WHO-AM radio host Steve Deace

Deace first discussed the Ft. Hood shooting Monday on his show. In a blog post published Wednesday, Deace expanded on his ideas and offered solutions to avoid similar acts being committed in the future.

Major Nidal Hasan allegedly shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas and wounded 29 more. While his motives are still under scrutiny, he allegedly yelled ”Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” before opening fire.

Deace said news of Hasan’s religious beliefs proves that while America has “sold out our religious traditions for a secular enlightenment,” the same cannot be said of the Muslim world.

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, Hasan may have done America a favor if we heed the warnings after the fact that we ignored beforehand, which sadly cost 13 brave and loyal Americans at Ft. Hood their lives,” Deace said. “If we stop lying to ourselves and accept the grave determination of the religious ideology that allegedly drove Hasan, then those 13 Americans didn’t perish in vain.”

The first step is Christian churches in American must begin to clearly define the differences between the teachings of the Bible and the Koran.

“We are at war with an ideology that has an aberrant view of God and what he demands of his people, so why wouldn’t the church use this as perhaps the greatest evangelistic and apologetic opportunity of the age?” Deace said. “We can’t expect our politicians to know the truth if the people in the pews who vote for them aren’t hearing it from the pulpit.”

Step two is to recognize that “Islam is not a religion of peace.”

Third, there is a difference between private citizen and public servant, so while Muslims are allowed to believe whatever the wish in America, being a part of the military means swearing loyalty to the U.S. Constitution.

“Since this is a nation largely founded on the Judeo-Christian value system, following the U.S. Constitution doesn’t provide too many roadblocks for me as a Christian, but it obviously does for those who follow the Koran,” Deace said. “Soldiers and public servants should be held to a higher standard than a private citizen, regardless of their belief system.”

Islam is an ideology opposed to the American ideal “every bit as much as communism or Nazism,” Deace said. The war against “radical Islam” has been taking place for more than a decade, and there is a simple reason why it won’t end any time soon.

“Because we began this war on a faulty premise, the premise that we’re all the same and truth is just a matter of perspective,” Deace said.  “Our Islamic enemy doesn’t believe this, but is exploiting our belief in it, and is winning as a result.”

In the aftermath of Major Nidal Hasan’s killing spree at Fort Hood in Texas, questions of whether his actions were inspired by religious fervor are still unanswered. But because Hasan reportedly yelled “”Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” before opening fire, Deace believes it is a clear example of political correctness getting in the way of protecting American lives.

“I haven’t said we should purge the military of every single Muslim, but I do think we should start asking ourselves a real key question: If someone has sworn a public loyalty to the ideology that brave men and women are fighting against, why are we giving them uniforms and guns?” he said.

Deace compared allowing Muslims to serve to allowing someone to serve in the colonial army who had pledged loyalty to the British crown or to a Nazi sympathizer during World War II.

The problem, he said, is that society is so worried about offending anyone that they are putting everyone at risk.

“This is the problem with political correctness,” Deace said. “I do not believe Islam is a peaceful religion. But I also don’t believe all Muslims are warmongers. I just think if you look at this history and tradition of Islam, to come to the conclusion that it’s a peaceful religion is laughable on its face. “

Deace was particularly upset with two audio clips he played for his listeners. The first was former President George W. Bush saying Christians and Muslims will both go to heaven, “we just have a different routes of getting there.” Deace said this was absolutely untrue, and that Bush was either lying or uninformed of how incompatible the two religions are.

He then played an interview with Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey who said he’s worried that rumors and speculation surrounding Hasan’s motives could result in a backlash against Muslim soldiers.

“His concern is that we won’t be fair to people who have declared their loyalty to a theology that we are currently at war against. I don’t understand this,” Deace said, later adding: “My concern is that we know who the enemy is and we kill them before they kill us. That would be my concern. Not diversity.”

The problem is that “diversity training and gobbledygook and psychobabble and gay rights and tolerance” have taught society that people who disagree with them are hateful.

