On March 7, the LDS Church released a pro-refugee video featuring Apostle Dieter Uchtdorf describing himself as a refugee, along with stock footage of Jesus Christ literally uplifting the weary.
Why the timing?
The day before, Trump toyed with revoking the legal status of about 240,000 Ukranians who were in the U.S. after fleeing the Russian invasion.
Perhaps the church famous for sending its young people proselytizing around the world released Uchtdorf’s 5-minute video to protest Trump’s threats against refugees.
Or perhaps the timing is a coincidence, a teeny corrective to an earlier lapse. Last month, when many churches filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration stating that I.C.E. has no place in places of worship, the LDS church issued guidance to make sure bishops avoided providing shelter to anyone who might be in the country illegally.
I so wish I could believe in the first reason. Even a month ago that’s the one I would have bet on. But the church of my childhood has disappointed me in ways I hadn’t expected.
In February, I was praising the Church to a never-Mormon friend of mine who’d recently returned from a trip to Salt Lake City, where he’d grown up. He was shocked, he said, at how much more accepting some active, tightly-identified Latter-Day Saints had become. “Salt Lake City,” he told me, “it’s actually a liberal city.”
I told him that Mormons as a group tend to be less xenophobic than typical conservatives. So many people have served in Bulgaria, Guatemala, Mexico – they come to love the people, and that makes them more accepting.
The very next day, I got an email from the Salt Lake Tribune’s Mormon Land column with the headline: Faith-based groups sue Trump over orders on refugees and immigration enforcement. Voila, I thought, preparing to forward the email, this proves the case.
But then I read the article. It said 27 religious organizations, including the Episcopal Church, the Mennonite Church, and many more were part of the lawsuit. How odd, I thought, that the LDS Church wasn’t listed. This led me down a rabbit hole. Not only had the Church not joined the lawsuit to prohibit I.C.E. raids, it had actually sent out guidelines stating that if they suspect a ward member is “not authorized to work, they should avoid potential conflicts with federal law by avoiding or limiting housing assistance, not transporting the person outside the local community, and not referring the person for employment.”
When Church leadership says it’s fighting for religious freedom, it means freedom to exclude gay and trans people and other minorities, not to protect the stranger.
I just watched the Uchtdorf video you linked, and I like the way we described his experience as a refugee right at the beginning of the video — thus encouraging members to sympathize with refugees (and maybe care about them as people). It’s a little disappointing, however, that the rest of the video is about generic striving with hardships, and there’s really nothing else in it about the plight (and common humanity) of refugees.
I fear that the guidelines not to help vulnerable people will have a lot more impact on people’s actions than this short video will. 🙁
Thanks for doing this research!
This is spot on. When you mention how many Mormons have done missionary work in other countries, what you’ve described is an opportunity to love and appreciate other people. That opportunity is often ignored in place of cultural imperialism. One of my cousins did his mission in Venezuela. He moved to Houston afterward and refused to keep up his Spanish, despite having ample opportunity to use it probably daily. It simply wasn’t important to him. This isn’t the case with all conservative Mormons, but it happens a lot.
I just watched the video of Uchtdorf released on March 2. (Is that the right one?) In that piece his message was to the refugees: we know your life is difficult. You may not have nice clothes and your accent sounds funny. But if you work hard, don’t complain, etc. then Heavenly Father will help you. Hmmm….
In other words, the message to American Latter-day Saints is: it’s all on the refugees. Great post as always, Monya.