Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Karen 0:00
Yeah, so we have this term that I did not coin, it was coined by other Latinex theologians, and it's called Abuelita theology or grandmother theology. And basically what it says is that our faith is passed down, informally, by our mothers and our grandmothers. They become the ones who teach us about the faith, who teach us about faith traditions, and who really instill in us the sense of faith. And it's worked out in the everyday. Sometimes it's called kitchen theology, because, you know, you could be chopping onions or mopping the floor and having a conversation. And, really, it's a theology of survival because what you see here in the US, you know, I write about my grandmother, she did not have the luxury of sitting in a seminary class talking about theology or you know, what does it mean when you know, good people suffer or anything like that. She only had her everyday life. She worked as a domestic worker in Los Angeles for this wealthy family as a live in housekeeper. And she worked out her faith in the everyday in the ordinary tasks, as she's seeking survival. Because she's not thriving she's just surviving, you know, kind of breaking even. I talked about that in the book too, how many immigrants; this is where we're at. But that's what she passed down to us, you know, this, this faith of survival. You know, she didn't have even a high school diploma. But she had this PhD in Abuelita theology, you know, of being able to really pass down the resilience, you know, that she had because of her faith, the strength that she received from God because of the faith. So yeah, that's what that's about.
Seth Price 2:00
The United States is something larger than we choose to admit that we are—we’re a nation, and we're entirely powerful. And with that power, comes a lot of strings. People look to us for leadership. And we like to think that we're good leaders, but we're not. Look down at the border, turn on the news and see the people that we turn away, especially my Christian Brothers and sisters, we have a faith that we don't do well. We're called to love people and yet immigration is an issue that politically, and not politically, I mean, even in the church, we discuss it in a way that we have a vehement hate for what I'll call “the other” and it's awful. I'm Seth, welcome to the Can I Say This At Church podcast. today's conversation is about that. Karen Gonzalez has written a beautiful book about a Christian view of immigration and theology that challenges my own theology that speaks to a truth that I find beautiful and challenging. So I hope that you enjoy this conversation.
Seth Price 3:46
Karen, thank you so much for joining the Can I Say This At Church podcast. I've become a big fan of yours, mostly on Twitter, a little bit on Facebook, but I like the things that you say. And you have a book coming out. I believe in, is it April?
Karen 4:02
May 21!
Seth Price 4:04
Dang it. Well, in May, that's fine. I was close. I was going from memory. And that book is also fantastic. And so I'm excited to have you on the show to discuss some of the, well, I'm trying to rightly phrase my thoughts on the book. So there’s so much in here that is deeply personal. And so there's a lot of theology in here. But there's a lot of you in here, which I think makes the greatest books, but they also are the hardest books to read and sometimes talk about. So thank you for making the time to come on the show.
Karen 4:34
Thank you, Seth. It's great to be here. I've been a fan of the show and appreciated a lot of conversations I've heard here.
Seth Price 4:41
I appreciate that a lot.
There will be people I'm certain that are unfamiliar with you, and possibly unfamiliar with the organization I believe you've worked with in the past or you might still work with World Relief, but before we get there, what is it that makes Karen tick if in for those that haven't read the book yet, and No, you haven't, because it isn't out yet. A lot of that is in there. But just in brief, what is made you, the woman that you are today?
Karen 5:07
Well, that's a great question. And I think a lot of things have, but a lot of what I've come to realize has made me is my journey of immigration, encountering God through that experience. And then also, since I've been working with World Relief, advocating and serving with the immigrant community. And I want to be careful to differentiate that from serving the immigrant community from serving alongside. And so I've been able to see what it's like to have my own community advocate for themselves and with allie, but also they're feeling empowered to advocate for their inclusion and welcome into this country; and also for the message of the neutrality of immigration, that there's blessing in it, both for the citizen that's welcoming and the immigrant is being received.
Seth Price 6:15
In the book, you walk through your upbringing and I really like how you keep revisiting what I'm going to loosely call the sacraments, you know, baptism and the Eucharist. I'm curious kind of your faith journey because you started out, well, it seems like your parents weren't extremely the most religious, but you started out kind of in the Catholic faith and then what sect or denomination do you have now? Like, what is what is home for you?
Karen 6:42
So I attend an African American Lutheran Church. And I know that sounds like what‽ But it's a city church here in Baltimore. And I did start out in the Catholic Church and then moved toward The Conservative Evangelical Church and the young adult. And after seminary, I went to Fuller Seminary, I found my way back to more liturgical churches. And I would say the church that I attend now is a beautiful combination of, you know, black church tradition, as well as Lutheran liturgy and theology. And really what drew me there was that it's fully inclusive. It includes women and leadership and includes the LGBTQ community at all levels. But it's also a church made up primarily of people of color. And that's also sacred.