“We assume that if I think you marrying another guy is not a good idea for you and that other guy and the children you might adopt, that must mean I hate you,” Deace said. “If I think that the police, instead of interrogating child sex offenders ought to shoot them, that means I hate the sex offenders. If I think it’s not a good idea to have someone who screams out ‘Allah akbar’ to serve in the military, I must hate him. There’s no delineation between the inherent value of human beings created in the image of God and whatever phony, evil things they either believe in or engage in.”

A Department of Justice settlement bars Iowa insurance company GuideOne from offering free-of-charge benefits to people of faith as a part of homeowner and renter policies, but does not stop the practice for auto insurance.

GuideOne Mutual Insurance Company, located in West Des Moines, and two of its agents have entered into a settlement with the Department of Justice in which they must pay $29,500 to three victims of discrimination, an additional $45,000 to the government as a civil penalty and stop the alleged discriminatory practices of offering special discounts only to “churchgoers” and “persons of faith.”

The federal complaint, which was filed in the Western District of Kentucky, alleges that the company and its agents offered a special endorsement to their homeowners and renters insurance policies at no extra charged called “FaithGuard,” which provided special benefits and discounts only to select religious persons. The provision was offered in at least 19 states and used an application form that included a space for applicants to indicate their religious denomination.

“Discrimination on the basis of someone’s religious faith is prohibited by the Fair Housing Act,” said Loretta King, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “All individuals have the right to secure homeowners and renters insurance without regard to their religious beliefs, and the Civil Rights Division will continue to ensure those rights are protected.”

The lawsuit also alleges that the company’s conduct constitutes a pattern or practice of discrimination or a denial of rights to a group of persons. The suite arose as a result of complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development by two individuals, one an atheist and one an agnostic, and by the Lexington (Kentucky) Fair Housing Council, a non-profit fair housing organization. After investigating the complaints, HUD issued a charge of discrimination, and after one of the complainants elected to ahve the case heard in federal court, the case was referred to the Justice Department.

The settlement requires GuideOne to stop selling homeowners and renters insurance policies with the FaithGuard provision, to train agents of their responsibilities under the Fair Housing Act and to provide periodic reports to the Justice Department. The suit and settlement, however, do not bar the company from continuing to offer FaithGuard provisions in conjunction with auto insurance policies.

The company’s auto insurance policies for “people of faith” include special benefits at no additional charge that include the waiving of deductibles if the insured is involved in an accident while driving to or from church or a church-sponsored activity, the paying of church tithing or donations in the event loss of income due to auto accident, doubling of medical limits if an accident occurs while driving to or from church or church activity, and memorial gifts to the church in the event of a deadly accident.

On the site of Iowa Family Policy Center ACTION, the socially conservative political group known for offering significant support to Republican campaigns across the state, I found a YouTube video that scarily warns viewers of growing Muslim populations and dwindling Christian populations. It’s embedded in the sidebar of most of the site’s pages (here’s an example).

The video, which is set to gloomy music that sounds vaguely Middle-Eastern, begins with a solemn on-screen warning: “THE WORLD IS CHANGING.”

It then launches into a detailed discussion of fertility rates in majority-Christian countries in Europe and North America. The announcer talks in terms of cultural survival, pitting the a growing Muslim population against Christians in a battle to control the future of the world.

“In a matter of years, Europe as we know it will cease to exist,” the video warns. “Yet the population is not declining. Why? Immigration. Islamic immigration.”

“It’s time to wake up,” says the announcer.

In the United States, the video claims that there is an Islamic conspiracy to “evangelize America through journalism, politics, education, and more.”

Though the video never explicitly says “Christians need to reproduce more” or “Muslims should be discouraged from reproducing so much,” its implication is clear: If the world doesn’t have more Christian babies in it, Muslims will take over. If that doesn’t happen, “The world that we live in is not the world in which our children and grandchildren will live.”

This sentiment may not mirror the particularly nasty eugenicist ideology of someone like Adolf Hitler, but it echoes the softer-edged eugenics movement that was actually pretty popular in the United States and much of the developed world through the middle of the 20th Century.

Dictionary.com defines eugenics as “the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, esp. by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics).”

