Gov. Nathan Deal’s vow to bar any more Syrian refugees from entering Georgia is drawing condemnation from some of the state’s faith leaders.
About a dozen of them delivered a letter to Deal's office Thursday afternoon denouncing Deal's executive order instructing state agencies to block any resettlement of Syrian refugees in Georgia. The group represents 119 Georgia rabbis, pastors and other clergy opposed to the order.
“Our elected officials have a responsibility to protect the nation, but turning away families who risk their lives to escape the destruction of war is unnecessary and wrong,” reads the letter from Faith in Public Life, a faith-based advocacy group. “We also condemn in the strongest terms proposals to discriminate against refugees on the basis of religion. The Statue of Liberty is not etched with the message ‘Christians only.’
The Georgia contingent joins 1,000 other clergy members across the nation who have signed the letter. Their campaign targets not only Deal, but the roughly two dozen governors who've pledged to turn away any Syrian refugees seeking refuge in their states. In his executive order, Deal said he was acting because "the brazen nature of the attacks creates significant concern over refugees from Syria to the United States and, specifically, the State of Georgia." Deal did not meet with the ministers who delivered the letter.
Almost all of the 66 Syrians who’ve settled in Georgia over the past two years live in metro Atlanta.
Thousands of Syrian men, women and children, many of them Muslim, have fled their homeland which has been ravaged by civil war and ISIS for years. This fall, however, what had been a steady stream of refugees out of Syria turned into a torrent, as waves of them flowed into Europe as conditions worsened at home.
The humanitarian crisis took on an ominous dimensions after Friday’s ISIS terrorist attack in Paris that left 129 dead. Authorities said one of the terrorists may have traveled into Europe in the mass of migrants. Republican presidential candidates and many Republican governors quickly called for a halt to U.S. Syrian resettlement efforts. Because many of the migrants are Muslim, some politicians suggested only Christian migrants be allowed into the U.S.
“I find it abhorrent when certain people say, ‘block the refugees,’ or ‘let only the Christians in,’” said Rita Henault, Rector of The Episcopal Church of the Nativity in Fayetteville in an interview on Wednesday. “That is not being a follower of Christ. We have a moral obligation as Christians to help those in need and in exile.”
Henault said she understood how the attacks rattled people across the globe and stoked fear, but worried about responses born of fear. “It’s human instinct to fear and it has its proper place, but fear makes us xenophobic, hateful and less compassionate,” said Henault, who signed the letter.
Before she was in charge of missions and community ministry at Peachtree Baptist Church in Atlanta, Rev. Karen Zimmerman worked with refugee families in Charlotte, N.C. Like Henault, Zimmerman said she believed much of the opposition to Syrian refugees stemmed from “fear rather than fact.”
“The refugee process is so long, it is very intense and they are fully vetted,” said Zimmerman, who also signed the letter. “It’s a two-year process where they have to prove their identities with documents throughout the process over and over again with different agencies. So if you have no papers, you’re not coming here. People aren’t just brought here and dumped. That’s not how it works.”
On Sunday, as Paris was still stunned by the horror of the attack, Rev. David Armstrong-Reiner of Epiphany Lutheran Church in Conyers noticed a couple of people in his congregation roll their eyes as he preached tolerance of the stranger.
“I said, ‘If we let the events of Paris affect how we view the outsider or the foreigner, then we let the extremists win, and if we let the events of Paris affect how we view Arabs, Muslims or people from the Middle East, then we’ve let extremists win,’” said Armstrong-Reiner recalling his sermon on Wednesday.
Though he wasn’t there for its delivery, Armstrong-Reiner signed the letter to Deal. The pastor called efforts to bar Syrian refugees, “not compatible with gospel or who we are as Americans.”
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