Deporting Clergy
Our friend Esther Yoon-Ji Kang reported this sad story earlier this week of another deportation in our city.
The latest request for the stay of removal — the third one filed by the family — details how Bartolome’s deportation would affect her husband, Edgardo Bartolome, a custodian at Moody Bible Church who also is a pastor at Filipino Immanuel Baptist Church of Chicago, an immigrant church on the city’s Northwest Side.
According to Bartolome’s stepson, Aaron, Julita Bartolome helps her husband with all aspects of the church.
“They go together to minister to people, visit people in the hospital, counsel people, or lead Bible studies,” Aaron Bartolome said, pointing out that the church caters to a lot of women, making Julita’s role crucial. “And now my dad is planning to resign because he can’t do these things without her.”
This is the second clergy-related deportation in Chicago this year that I’m aware of. It’s really hard to imagine what this accomplishes, aside from instigating fear in immigrant communities which seems to be exactly the point. I wrote about the first deportation for Missio Alliance last month.
I mentioned the 1619 Project from The New York Times last week. But by the time I had time to pick one up on Sunday they’d all been sold out in our neighborhood. I took to social media with my plea and a friend from college found one in Georgia and mailed it to me. So nice! I dipped into it last night and already am impressed with the scope of the project. It’s made me want to be aware as our sons make their way through US history in their public school educations. I assume that we’ll need to supplement what they learn about slavery. If, like me, you prefer a hard copy, you can purchase one from the NYT store online.
My book is scheduled to be published with InterVarsity Press this coming spring and this week they released the cover. Hopefully it provokes people to consider a book from a first-time author. I’ll be writing more about this as we get closer to the spring publication.
Last summer, during our family’s cross-country trip out west, I picked up Black Elk Speaks in a used bookstore on one of the San Juan islands. Then, as we were making our way home, we visited the Little Bighorn National Monument and I bought Joe Jackson’s biography of Black Elk. I recently finished them both and highly recommend them for a window into an era of our history that seems to have almost completely escaped our consciousnesses.
Today we get to spend the day at our church’s annual back-to-school fair. I hope your weekend is even half as great!