A couple of weeks ago, after Trump welcomed an planeload of Afrikaners fleeing oppression by the black-dominated government of South Africa, the Episcopal Church in America — which had prospered through previous refugee programs involving nonwhites– immediately declared it was not interested in assisting white refugees. They even went to so far as to declare that instead they would be getting out of the refugee business altogether.
We flash forward a week and find that a similar religious organization — the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina (CBFNC)– has declared that, unlike the Episcopalians, it will assist the refugees. Responding to a request from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Marc Wyatt, director of a Baptist refugee charity in Raleigh, North Carolina, said:
Our mandate is to help welcome and love people.Our holy book says God loves people. We don’t get to discriminate. My wife and I have come to the position that if it’s not a full welcome, just like we would with anybody else, then it’s not a welcome. If we don’t actually seek to include them into our lives like we would anybody else, then we’re withholding something and that’s not how we understand our holy book.
Wyatt’s group, Welcome House Raleigh, affiliated with the CBFNC, says it will furnish two apartments for three Afrikaners, a single individual and a married couple, who are expected to move to the state.
For more, see the Religion News Service.