DIVERSITY | Offering a place for everyone
01 August 2008
Religious Groups Offer Wide-Ranging Services to New Immigrants
From English classes to legal aid, they extend welcome
Washington -- Religious groups always have played a key role in helping the United States live up to its reputation as a “nation of immigrants.”
They continue to fill that function today as new immigrants, many of them Hispanic, enter U.S. society. (See “U.S. Minorities Will Be the Majority by 2042, Census Bureau Says.”)
Recent estimates by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life indicate that, with some 61 percent of immigrants coming from Latin America and the Caribbean, Hispanics now account for a third of all Catholics and 6 percent of evangelical Protestants in the United States.
Church leaders determined to meet new immigrants’ needs and gain their allegiance are adapting the religious services they offer and providing a range of social services for the newcomers.
Congregations across the country are recruiting clergy from throughout Latin America, reasoning that is a way to make their new congregants feel most comfortable. The largest U.S. church of all, Houston’s Lakewood Church, has brought in Pastor Marcos Witt -- born in San Antonio but raised in Mexico -- to lead its Hispanic ministry. Witt draws a reported 8,000 worshippers to one of the Texas megachurch’s four weekly worship services. (See “U.S. Megachurches Thrive in Climate of Faith, Tolerance, Bigness.”)
At the same time, multicultural congregations are growing in number and significance. Many new congregations, the ReligionLink.org Web site reports, “are intentionally diverse racially and culturally,” in part because young people who have grown up in a racially and ethnically diverse world “expect their houses of worship to be as multihued as their schools, their workplaces, the coffee shops they visit.”
SOCIAL SERVICES
As for social services, they are offered by congregations and denominations nationwide -- and are almost as varied as they are widespread.
Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the National Council of Churches (NCC), summarizes the effort this way: “Compelled by their faith and ancient scripture to welcome all people as neighbors, church people have introduced in their communities creative and effective immigrations ministries,” offering support to “neighbors who are sometimes dismissed as ‘aliens.’”
The council includes Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, Evangelical, historically black and Living Peace churches boasting 45 million members.
Among typical services being offered by NCC-affiliated groups:
• Congregations in the Colorado Council of Churches are providing members to serve as mentors to immigrant elementary and high school students and to work with their families. The council also is developing a four-week Sunday school curriculum on DVD entitled Who Is My Neighbor? A Faith Discussion on Immigration that it plans to market nationally.
• The Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon welcomes refugees and immigrants as new neighbors, gives them temporary homes with household items and food and offers assistance as they learn a new language, complete their education and seek jobs.
• Interchurch Ministries of Nebraska offers services to immigrants, including adult forums that connect rural and urban constituents in the state, free legal services through a rural response hotline, access to a domestic violence counselor and state campus ministries to work with students.
Legal assistance programs are a common thread in the immigrant assistance effort.
Thus, the United Methodist Church offers a Justice for Our Neighbors program providing free professional legal services to immigrants in monthly clinics. The effort, the program Web site explains, is aimed at “asylum seekers and immigrants who need a helping hand to navigate the maze of rules and laws that affect their lives in the United States.”
Access to health care is another challenging problem being addressed. For example, Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska -- after discovering a critical shortage of qualified medical interpreters -- launched a pilot project with an Omaha college to provide specialized training.
Catholic Charities’ Immigration Service provides assistance from bilingual staff that ranges from document translation to application for citizenship and preparation for testing.
Individual churches also pitch in.
Twice each week, Iglesia Forest City in Orlando, Florida, partners with the local school district to offer English-language classes. The church also offers a food bank and guidance on the naturalization process.
Arcola United Methodist Church, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, sponsors annual scholarships to send needy Hispanic youngsters to a Christian camp.
Central Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, provides child care and English as a Second Language (ESL) classes to more than 60 adult immigrants; the ESL program coordinator is a Lebanese immigrant.
A DIVERSE EFFORT
Responding to an influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union in recent years, Jewish social service agencies have focused much of their effort on assimilating Russian speakers. The Jewish Community House in Brooklyn, New York, has a Russian Service Center that offers immigration counseling, legal and translation services, and citizenship and ESL classes, as well as youth and senior programs, day care, business and book clubs and health insurance information. Kol Isha, a domestic violence program based in Boston, works with Russian-speaking teens and adults, providing service to victims and outreach to the community.
Muslim groups increasingly have joined in communitywide social service efforts. The Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church , Virginia, is involved in blood drives and mental health fairs as well as joint programs to assist immigrants struggling with poverty, discrimination and legal problems. The effort, the Washington Post reported in June, reflects “the growing cooperation between area Muslim institutions and the largely non-Muslim immigrant communities that surround them.”
See Diversity-At Worship.
