The whitest Biennial I’ve been to
Photograph by John-Mark Smith via Pexels
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf
Last week I participated in one of the key events in the life of the American Baptist Churches USA – the 2025 Biennial Mission Summit. There were encouraging conversations, heartfelt worship, and all the hallmarks of a fantastic event. Even so, I felt there was something amiss. When I looked around, I could not help but notice that, in my estimation, it was the whitest Biennial that I have yet attended.
It is not accidental. It is the direct result of the cruel, outrageous policy of immigration enforcement that the Trump administration has enacted. Readers will no doubt be familiar with the scenes unfolding in Los Angeles, as masked ICE agents literally kidnap people off the streets to send them to what are often for-profit detention centers like the one I protested in Jena, LA, in June.
I had some inkling that this might be the case because some of the Latin@ pastors that I had spoken to were not attending, even though they had in previous years. The culture of fear that the Trump administration is fomenting not only affects those who were undocumented, but all those with a precarious immigration status. This administration has shown it is not above going after green card holders and has even made announcements recently that it intends to target naturalized citizens. Indeed, one of the stated goals of this administration is to remove temporary protected status from Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Hondurans, converting people’s status from documented to undocumented.
As the most diverse mainline Protestant denomination, we are only whole when our entire body can gather together freely, without fear. We cannot be who God calls us to be without our Haitian, Latin@, Kachin siblings, as well as all others who are being targeted by this present administration. Without a doubt, the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is a moral emergency of the highest order, but this Biennial also shows that it impedes our ability to freely worship, damaging our First Amendment rights.
I know that at the Biennial, our leadership took all the steps it could to protect those who were being targeted. I helped create the event’s emergency action plan. Such steps are laudable and necessary during these difficult times. But emergency action plans and know your rights trainings can only take us so far. What we need more than ever is solidarity.
When we come together to worship and to fight back against the powers and principalities of this world, we can unleash a spiritual power that the most powerful forces in this country fear.
What this Biennial showed me was the incredible power and promise of a diverse religious denomination. We can and should support each other during an unprecedented attack on civil liberties not just because we are bound by bonds of fellowship and shared religious identity, but because God calls us to this holy work.
For white pastors like me, this means making use of the considerable privilege we have as religious leaders. We must not cease raising our voices against repression and for human rights, because these issues are also about our most cherished beliefs as Baptists – the separation of church and state. We cannot worship freely when an authoritarian state announces its ability to freely enter our sacred spaces to arrest our congregants. That is why my church recently signed onto an amicus brief opposing the removal of temporary protected status from many minoritized groups.
The reason why this administration has targeted sanctuary churches from day one is not because these churches shield a substantial number of migrants from the immigration enforcement. That number is vanishingly small. This administration targeted sanctuary communities because of the spiritual power of solidarity with those living in fear of deportation.
When we come together to worship and to fight back against the powers and principalities of this world, we can unleash a spiritual power that the most powerful forces in this country fear. That ought to give us some sense of the power we wield.
I will be in prayer over the coming months and years that we rise to the task and are truly the body of Christ. What affects one of our members, affects us all. In two years we will gather again. All indicators point to the fact that immigration enforcement will only increase over that time, as Republicans recently increased funding for immigration enforcement by an astonishing $75 billion through what they call the “big, beautiful bill.” It may indeed be big, but it is not by any means beautiful.
We have two years to build the sort of denomination that we want to see. Two years for us to practice solidarity and tell this administration that we decry and resist the culture of fear that they are attempting to instill. Two years for us to truly become the body of Christ, where all can worship freely.
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf is senior minister, Lake Street Church of Evanston, Illinois. He currently serves as the co-associate regional minister with the American Baptist Churches Metro Chicago. His book, published in 2023 by T&T Clark, is titled “Sanctuary and Subjectivity: Thinking Theologically about Whiteness and Sanctuary Movements.” He is also the co-founder of Challenging Islamophobia Together Chicagoland, an initiative that brings together people of all faiths to counter Islamophobia from a religious perspective.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
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