Seth Price 7:40
Yeah, I often, as I look out from my church, often there's just so much, not that there's anything wrong with so much homogenization, is that the right word like there's just so much at the same at my church. And one of the things I think that we're good at sometimes is not assigning token roles to those that aren't necessarily white. Like just letting them be, and fit in. Because I have, I have a friend that used to play drums with us. And she would be like, I hate that; and she's African American, and every time that we have a song or something that has to have a different flair, I'm the token black person or the token, whatever that has to do the African drum beat or the, whatever, whatever, for Black History Month. And she’s like it just annoys me that I'm the token person that has to do that. So I would love if every church was a mix of everything, but I honestly don't know if that's ever gonna happen. If I'm talking out loud, that's very sad. That's not why I brought you on. I don't want to be sad.
So your book, The God Who Sees I like that a lot, especially because I didn't really ever and so that plays on Ishmael and Hagar those at least from as reading it. I didn't know that that's what those words meant. And like you I don't really know what my name means. I don't know if I care or not, but I'm probably gonna go But I still don't know what it means. But I know I don't know what it feels like to be an immigrant. And I don't know what it feels like to not actually already fit in with the way that the world is programmed to work. And as I get older, I've realized how true that is and how wrong that is but that doesn't mean it's also not currently true. It's a problem that needs to be fixed. And so at the beginning of your book, you kind of walk through, you know, Ruth and Naomi and how, if they showed up today at the border, like they wouldn't qualify for this Visa, they definitely wouldn't qualify to enter the country for “this”.
I wanted you for those listening to kind of break down you know, as we talk about these church figures and these religious figures and these pillars of examples that we learn from, hopefully weekly at church but at least sometimes during the year that we would not, if they showed up today coming up, you know in the caravans that are coming up semi frequently. We would have the same issues today that if we treated them like that then maybe these stories wouldn't even exist in the Bible. But I'd love if you could break that apart because I didn't know half of that, especially the way immigration works and Visas work and the U-Visas like, I didn't know any of that. So I read those portions a couple times like this is I like new information. This is fantastic.
Karen 10:24
Yeah.
You know, I love the story of Ruth and I always have I talked in the book about encountering it for the first time. And it had never been taught to me as a book that was about the story of immigrants. First, Naomi and her husband immigrate to Moab. Then when tragedy and famine strike, she immigrates back to her homeland, and she brings an immigrant woman with her a more white daughter in law, who is Ruth and the way that Ruth is treated when she comes to my Moab, to me is remarkable. You know, reading the Bible you read so many times when the Israelites refused to obey God, refused to obey God's commands and laws, and they ended up sometimes, you know, in exile as a result of it. And that's a story that's really common. And over and over again, you see God's grace and God's call to bring his people back, sending prophet after prophet to bring them back.
But in the story of Ruth, you have people of Judah, do exactly what God says. They welcomed Ruth. She's allowed to go onto fields to glean. She's allowed to have Sabbath just like God says she should. She shares a table with them. She's protected. She's not, you know, a victim of violence or harassment in the field because she's a foreigner. And she's welcomed to such a degree that she marries, you know, someone from that community. And we know for so she ends up in the lineage of Jesus, she becomes a great grandmother of King David. And it’s a remarkable story.
But I did want to draw readers to what would happen if rather than coming to Judah, when Ruth arrived at our border, and these are all the ways that people can enter our country, and she wouldn't qualify for any of them should be turned away, and she returned to Moab. Or she would die in the desert, or she would die in the famine. We don't know what would happen to her Naomi would enter because Naomi’s a citizen, and she's an older woman who's a widow, as we know, these are people who suffer great marginalization and poverty in the ancient world. Who knows what will happen to Naomi as well? And I really wanted to draw the reader's attention to that. Of course, they lived in the ancient world where these things, these laws that we have are not an effect. But I wanted people to know that of all the ways that are available to an immigrant to migrate, Ruth would not qualify.
Seth Price 13:21
So there's a line that you write just I like the word, there’s a line that you write in your book that says that there is bad Mojo between Moab and Israel. I don't know enough Old Testament. I just don't. Why is there that bad Mojo and then is there anything like that today? Like if we think about immigrants, at least coming into America, because that's where I live and so that's what most I have impact on. Like, what would be a correlate…correlate….I don't know that that word is a correlating Mojo to other countries and how would that into play?
