National Solidarity Vigil and Fast – Isaiah 58

Bishop Gwinn, Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño (Desert Southwest Conference), and the Council of Bishops asks all United Methodists to join them as a committed people in the fight for comprehensive, just, and Christ-centered, immigration reform.   In such manner, all United Methodist are invited to participate in the Isaiah 58 National Solidarity Vigil and Fast that will begin on June 6, 2010 and continue with constant prayer and public witness through July 28.  The North Carolina Conference prayer and action will take place on week 7, July 18-24. During the week, congregations are invited to in constant prayer and action.  Possibilities include taking prayers to the streets, standing as witnesses outside the statehouse, detention center, school, and other places where the brokenness of our immigration system is most apparent.

Please review and prayerfully consider the following documents as we seek to be the disciples of Jesus, loving as Jesus loves — feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, defending the children and proclaiming the Acceptable Year of the Lord.

You can download an excellent free Christ-centered immigration reform study-guide, “For You Once Were a Stranger” at:  Christian Immigration Study.

UMC Position on Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Immigration Call to Action 2010 – NC Conference July 18

Immigration Isaiah 58 Project

Not Boycotting Arizona

*Immigration will continue to be one of the major realities facing our church as we walk through the twenty-first century. But more than this, learning how to welcome the immigrant is a ministry into which God clearly calls us and to which the Bible points us at every turn. Throughout this century our churches in the United States will find themselves face to face with some monumental tasks like:

1. understanding and confronting the causes of global migration and developing a theology of migration,
2. re-thinking their ministries around rapid demographic changes,
3. advocating for just and fair U.S. immigration laws, and
4. engaging in ministry with the poor, more and more of whom will be immigrants or their immediate descendents

For the past two four-year periods or quadrennia, The United Methodist Church has declared its support for a comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration law, and it has called all its agencies, annual conferences, and local churches to become actively involved in this ministry. The reasons outlined in that resolution go to the heart of what it means for us to be United Methodist Christians in this century.

The overall work of our denomination in this regard is coordinated and directed by the denomination’s Interagency Task Force on Immigration, chaired by Bishop Minerva Carcaño, who has been tasked by the Council on Bishops to coordinate the Council’s ministry in the area of immigration. In collaboration with these General Conference declarations, the church’s general agencies develop programs and response.  To learn more of the United Methodist stance on immigration and justice, please see the following:

UMC 2008 General Conference Resolution – Call for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

UMC Social Principles – Rights of Immigrants – United Methodist Book of Discipline Paragraph 162 – III (H)

* as noted by Rev. Jim Perdue, Desert Southwest Conference