ACNA’s Christ Our Advocate Church and ICE
Sermons targeting ICE
Last week, a Religion News article got the attention of some of us in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). The article focused on the anti-ICE patrols of a family in the Chicago suburbs. To be fair, their activities included meeting physical needs of illegal immigrants. But they also included efforts, online and in person, to track ICE movements and to alert illegals and others through whistles and through social media and messaging apps. Two teenage sons in that family were particularly involved. (The article names names but I am leaving those out as those are not my concern here.)
More concerning to those of us in ACNA is that a number of people from the family’s church, Christ Our Advocate in the ACNA Diocese of Church for the Sake of Others (C4SO), apparently are also involved in anti-ICE tracking. From the article:
[The mom’s] outreach to Denisse is part of a project that bubbled up in [her] church, Christ Our Advocate, shortly after Operation Midway Blitz launched. Members of the church, which is affiliated with the Anglican Church in North America, grew concerned about how the raids were impacting their neighbors and started a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal….
[The mom’s] church group, now numbering about 80 members, shares tips and maps showing how to keep track of ICE’s actions, “know your rights” information and even sermons they feel are relevant. The Christ Our Advocate group drew other Wheaton-area locals who, [she] said, were frustrated that their churches weren’t doing more.
I’ve been careful about commenting on the article as it left some unanswered questions. Are leaders of that church encouraging anti-ICE tracking and interference or not? Also, the reporter seemed a bit eager to show the anti-ICE activism was “drawn on . . . conservative Christian faith.” So I wondered if ACNA church involvement might have been exaggerated.
But some digging reveals that Christ Our Advocate’s involvement is actually more than I suspected and goes to the top of parish leadership. That is revealed out of their own mouths, from recent sermons.
At this point, I intend to go into “just the facts” mode. Many readers know I have strong opinions concerning illegal immigration, deportations, and related church activism. But at this point it is more important that ACNA becomes aware of the situation at Christ Our Advocate. My opinions can wait.
As mentioned, Christ Our Advocate is in the C4SO diocese. Located in Wheaton, Illinois, it is led by Ron and Emily McGowin and Aaron Harrison. In the sermons I will mention, only Aaron Harrison’s are under his name. Other sermons do not list the name of the preacher. Those are likely by one of the McGowins, and sometimes the text indicates which one.
On August 31st of this year, the text indicates that probably Ron McGowin was the preacher of the sermon “Stories of Status.” It contained the following paragraph.
Like Jesus, the most vulnerable in our communities, and across the U.S. know what if feels like to live under surveillance. Students under surveillance from armed resource officers in their schools because of the threat of gun violence. Kids afraid their undocumented parent won’t be there to get them off the bus after school. People concerned leaving their house because of armed National Guard roaming their streets. Legal US citizens afraid to walk through their cities because masked I.C.E. agents have been given freedom to snatch and grab, harass, and brutalize with impunity. And now, the President is threatening to deploy his gestapo to Chicago.
Thus ICE agents were vilified from the pulpit and even characterized as “gestapo.” And President Trump was vilified along with them. On September 21st, Emily McGowin’s sermon “On Kingdom Shrewdness” began with more vilification of ICE.
I’ve lost count of the number of times over the past few years that I’ve come forward to preach feeling like we’re in a crisis. And here we are again. ICE is in our neighborhoods terrorizing our people and abducting our neighbors. Many of you have spent this past week doing all you can in your spare and not-so-spare time to help. Who knows how long this latest operation will last.
The unsigned sermon of October 5th, “A Possible Impossibility,” began this way:
Impossible! Has this word crossed your lips lately? Maybe as you’ve assessed your news feed; or as you’ve watched federal agents attack unarmed protesters; or as federal agents drug residents, including children, out of their apartment building without clothes, loading them into U-Haul vans, separating children from their mothers; or as you contemplate what you can do about the starving children in Gaza; or how you’ll afford health care when your premiums go up 114%; or as one of our very own found out this weekend that Wheaton Grad. Russel Vought and the Trump Administration have canceled over $7 billion in Dept. of Energy research funding, only in blue states, cancelling all of their summer salary? What feels impossible for you tonight? What do you need more of to face the impossible weighing on you?
Hear me: it sucks to be rebuked: to have your privilege, racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ablism, or bad theology brought to your attention.
Beloved, make no mistake there are real mountains and mulberry trees that need to be uprooted in our midst: poverty and hunger, racism and Islamophobia, sexism and homophobia, white supremacy and Christian nationalism, medical misinformation and first amendment violations, masked fascists marching in U.S. cites and genocide in Gaza, a government shutdown and mass shootings. This is not healthy soil to grow good fruit.
You might not be able to protest at Broadview or go out on neighborhood ICE patrols; You might not be able to give extra money or purchase gas masks, snacks, water + milk to clean off tear gas + pepper spray, or to give gas money for those on patrol. But you can decide not fund those who support these inhumane policies, you can “vote” with your wallet, and educate yourself through conversations, articles and books. For some of you, receive the grace to say + do less and for others receive the grace to say + do more.