Karen 13:55
So for the Israelites, I mean, the moment descended from Lots incestuous union with his daughters. And because of that they were banned from the assembly, Israelites were forbidden to marry more white women. I mean, they had a lot of disdain for them. And the only thing I can correlate with the New Testament is the way that people in the New Testament felt about Samaritans, right, very similar dynamic. But in our context, it might be more like the way many Americans feel about Muslims. This kind of suspicion, almost discussed and this, you know, kind of worries about national security. And along, you know, the border people might feel that way about Central Americans and Mexicans that are coming in. And just the sense of, you know, "this is our country”. You remember that journalist who recently said, you know, he's talking About the “browning of America”, and he was really concerned about having brown grandbabies. So this kind of language is very similar to what we see with the Moabites and the people of Judah.
Seth Price 15:16
Yeah. Well, I remember that journalist saying that, and I can remember other things said against, and it always strikes me as odd that it's always Muslims that are picked on, as if there aren't other religions and other cultures that that also could, I guess, be a threat, quote, unquote, to Christianity. But you don't hear people yelling about Sikhs, you don't hear people really yelling about Buddhists or Hindus, or for some reason, it's always quote unquote, “illegal immigrants” or “Muslims” and everyone else is fine. These are the only threat that matter. That may just be because the circles that I run in, just repeat what's on Fox News, and maybe that's all they care about. And so maybe that's all that I think that people care about. Maybe that's just a bad input coming into my feeds. But I feel like America as a whole really only has an issue with those handful of people. Which is funny because there is no way to stop using his words the browning of America because overall, there are I mean, people…people have so many different colors. It doesn't really matter what it's white is not. I don't know, it's a stupid analogy. It's, it's a dumb thing to say.
But also, I mean, Muslims are coming to America, regardless of whether or not we want them to. And if we don't prepare for it, it's gonna be an awful thing. Like you have to figure out a way to integrate with people that don't necessarily agree with you on everything without blowing each other up, or yelling each other, or picking fights with each other or building fences in between our property lines, like we want to build walls along our government lines. I feel like when I watch people bicker about all that it's like me watching my children bicker. Like I'm not entirely certain why y'all are arguing about this, this doesn't really matter who's holding the remote or it doesn't really matter what God you're praying to. Let's talk about this. Let's figure out what we can learn from each other. And possibly love each other.
Karen 17:18
Right! And the fact that it’s a simple thing that happens all the time. You know, we have these movements back and forth from welcoming immigrants and reveling in this, you know, legacy of our nation as one of immigrants, which I have trouble with that because it erases black Americans brought here in chains and it erases Indigenous people who have always been here. But we seem to have this sort of immigrant amnesia groups. As every new group has come to America, they've experienced the same thing. It's almost, you know, there was the same attitude toward Italians, toward Polish people, toward Eastern European Jewish people. No, no, yeah, that's the kind of movement from xenophobia to philoxenia back and forth of like you know, reveling in our past but being suspicious of current immigrants.
Seth Price 18:03
So it's like you knew where I wanted to go because in bold here, you can't see it but in bold because I can't make my notes show up on my laptop, so I have a new wrote down Boaz practices true hospitality, which I think is the hope and the goal for Christians today, where you say "philoxenia, as it's called in the New Testament, is a love of strangers and foreigners versus xenophobia”, which is the exact opposite, but I don't honestly think that many people especially and I feel like you're similar in age to me, you know, under 40. Those aren't words that we really talk about, or even know what they mean. And I think other people operate from one of those two extremes and they don't even know that they are. And so what does that mean to act as with a with a posture of philoxenia, as opposed to xenophobia?
Karen 19:00
Philoxenia is really a love and welcome of immigrants. And it really stems from just the way that many of us give to the church, out of obedience to God and out of trust, that there will be enough. That God will provide for us despite our generosity. It's the same with philoxenia except we're giving of our country, we're giving a lot of resources, and we're giving up our very selves. And so it's trusting in God, that there will be enough resources for us that our countries will and then it won't take from us in any way, right to welcome immigrants. And so we welcome them into our communities. We treat them justly. We allow them to work without exploitation.
You know, in Ruth, you see that Ruth does the work that everyone else does. But I know in my city in Baltimore, immigrants do the work nobody else wants to do? And that is different from what you see in the ancient world, you know, God said, Yes, agricultural work it's very hard work. But it's exactly the kind of work everybody else is doing. So it's not especially difficult for her because she's an immigrant. And there's no exploitation. There's no “Oh, we're gonna take this from you”.
