20 Minute Takes
Engaging with social justice is complicated and messy, and yet it's the invitation for all Christians. 20 Minute Takes breaks down the big and complicated and brings it into everyday life. Whether through interviews with people on the frontlines or breaking down the concepts in the headlines, 20 Minute Takes helps Christians to stir the imagination for what faithfulness and living justly can look like. 20 Minute Takes is hosted by Nikki Toyama-Szeto, executive director of Christians for Social Action.
20 Minute Takes
Gabriel Salguero & Advent Welcome: Room in the Inn
On this special episode of 20 Minute Takes, Nikki Toyama-Szeto talks with Rev. Dr. Gabriel Salguero of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition (NaLEC) about the current state of immigration in the United States, and how Christians are called to be people of welcome.
Listen in on this podcast, and check out their resource: Advent Welcome: Room in the Inn.
You can follow Rev. Dr. Gabriel Salguero on Instagram, Facebook.
You can also follow the work of NaLEC here.
20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action
Hosted by Nikki Toyama-Szeto
Produced and edited by David de Leon
Music by Andre Henry
Hello, my name is Nikki Toyamasito, and I'm the Executive Director of Christians for Social Action. And your hosts for today's special episode of 20 Minute Takes. Today, I talk with Gabriel Seguero. He's the co-founder with his wife Jeanette of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition. And they talk to us about what it means to walk during this Christmas advent season with the Holy Family, what it means to welcome the stranger, and how we can participate in God's good work and good news today. Join us for this conversation of 20 Minute Takes. I'm here today with Reverend Dr. Gabriel Salguero. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of 20 Minute Takes.
SPEAKER_01:It's awesome to be with you. Simply awesome.
SPEAKER_00:Gabrielle, you have been in the center and at the forefront of a lot of what is happening with regard to the administration and its posture, position, and behavior towards some of our most vulnerable communities, immigrants and refugees. Can you tell us a little bit about some of what you are seeing? And then also where you're seeing the Spirit of God breaking through.
SPEAKER_01:Since January, there have been some executive orders around immigration enforcement. Churches, hospitals, playgrounds have been removed from sensitive locations. There is efforts for mass deportation and detention. There's been separation of families. There's been, sadly, regrettably, racial profiling because of these indiscriminate enforcement actions. And so Nalleck has been working, as you know, NALEC is the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, which Jeanette and I founded almost 15 years ago. Yes. Working on this for over two decades, even before we founded NALEC, we critiqued the Obama administration when they had mass deportation. This is not a partisan issue. This is a pastoral moral issue. And we believe we need immigration reform that secures the border, that deals with violent criminals with due process, detains supports violent criminals, but also treats immigrants with human dignity. And this indiscriminate action, a last figure I saw was almost 70% of people who have no violent criminal records who are being active deported. And so we are, together with evangelical brothers and sisters across the country, launching a national campaign. I'm glad that the Christians for Social Action is a part of that campaign. And your leadership voice, Nikki, is a part of that, which is called Advent Welcome, Room in the Inn, which is saying, as evangelicals, we are the people who say yes, there's room in the inn for our immigrant brothers and sisters. And we could and welcome is judicious. It's circumspect, it's wise welcome, but it is welcome and it's what the gospel calls us to. So we're moving at Advent Welcome and Room in the Inn national campaign because our nation is better than that.
SPEAKER_00:And why do you think it is that Christians have a particular invitation from God to be people of welcome, to be people of hospitality, particularly to immigrants and refugees?
SPEAKER_01:The entire scripture has a thread of how God asked Christians and followers of the way, and even people of goodwill to treat the immigrants. In the Torah, remember to treat the immigrant like a citizen because you were once a stranger in Egypt. In the book of Hebrews, remember hospitality because many of you have entertained angels unaware. And Jesus himself, Matthew 25, says, I was a stranger, and you welcomed me in his his apocalyptic message to the judgment of the nations. The nations will be judged on how they treat the vulnerable. And so I think there's a prophetic and pastoral thread on how Christians should respond to immigrants among them.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it seems like it's tied even to the core identity of our relationship to God is the faithfulness of God as we also are wandering and people on a journey. How much so we should be welcoming to those who are on the journey.
SPEAKER_01:Christians themselves, Nikki, are defined as immigrant people. Peter writes to the church, to those of the diaspora, descent people, the and so we are in this world, but not of this world. So we ourselves have a self-understanding that we are a people on the move. And that Christian identity, yeah, from Jesus' very life, who fleeing persecution from Herod, from the Jewish tradition of Abraham was a sojourner. The founding of the Jewish faith is founded by a migrant person from Israel itself, walking, wandering through the desert, the exile when they return back home. And so it's in the heart of our scriptures and of our Christian identity.
SPEAKER_00:No, absolutely. I think that makes a lot of sense. I heard you say that what we're dealing with is a pastoral issue and a moral issue. What would you say to folks who are like, why is the church getting involved in this political issue?
