country? Am I a nationalist? Absolutely. Am I Christian? Yes. And so I hope that people who are both patriotic and Christian are not being painted with a broad crust.”
• “But if we think about what it means to be Christian, it means to care about every human being, because every human being is created in the image of the Lord, and therefore every human being has worth.”
• “One of the closing comments from President Bush was, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected. …  that is the core of our Christian belief.”
• What is  the state of the Christian influence in American politics and life?
• Emulating the early church in establishing orphanages and hospitals, “and  to be a voice on behalf of those who are dispossessed.”
• Religious Freedom
• “When I was secretary of state, not because I was Christian, but because I was secretary of state, I would take a list of religious objectors with me to countries like China.”
• “The evangelical church has been very involved in human trafficking issues. We actually do have a problem of modern slavery.”
• “The church has a lot of potential to be a really good force in the world.”
• Condoleeza Rice’s most passionate prayers for the nation and the world right now
• “My most passionate prayer is that our leaders would have—and I actually pray this prayer— that they would have judgment and discernment, that they would have compassion, that they would lead from a position of knowing how much America has, and that they would understand that our role in the world derives from our universal belief in human freedom and that it is the only way that human beings have the dignity that they should have as having been created by God.”
• “I think one of the reasons we've had a bit of a backlash against some foreign assistance is that people wonder, ‘Well, are you thinking about Americans in the same way?’”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“ When I watch people who are what I think of as expert communicators, they are people who have this quality that they hear well, they listen deeply, and they know what kind of communication to give in return that actually seals that that was fully received.” (Mark Labberton, from this episode)

Why is it so hard to communicate? To accomplish the simple task of delivering and receiving information?

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton suggests that real and successful communication is a miracle, and an infrequent one at that. Our failure to communicate regularly demonstrates just how far we are from adequately listening to one another. Ultimately, if we want to seek the miracle of communication, we need to take the responsibility to “close the loop” and do the work of hearing, listening, and acknowledging receipt.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• Endless communication meetings talking about the failure of our communication
• News media’s failure to communicate
• Marital failures to communicate
• Parent-child failures to communicate
• Overcommunicating with too much information
• Undoing miscommunication
• “Communication is a miracle and not a frequent one.”
• Why is it so hard to communicate?
• “ In many ways, the stakes are against us when we’re really trying to communicate.”
• Ears, eyes, space, time, sounds, lighting
• How far we are from adequately listening to one another
• Acknowledging receipt of a message
• “The world is pushy. Culture is pushy.”
• Clarity of mind and heart
• ”When I watch people who are what I think of as expert communicators, they are people who have this quality that they hear well, they listen deeply, and they know what kind of communication to give in return that actually seals that that was fully received.”
• The importance of closing the communication loop
• “If I’m seeking the miracle of communication, then I have to live into the responsibility of closing the loop of communication and not just being a passive recipient of what it is that’s been said.”
• Failure to close the loop is what allows us to measuring the infrequency of true, successful communication.

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.