I have a good friend who was just telling me about her uncle who worked for a Christian man for 20 years. Her uncle was an immigrant from Mexico. And after 20 years, he changed jobs. And when he changed jobs, he went up to his boss, and he said, I think you made a mistake with my paycheck. You didn't take out the 10% for the church. And the man was like, “what!” He's like, “yes, my previous boss always took 10% of my salary to give to the church”. And his current boss was like, “that's illegal. No, that's not right. And it's your money if you want to give 10% of it to the church. Sure, go ahead”.
But we hear stories like this all the time of immigrants, and that's the biggest crime committed against immigrants is wage theft and mistreatment at work. It's very, very common. But what you see in the book of Ruth, is she gets the same protections as every other citizen. She does the same kind of work. She's treated with dignity. She's treated with respect, she's protected like every other worker. It's really the way it should be for all of us, because I think even in that case, you know, the oppressor loses his or her own humanity in oppressing the immigrant and taking, you know, from them. And of course, the immigrant is exploited and is robbed of wages they rightfully earned, and mistreated. Yeah, I think the way that our system exists currently this outdated immigration system that we have, it creates these conditions that are ripe for exploitation?
Seth Price 22:02
This isn't a theological question but I wanted to ask you because you have more knowledge on the subject than I do. If you could change one thing about our immigration system like today, tomorrow, it's law, and it's done, and anything that doesn't fit into that law is immediately absolved. If you could change one thing, Karen, what would it be like? This is what I've done. And it's done. For me in banking, it would be redlining, if I got rid of redlining and make it effective in history. So many of the populations in the way that we apportion schools, and tax revenue, and dollars, and gerrymandering, so much of that would be different that the entire climate and landscape of America would look different, just from getting rid of redlining. If you don't know what redlining is, and you're listening, I'm sorry, I usually don't talk about banking, but that's actually what I get paid to do for a living. So if you could do that, Karen, with immigration, what would it be? What's the one thing that you're like this is the thing that when I pull this lever lives are changed immediately and irrevocably?
Karen 23:05
So if I could change one thing about immigration, it would be the racial component that made up most federal laws until the Immigration and Nationality Act, which occurred during the 60s. But prior to that law, every other federal immigration law had a racial component to it. The Chinese Exclusion Act, you know, excluded, of course, Chinese people, other acts excluded Southern Europeans, excluded Asian Americans, excluded Latinos, you might have heard of Operation Wetback and the way that it tried to keep Mexicans from crossing the border
Seth Price 23:47
Is that the actual name?
Karen 23:48
That's the actual name.
Seth Price 23:51
Oh my Lord! No, I have not heard of that. That is, oh my gosh! I'm from Texas and so I know how bad of a word that is. Like that's just an awful word.
Karen 24:00
It's a terrible word. And it's now considered this terrible slur. But that's what it was actually called by our government. And so if I could go back and and throughout all history affect that change, lives will be transformed families reunited, you know, it would change the whole game.
Seth Price 24:25
I want to say this, right? So when you get into some of your upbringing, you talk about your baptism. And you go and you revisit baptism a couple times along with some of the other sacraments. as I alluded to earlier, there's a part where you say, and so I wrote this down, “wishing we could return to a faith of childhood faith when it was easy faith when we didn't know what the words meant”. And then after that, you say something that I would like you to break apart. And so you say “though, I had little understanding of this sacred initiation into the church”, and by that I believe you mean baptism in the Catholic Church. So "though I had little understanding of this sacred initiation into The Church, the body of Christ, it was a beginning. Baptism set me on a path toward knowing God”. I've never really heard baptism done that way. Because the way I was baptized, it was my choice. And so can you break that apart? Like, how did something from possibly when I don't even remember how old you were, but you had to be young?
Karen 25:18
I was like six months old or something?
Seth Price 25:20
So how can something that happens in that way, especially when you've said that your parents don't really, you know, aren't really practicing, I guess, is probably the best word. And if I'm wrong on that, correct me, how would it…how could that be the beginning on setting you toward a path?
Karen 25:36
Sure. Well, I firmly believe that most Protestants, particularly those outside of mainline denominations, really misunderstand baptism in you know, in the church historically. And of course, I'm talking about the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, even the early Protestant church, it was seen as a sacred rite of initiation into the church. And the reason that infants were baptized is because it was seen as the parents having this desire, right to dedicate this child, to the church and to committing to raising this child within the church and its values. And so, my parents were not really Christian. They were nominal Catholics, cultural Catholics I would say, and so they baptized me as more of a tradition than anything. But the interesting thing is that I have always felt drawn to God because in fact, even though it did not mean anything to them, other than celebration of family, it didn't mean anything spiritually—God knew me. And there was a sense of calling and longing for God that I always had an interest in knowing God. And being part of the church, you know, I went to Catholic schools. I went to Catholic parish and I did my first communion there. I mean, you're around this environment where you are, you know, I read the same thing about the prosperity gospel, believe it or not, that a lot of people will go to these prosperity gospel churches, you know churches where they preach like God came to give us health and wealth…
Seth Price 27:23
mmhhmm.
