Can American Churches Lead a Protest Movement Under Trump?

"On March 24, 1982, four men from El Salvador stood in front of the University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley, California, and talked to an assembly of reporters about why they had entered the country illegally and about the violence-sponsored by the United States and the Reagan Administration-that they had fled. On the same day, at Southside Presbyterian Church, in Tucson, Arizona, a similar press conference was held at the prompting of an eccentric goat herder named Jim Corbett, who had been sheltering refugees."

"part of the problem with activism today, especially on the left, is that it mostly results in large-scale flareups that quickly die out. What I've seen in the past decade of reporting on protests is that activist groups, whether they are purely grassroots or have been assembled by non-governmental organizations and nonprofits, do not have the proper economic, human, and organizational infrastructure to keep a movement going, especially at scale."

On March 24, 1982, clergy and congregations in Berkeley and Tucson sheltered Salvadoran refugees and helped launch the Sanctuary Movement, an interfaith civil disobedience effort that inspired sanctuary cities. Clergy-led organizing provided sustained leadership, resources, and networks that enabled long-term activism. Contemporary activism often produces large-scale flareups that quickly die out because grassroots groups and NGOs lack economic, human, and organizational infrastructure to sustain movements at scale. Shrinking congregations have reduced the capacity of churches to lead dissent and offer organizational backbone, weakening the church's historical role as a durable engine for social change.

Read at The New Yorker