Although the preacher at Christ Our Advocate does not here explicitly say members are going “out on neighborhood ICE patrols,” those are endorsed from the pulpit.
Perhaps more concerning is the endorsement of the Broadview protests. Here is a report on those two days before the sermon on October 3rd. Here is a September 26th report. The Broadview protests included blocking law enforcement vehicles and violence, including assaults and hit-and-runs. Of course, not everyone at those protests engaged in these illegal activities, but they were a feature of the Broadview protests. Yet the sermon endorsed “protest at Broadview” without qualification. To what extent, if at all, Christ Our Advocate members were participating in those protests is an open question. But the three Christ Our Advocate leaders co-signed this open letter supporting the Broadview protests.
On October 26th, Aaron Harrison also endorsed the Broadview protests from the pulpit in “It’s Not the Pharisee’s House”:
We are called to pursue righteousness, to do justice, and to walk humbly with God and our neighbor. At the No Kings protest, I had a sign I’ve used a few times that reads, “Be the salt of the earth. Melt ICE.” We won’t overcome evil with cleverness, memes, or namecalling (as good as that might feel sometimes). We overcome evil by being salt-of-the-earth people, rooted, neighborly, doing the mundane work of care and compassion: bringing groceries to those who are afraid to leave their apartments, driving around vulnerable neighborhoods, and even asking ICE officers to repent, as many clergy did at Broadview. That is enacting God’s kingdom.
On November 9th in the sermon “Advent Creep”, Harrison both confirms and endorses church participation in anti-ICE patrols [Emphasis mine.]:
But God’s living and active Word has this message for us: take courage. Priests at Advocate, take courage. New vestry members, take courage. Musicians, take courage. Children’ s ministers, take courage. Advocates, take courage. Patrollers, take courage. All you beautiful chefs, take courage. Teachers, take courage. College students, take courage. Single people and families, take courage. Children, take courage. All the people, take courage and work together, for God is faithful to his promises.
This was echoed a week later in the unsigned sermon “Shaken Not Stirred”:
When you’re out on patrol filming ICE and proceeding our neighbors, you are bearing witness.
Obviously, I am excerpting sermons that deal with much more. But ICE, protests against ICE, and anti-ICE tracking were addressed frequently in recent sermons at Christ Our Advocate. ICE was vilified, and anti-ICE tracking patrols were endorsed as were protests at Broadview. The preachers confirm the Religion News report that church members were engaging in anti-ICE patrols. I’ve not determined whether members have protested at Broadview.
I will leave it at that for now with apologies for an abrupt conclusion. Again, I intend this a “just the facts” post.
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lead in image: photo of anti-ICE tracking by Jack Jenkins
Mark, thank you for assembling this material so carefully. What you have presented is not merely a political concern, it is an ecclesial and theological one. The issue here is not immigration policy, or even activism, but the integrity of the Church’s witness and the sacred purpose of the pulpit.
The Church has always taught that the ministry of Word and Sacrament is consecrated for one purpose: to proclaim Christ and form His people in holiness. When a sermon ceases to call sinners to repentance, to unfold the Scriptures, or to lift souls toward God, and instead becomes a vehicle for partisan mobilization, the Church loses the very thing that makes her the Church.
It is entirely fitting for Christians to care for the vulnerable, including immigrants. That is not in question. But the rhetoric quoted here, “gestapo,” “masked fascists,” “terrorizing our people,” “melt ICE”, is not Christian proclamation. It is the language of political struggle elevated to a kind of pseudo-sacramental urgency.
And when clergy present particular political actions, patrols, and protests as if they were the necessary expression of Kingdom righteousness, they risk exchanging the Gospel’s transcendent call for the narrower demands of a political program. The Kingdom of God cannot be reduced to any earthly cause, no matter how passionately held.
The Church’s authority is moral and spiritual, not coercive or partisan.
Her task is to form consciences, not direct political operations.
Her power is the Cross, not activism.
Once the pulpit becomes a command center for political action, even with good intentions, it ceases to be the pulpit in the Christian sense. The Fathers remind us that the shepherd must guard the flock from every ideology that would claim the allegiance of the soul. That warning applies as much to the left as to the right.
The concern here is theological before it is political.
The sermons you’ve quoted represent a shift in the very understanding of what preaching is for. And that should alarm all of us who care about the faithfulness and unity of the Church.
I appreciate your commitment to “just the facts.” Those facts now call for sober reflection by our leaders, not for the sake of any party, but for the sake of the Gospel we proclaim.
First of all, thank you, Mark, for your post.
We need to remember something important: Anglican clergy are under orders. None of us functions as an independent actor. We preach, teach, and serve under the oversight of our bishops. That’s by design.
So if readers in ACNA are rightly concerned about what’s happening at Christ Our Advocate, the most appropriate next step is contacting the bishop of C4SO directly. Ask for clarity. Seek accountability. This is how our tradition handles these things.
Meeting real needs is good and biblical. But using the pulpit for partisan vilification or organizing patrols is outside the church’s purpose and requires pastoral oversight. That oversight belongs to the bishop, and he should hear from the faithful.
David Roseberry
The Anglican