I’m not a fan.
Karen 27:24
And initially, you know, of course, they're excited by this idea. But then a lot of these are Protestant churches, where you start to read the Bible and you encounter Jesus. Even though the church itself may be unhealthy and maybe promoting theology is extremely harmful you can still encounter Jesus in an environment like that. And it was very similar for me.
You know, my parents were not interested. But that baptism, I always know about it, and I've seen pictures of it, and it set me on this path for knowing God. When people ask me, I was like, “Yes, I was baptized in the Catholic church” because the second baptism that I talked about in the book, I see more as a confirmation because by then I did have understanding.
Seth Price 28:46
I can distinctly remember, you know, as a child being baptized and it being a big deal. I mean, my son was just baptized in the fall of last year and it's such a good thing. Because I mean, we do have those discussions and so yeah, when I read that, like it just didn't click in my head because again, of my upbringing and the way I was raised and the fact that there's so few, at least where I was from, there's just so few Catholics, at least that I was aware of. Although I feel like there's a bigger presence in that, because where I'm from in Texas, there's a huge, you know, Mexican American and just Mexican population period. One of my best friends in high school, you know, quote, unquote, “converted” out of Catholicism and Protestantism, I don't know if converted is the right word. But that's the word he would use. So I'll steal that from him. When I read that I was just not confused but more like I don’t…these two pieces don't fit together well, in my head.
One of the things that's heartbreaking and heartbreaking because I've also seen it happen locally, and I've discussed it with people happening locally is so many people that are here now that are immigrants they don't report crimes, because if they report crimes, they're instantly going to be you know, ICE is going to come and pick them up and break apart families. And you tell a couple stories in that and one of the ones that I like the most that you tell why I don't like let me get this straight. I like the way you tell the story. The story itself is awful, is a guy named Francisco that was arrested and ultimately deported because he was asleep. Instead of driving drunk, he decided to just get sleep-just go to sleep, but just be in the car keys not in the ignition so he can't be accused of driving. And then he just didn't know what the law was. And honestly, I as I was thinking back to like my college days, like I did that often.
Like, I probably shouldn't drive right now. I'll fall asleep until I wake up and I'll be fine. And it just breaks apart of family. And then you go on to relate that to Abraham is the criminal immigrant which is not a way I've ever in my entire life heard Abraham presented to anyone, in any way shape or form. And then as you walk through, I don't know if these are your words or mine. I feel like they're mine. But I put “the punk is willing to sacrifice his wife for survival”. And that might be your words. I don't remember. But he basically sex trafficked his wife not once but twice. And I don't think anyone usually talks about that. And if they do, I'm unfamiliar with it. What do you mean when you're saying that Abraham is a criminal immigrant?
Karen 31:17
Yes. And I say that knowing how deeply uncomfortable that makes people. And I say that understanding Abraham's full story and the fears that he had coming into a foreign land. But Abraham and his wife because of famine, it's always need that prompts people to migrate. And in Abraham's case, it's famine and it's the call of God. (He) arrives in Egypt, there was probably some sort of, you know, ancient sort of gates at the, at the, you know, edges of the land, or some sort of, you know, common road that many people took since Egypt was a very common place to go to in times of famine because of the Nile and fact that they didn't suffer the same when there was a lack of rain in the land.
And so, when he enters he, he presents a half truth. He says Sarah is his sister, which is a very convenient truth, but she's also his wife. And so he commits this fraud to enter this land. And then he basically tell Sarah, you know, they're gonna kill me because of you because you're beautiful and because they'll want to have you and so, basically go along with this for my sake. So she does and she's taken into Pharaoh's palace and Abraham grows extremely wealthy as a result. You know, we read in the text that he gained flocks, he gained land, he gained all of these things, while Sarah suffered sexual abuse and exploitation right and at the, at the hands of Pharaoh. And so our modern standards he commits fraud, entering crossing into a new land. And he commits human trafficking by sacrificing his wife for his own well being.
And most of us would say, you know, not only are those crimes today, but morally we would say, you know, to save himself he allowed Sarah to suffer. So it’s an extremely troubling part of the story and not a story, as you know, as you pointed out, that's usually focused on. And while it's uncomfortable, we also understand why he made these choices. You know, there was great fear, probably right, he probably would have been killed or enslaved or who knows what might have happened to him if he had said, This is my beautiful wife and I'm entering into your land. And so we take all these factors and we consider the whole story of Abraham. This is why he made these choices and in spite of this, in spite of these transgressions, God kept the promise to Abraham.