SPEAKER_01:Because we can't preach with moral authority on Sunday if we don't care what happens to people from Monday through Saturday. We're called to a theology of companionship, accompaniment, solidarity, to walk with people in their suffering, in their hurting. And so as pastors, when families are being separated, when people's due process is being violated, when racial profiling is happening, when children are crying because they don't know if their parents are going to pick them up at school, that's a pastoral issue. Because we're called as shepherds to walk along with women, children, families, and men. And so for us, when we see a law that's broken break people, we're called to say, hey, we can reform this law. See, and here's the thing, Nikki, a lot of people are drawing straw men arguments. This means that Christians just want open borders. No. This means that Christians are demonizing ICE. No, our posture matters. We should treat ICE agents with respect. We should mourn the death of National Guards men and women in Washington, D.C. or anywhere else. We decry violence from any side. At the same time, we know how God has taught us and instructed us to walk along the protected classes of society. The widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor. All of the Hebrew Bible talks that God looks after the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor. We're just following God in his accompaniment of these people.
SPEAKER_00:I think one of the things that to me was, I appreciated that you invited CSA to participate in this Advent journey of welcome. Because I feel like there's something about the Advent season that is about waiting. It's about journeying. And I think it's such a profound invitation to both do an act of intercession. We're acting, we're praying for God in this Advent season to intervene on behalf of some of our most vulnerable brothers and sisters. As well as I think it just it's helpful for me to remember the journey of Mary and Joseph as they are journeying towards the birth of Jesus, Emmanuel God, with us. And the vulnerability of that journey, the housing insecurity, the invisibility of that journey as they are on the road, as they are in any case. I think I just really appreciated. It helped me to engage with both an anticipatory Christmas season as well as have a little bit of sorrow for what it is that I see happening in our communities.
SPEAKER_01:Advent, Nikki, is always dialectical. The arrival of Jesus in a manger because there's no room at the end, is in juxtaposition to Herod feeling threatened by that little baby and his birth, and the birth of John the Baptist. That there's a new kingdom breaking in. And so Advent has always been about the cry. You remember the New Testament says, and Rachel wept because her children were not quoting from the Hebrew Bible because the massacre of the innocents. That's part of the Advent story. There was an executive order by Caesar that everyone should be counted. There was an executive order. And so all of that is true to our scriptural narrative, at the same time. It's true of the loving shepherds and the wise men who brought gifts, right? There's always that. What are we going to do with this family that's sojourning? Are we going to bring the gifts? Are we going to see them as a gift to us? Or are we going to see them as a threat to the established order? It's always the evangel versus the empire. It's always the baby versus the seed of power. And so that dialectic is there. You have Herod troubled in Matthew 2, and then you have the shepherds listening to the choir in Luke 2. Both of those are part of the Christmas message. And so I tell people we need to celebrate Christmas because it gives us resilience that God will have the last word without ignoring the very real pangs and pains that come with God breaking into the world.
SPEAKER_00:I so appreciate that. Because I, as I've been going around in our community, we got our Christmas tree over the weekend. And I was just chatting with one of the guys that was there, and he said, We were so busy. And I said, I think people need Christmas. And at the same time, I was worried that was this invitation into escapism from some of the sorrow. So I think what you just said about you said dialectic. Is that right?
SPEAKER_01:That's right.
SPEAKER_00:That that holding that intention, that I think it helps me to feel like I can be fully present to the sorrow. And I also can be fully present to some of the hope and the joy. Anyways, I appreciate you calling that out because I think I might have accidentally just slipped into some level of escapism through Christmas. And that also doesn't feel like that honors or gives that doesn't feel like that honors Jesus.
SPEAKER_01:Power of the gospel is that it can hold tensions through the life of Christ and the cross of Christ and the resurrection of Christ. We are crossed people and empty-tuned people. The beauty of the African American church is that they compose some of the most powerful, inspiring African-American hymns with a history of oppression and slavery and Jim Crow. And so I'm a Latino evangelical. I don't know if you knew that, Nikki. I may have said that once or twice in our once or twice. Yeah. We live in the hyphen. We live in the already in the not yet. We live in in what C.S. Lewis wrote in the Chronicles of Narnia. You know, it's winter but never Christmas. It's always Christmas because Christmas is God breaking in without ignoring the suffering of people. And so it's like this. I can celebrate Christmas, even though I'm pastoring immigrant people who are afraid. I can say and say, I weep with you, I stand up with you, we'll go to your immigration hearings, we're doing advocacy campaigns. So prayer has the capacity to hold lament and hope. It's the power of the gospel that it embraces us in our concern for the brokenness of the world, but it calls us to the hope of the gospel making of all people one people.
SPEAKER_00:Gabrielle, what a gift you are. And thank you so much for sharing both your heart and your words and inviting us into this longer Advent campaign reflection and invitation. Thanks so much for joining us here on this episode of 20 Minute Takes.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Advent welcome. Room in the inn.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for joining us for this episode of 20 Minute Takes. If you'd like to learn more about the work of Nolek, please check out the website at nalec.org. 20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action. We're produced and edited by David DeLeon. I'm your host, Nikki Toyamasito, and the music is done by Andre Henry. You can find us on the web at Christians for Social Action.org. Give us five stars, write a review, and share about the podcast with your friends.
