Remonstrance Of the Quaker Walkers

To our representatives,

Through your action or inaction, you have permitted the intrusion of federal officers into our houses of worship to abduct our friends and neighbors. We cannot accept this transgression of the sacred; both the sacred stillness of our worship, and the divine human rights of our persecuted friends. While the voice of power slanders them, calling non-citizens criminals, stirring fears of displacement and hatred of the newcomer, we know the truth: that we are all children of God, deserving of equal opportunity and safe harbor. We know that our rights are endowed freely by Heaven, not conferred by the paperwork of citizenship.

Being ourselves immigrants, or their descendants, delivered to this land by a violent history, we cannot judge anyone else seeking freedom and shelter here today. We are bound instead by a sacred obligation to do good to one another in all circumstances. While the politics of the moment may be set against such hospitality, when forced to choose between the laws of man and the Law of God, between the politics of the moment and the politics of eternity, we will always choose to follow The Light.

As to those who say undocumented immigrants are destructive to our nation and its values, they themselves misunderstand our nation and its values. American nationhood is not an ethnicity nor a mundane coincidence of culture. It is a set of sacred principles, including equality before the law, due process, and free expression. We are an exceptional nation because we are forged from the lineages of the world, yet unified in the centuries-long pursuit of a free and just society. Our founding experiment is a state intended to provide liberty to all, protecting the inalienable rights of all people within its territories and subject to its power. Every human being that our government detains has a right to due process and a jury of their peers. No matter how often it is ignored, this is the highest civil law of our land – enshrined in the bill of rights. If this administration can defile that law by making ICE the judge, jury and executioner for any class of people, we are in deep peril of losing our democratic republic.

Civic history teaches that assaults on the rights of any group imperil the rights of the entire nation. As all people are created equal by God, which we hold to be self-evident, we condemn the cruel and arbitrary subjugation of any person. Our faith teaches us compassion for all forms of humanity, with no exceptions for human beings under the judgment of the law. The golden rule which guides us flows from the witness of That Of God in all people. It is the underlying law of all religions, the core of true morality. Therefore, whoever may come to us in fear and in need, we are compelled by conscience to aid them, giving them free access to our homes and churches. This is according to our traditions, both civic and religious, as Americans, and as Quakers. We have a responsibility we refuse to neglect: to steward the utopian projects of our ancestors, for this nation, and for the kingdom of God. In the protection of faith, in God and in our constitution, we will hold to our moral convictions as ministers, citizens, and patriots. So long as you represent us, we demand that you do the same.

Your faithful constituents,

American Friends (Quakers) among the the New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore Yearly Meetings”

This text is from the Quaker Walk to Washington website – go to their site to see more about the WALK and the original Remonstrance written in 1657.