Seth Price 34:04
The tension that I had with that was (that) so many people read the Bible in a way that gives them permission to act in a way that they were already going to. Yeah, I think that's the best way to say that. So, you know, if you talk about slavery or women can't be in ministry, because there's this one passage that says that they can't and so overall they're not allowed to forget all the other women in the Bible that actually were leaders in ministry; forget about them because of this one thin. And my fear is what if it was okay for Abraham? Because we know the whole story, how would it possibly not be okay for today, with if we know the whole story three or four generations from now, if some guy in Chile, or some guy in India, or some woman in Russia, basically gets into any country because of that, how would it not possibly be okay in the same lens?
Karen 35:06
Mm hmm.
Really what at the point that I was drawing there, it's not that Abraham is an example for us to follow or even that laws are not important—because I believe that they are and they're written to guide us and protect us. Even God's laws are given for that same purpose. So it's not given as a model, but more as a these are the mitigating circumstances that drove Abraham to these desperate, wrong actions. And reading them I understand why he took those actions, I still think it's wrong. And I still think he should have trusted it his God, that his God could have finally found a way out of that situation. But do I think that this is a model for other people to follow in terms of well, you know, Abraham, it's so it's okay for me? I think there is a sense in the text, the fact that this story is shared, that this was wrong. That, you know, we get this well rounded perspective on Abraham. It's kind of like finding out what a misogynist and anti-semite Martin Luther was. It's like, okay, this is really horrible. But also he was a human being he was not, you know, Jesus, right.
And it's the same thing with Abraham. We get a well rounded view of a complicated human being who did some terrible things for survival. And so I liken it to, you know, we extend this sort of grace to Abraham because we know his whole story, and we know about his journey with God. And he's a model of faith. But when we have someone like Francisco who didn't know you could get a DUI with a car turned off and the keys in your pocket, napping…
Seth Price 36:54
And actually not driving.
Karen 36:56
And actually not driving! (Not) someone who crosses the border because their family's starving. So these are not actions that are even harming other human beings. You know, you're just he's just sleep napping in his car, letting the alcohol wear off, just seeking survival crossing across the border, which by the way, still considered a criminal misdemeanor. And yet, people take that as criminal, you know, this is a criminal person, they broke the law, and they want to enact these really harsh consequences. You know, what Francisco suffered is a real tragedy to me, because in every other way, other than having crossed the border and taking a nap in his car, he was a model citizen with within the US in the way that he lived his life in terms of citizenship, you know, his care of his neighbors, and yet, he still suffered this deportation.
Seth Price 37:56
Yeah, there's two more things that I really want to touch on. But before I do, you as a person have a lot of knowledge on the way that specifically when we're talking about the immigrant population coming to America today, that the policies that we have done as Americans have greatly impacted the reasonings that they come here. And then I find as I try to educate people on that, I'm an entirely uneffective. And so one of the favorite episodes that I've done is a multi part series with Paul Thomas on Oscar Romero. And I learned so much in that.
Karen 38:30
I loved that!
Seth Price 38:32
Yeah, there's multiple parts. I think only one part is live everywhere. But so much of that I'll tell people that and then they just don't believe me. And so as a human, not necessarily read into the book that changed the way that I view immigration. Because I still used to say one thing, but then I still had attention on the way that I acted. But the more history that I get, the more I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is my fault. Not my fault, but my as Americans fault and there's a responsibility, not to right that wrong, but a responsibility to not perpetuate more wrongness and a responsibility to reap what we sowed, I guess for lack of a better word.
So how do you speak to people that just don't have that history? Like what's the best avenue for people to dive into or to converse about that without it becoming a name calling session? Or a, you just don't like Republicans, or you just don't like Democrats or you just don't like people from Venezuela or you just, because that's what it ends up being for me, when I try to do that is you just don't like Ronald Reagan says nothing to do with Reagan. There were a lot of other people that also make those decisions. He just happened to be the president. But there's also Congress and governors and other people and other parties in in those countries as well. Like there's a lot of people responsible here. I just don't talk well to it. So for those listening because one thing as I deal more and more with immigration, I find that I’m severely lacking in history of how we got here.
Karen 40:05
Yeah, so part of what I do is I do share when people ask me, especially about my own immigration story, I let them know. And I start the book out that way for that very reason. I wanted people to know how good our life in Guatemala was, and how my parents had no plan, no desire, to ever leave our country. And I want people to have that sense, you know, and that really, for us, the push factor became the civil war that was funded by the United States.
Now, I know it was because of the Cold War. And I know it was because there was this great fear of communism spreading to the United States. But even knowing that, it's still a fact and you know, a lot of the effects that we see today are because of those choices made in the 1970s and early 80s, I always tell people, that both Democrats and Republicans have been equally bad at immigration. And Republicans have been slightly better. Because in fact, you know, George W. Bush, who had a lot of faults was better for immigration to Barack Obama. And that's fact.
Seth Price 41:20
Really?
Karen 41:22
Yeah. Barack Obama, in the immigration advocacy work, we call him the deporter in chief. Because he in fact deported more immigrants than most President in the modern era. Yeah, it's a fact. Bill Clinton-extremely bad for immigrants. He instituted the 10 year bar, which has been so harmful and kept so many people…
Francisco could be a resident and a citizen today, if it wasn't for this statute that Bill Clinton instituted, where he said, Oh, if you accumulate more than six months or a year of unlawful presence, you have to go back to your country for three years, if it's only six months, and if it's more than that 10 years before you can come back and apply for a green card, even if you're married to a US citizen, even if you have US citizen children, even if you're gainfully employed and you're the only breadwinner. So, in contrast, Ronald Reagan had this amnesty, by the way lots of my relatives were able to become residents and then citizens through Ronald Reagan's amnesty. George Bush, and I believe it's because he comes from a border state, also have more generous policies toward immigrants and immigration. He grew up with immigrants, you know, and his ranch in Texas.
And so I always tell people, look, this is not a Democrats are really good at this and Republicans are really bad. Historically, both have done harm, but the republicans are slightly winning; believe it or not, in terms of more welcoming policies. But really, we have to take some responsibility for the choices our nation made. And maybe that's the information we had back in the 70s. Communism is a threat! Who knew that in 15 years, the Soviet Union was going to collapse completely, you know, we didn't know that in 1977. And so they started funding these terrible or the cause effects of people like Romero, and lots of people in my country. And I talked about the fact that I encountered dead bodies in my neighborhood that were dumped by, you know, the military.
Seth Price 43:34
That story of that body in the river…I had to put the book down. Like I just, because I can walk out into the back well, not the backyard but walk not far from here and just there's rivers, there's a river not far from here that you can just kayak all the way to the James River if you wanted to. I can't imagine you know, going down there with my kids or going down there myself and just, well, there's a…there’s a human being in the water. Like I just can't do it. Regardless of the age I can imagine, it breaks my heart. Yeah, that tweet you said the other day where you're like I there's parts of this book that I can't read out loud. Like, I'm assuming that means that you're recording the audio book for your book. I'm assuming that that's what that means. But yeah, being that I read the book, I'm like, I think I know some of those parts, but I don't. I don't know. There's a lot to be said that you even wrote them down to begin with, in a way that it's there's so much bare in this book for you I think so.
Karen 44:31
Yeah. And for me, I wanted to tell the story, because often, if we just say things like, Oh, well, you know Seth, the United States funded this war in El Salvador and Guatemala. It's sort of nameless, faceless rhetoric. And I wanted to share this is how that decision impacted my family specifically. And not just my nuclear family, but also my extended family. You know, most everyone in my family fled during that time. And I'm hoping that the fact that people see something more personal in it will speak to them in a way that sharing rhetoric or statistics or talking about wars doesn't seem to impact people as you said.
Seth Price 45:20
Yeah, yeah. Well, and if anything, that's the way Jesus told truth says, You asked me a question. Let me tell you a story. I'm not gonna answer your question. You asked me this question. Let me tell you a story about this guy. Or let me tell you a story about these farmers. So let me tell you a story about this rich guy. So I think there's a lot to be learned from not answering questions directly, although I'm very bad at it. I'm very, very bad at that. I like to just, this is input A, here's the answer B and we're done with that.
One of the things that I most liked about your book, and I wrote it down. So you talked about the theology of survival, and like that, and Abuelita Theology I've never heard that. And so what is, is that the theology of your grandmother or like an all encompassing like theology of survival is from where we come from this is how, you know matrons that are in the leadership role talk about God? Like, break, like, I'm not familiar with that. And as I read about it, I'm like, I like this. I like this a lot.
Karen 46:22
Yeah, so we have this term that I did not coin. It was coined by other Latinex theologians, and it's called Abuelita Theology or grandmother theology. And basically what it says is that our faith is passed down informally by our mothers and our grandmothers. They become the ones who teach us about the faith, who teach us about faith traditions, and who really instill in us the sense of faith. And it's worked out in the everyday. Sometimes it's called kitchen theology, because you know, you could be chopping onions or mopping the floor and having a conversation. Really, it's a theology of survival because what you see, like here in the US you know, I write about my grandmother, she did not have the luxury of sitting in a seminary class talking about theology or, you know, what does it mean when, you know, good people suffer or anything like that. She only had her everyday life. She worked as a domestic worker in Los Angeles for this wealthy family as a live in housekeeper. And she worked out her fate in the every day in the ordinary tasks as she's seeking survival. Because she's not thriving. She's just surviving, you know, kind of breaking even I talked about that in the book too, how many immigrants This is where we're at. But that's what she passed down to us, you know, this faith of survival. You know, she didn't have even a high school diploma, but she had this PhD in Abuelita Theology of being able to really pass down that she had because of her faith, the strength that she received from God because of the faith. And so yeah, that's what that's about.
Seth Price 48:08
I liked it a lot. I'd like to end on Jesus. And so if anything from the last hour that people listen to, and as they read your book, what do you want them to take home as something that is generative in their lives that they can change; to just maybe do this slightly better? Because it's going to take there's no way that it's going to be a huge lever, and tomorrow we have it fixed. And so what would you like people to take away at the very end if they haven't listened to anything if they've checked out stop! Stop, pull over your car, pay attention you in the back row. Listen, listen in! What would be the one thing like hey, just if you don't hear anything else, do this and do it? What would that be?
Karen 48:48
I would say the one thing you should do is ask yourself where did I learn about immigration? Did I learn it from Jesus from the Gospels from the Old Testament? Did I learned it from my family? Did I learn it from Fox News? Did I learn it from social media? Where did I learn about immigration where do all the beliefs I have about it come from?
Because if you're a Christian, your views on that human issue, which is a human issue, so it's a Biblical issue, should be informed primarily by your faith. You know, what does Jesus say about this? What does the Hebrew Scriptures, what do they say about immigration? And I would say that's the one thing you can ask yourself, because I asked myself that question, and realized, I heard a lot of rhetoric from my family. I'd heard a lot of things in church circles. I've heard a lot of things in social circles. But my views were not always imposed primarily by what the Bible says and what Jesus says. I would think that is the one thing I would want people to really reflect on and think about honestly, and just really be transparent with in the presence of the Holy Spirit, you know, asking yourself this question.
Seth Price 50:13
Does your book have a subtitle?
Karen 50:16
Yes, it's Immigrants, the Bible and the Journey to Belong
Seth Price 50:19
Because I was gonna say, if it doesn't, what you just said, it's a human issue so it's a Biblical issue. I wrote that down, I'm stealing that. I just want to make sure I didn't plagiarize or copyright because I like that a lot. Like that is…that’s gonna turn into something today. It's going, it's going somewhere. I like that a lot. Because that's encompassing more than immigration. I mean, that encompasses a lot of things. Yeah. that encompasses everything because we're all humans. And so every issue we have is a human issue. Where can people connect with you, Karen? I know you're active on social media. Where can they as they're listening to this as the book is released, where can they get the book? How do they engage and wrestle with this with you if they want to?
Karen 51:00
So I have a website, Karen-Gonzalez.com. And I'm also on Twitter and Instagram @_KarenJGonzalez so they can connect with me there. I'm also on Facebook and my Facebook page is pretty public so you can connect with me there as well. And the book is available for pre order on Amazon. It releases May 21. So on that day, it'll be like you forgotten about it, and now you have a surprise.
Seth Price 51:28
So pre order now. Well, thank you for coming on. Thank you for your patience and the messes up in scheduling and Zoom being whatever it is and either way, thank you. I'm glad we finally made it happen.
Karen 51:40
Yeah. Thank you Seth! I really appreciate it.
Seth Price 52:21
Think back at that tail end there, right there at the end. If it is a human issue, it's a gospel issue. If it's a human issue, it's a Biblical issue. What if we live that way? What if we acted and treated and loved and cared for and protected and honored other people that way? Shoot would have we honored just the people in our neighborhoods that way? I don't even know what would happen. I know that the world would be different and I know it would be different instantly. I hope that you enjoyed today's conversation. If you did not or have not yet considered going to CanISayThisAtChurch.com clicking that support button in the top right become a patron of the show. You're what make the show work. If you can't do that, if you're not financially in a place to pitch in less than a very, very, very bad cup of coffee a month share the show. Rated on iTunes. Tell your friends…it helps.
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Talk to you next week. Be blessed.