At the very least, the video, which I have posted below, seems to encourage something akin to “positive eugenics,” based more on religion than actual genes.

I couldn’t determine the actual source of the video, because it was published March 30 using a YouTube account that owns no other videos. (It is unlikely, though, that the Iowa Family Policy Center created the video itself, since they already have their own YouTube channel, and it’s not like they are trying to hide their support of this message.) The username associated with the account is, ironically, “muslimfriend.”

This may not be breaking news (in fact, the video could have been up on the IFPC site for months without me noticing), but I thought it deserved some attention anyway, given the socially conservative group’s significant influence in Iowa politics.

What do you think?

The ads, which said, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone,” first went up on buses Saturday and were removed by Tuesday.

Gov. Chet Culver said he was “disturbed” by the ads.

This isn’t the first controversy surrounding atheist advertisements on buses. After an ad campaign was successful at generating publicity (and a lot of controversy) in London and elsewhere in the UK, atheists and advocates of religious freedom have attempted to replicate those efforts in many cities in the United States.

According to a Pew Research study in April, roughly 5 percent of U.S. adults say they do not believe in God, but only about a quarter of those adults call themselves “atheists.”

A 2006 survey by sociologists at the University of Minnesota found that atheists are “America’s most distrusted minority.” According to the survey, they are tolerated more on the east and west coasts than they are in the Midwest:

American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity does not extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology. The study will appear in the April issue of the American Sociological Review.

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.

Edgell also argues that today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past—they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society. “It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy—and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell. Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.

Edgell believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social disorder is behind the findings. “Americans believe they share more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens—they share an understanding of right and wrong,” she said. “Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good.”

The researchers also found acceptance or rejection of atheists is related not only to personal religiosity, but also to one’s exposure to diversity, education and political orientation—with more educated, East and West Coast Americans more accepting of atheists than their Midwestern counterparts.

The study is co-authored by assistant professor Joseph Gerteis and associate professor Doug Hartmann. It’s the first in a series of national studies conducted the American Mosaic Project, a three-year project funded by the Minneapolis-based David Edelstein Family Foundation that looks at race, religion and cultural diversity in the contemporary United States.

Three Iowa inmates, convinced that they were not allowed enough time for proper religious ceremony, have lost their claim on appeal. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision released today, affirmed the 2006 ruling of U.S. Magistrate Judge Ross Walters that the prisoners were provided adequate time for their religious ritual.

Lawrence Gladson, Darrell Smith and Scott Howrey were incarcerated at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison when they claimed their right to religious assembly had been violated. The three inmates, all practitioners of the Wiccan religion, filed for injunctive relief and monetary damages, citing their rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 had been violated when prison officials limited their Samhain observance to three hours.

Samhain, pronounced “sah-win,” is the most important of eight Wiccan observances throughout the year. Coinciding with secular Halloween, the religious holiday comes at a time when it is believed the veil between life and after-life is the thinnest. Rituals associated with the observance often include attempt to commune with ancestors who have passed and a celebratory harvest feast to reaffirm life.

The Iowa Department of Corrections formally recognized Wicca as a religion in November 2002, when the courts ruled on a case brought by another inmate. Iowa prisons must now recognize Wicca as they would other religions, and allow time for practitioners to observe eight religious holidays. Four of the holidays are combined with the institutions’ weekly religious services. The other four are allowed time for a “special service” typically held in the facility’s chapel.

While the appeals court agreed that prisoners retain constitutional rights, it acknowledged that those rights are subject to limitations “in light of the needs of the penal system.” As such, it found no reason to believe that the three-hour window allotted for the Samhain observance posed a significant burden on those inmates who practiced Wicca.

The court also acknowledged that while a three-hour window was customary for religious observances, exceptions had been made to that standard for some religious groups.

“We will not address such exceptions, as the inmates have not alleged an Equal Protection claim in the present case,” the three circuit judges wrote in their decision.

On Monday night, the final night of Hanukkah, a group of about 50 people gathered outside the Dubuque County Jail where Rubashkin is being held, to perform religious rituals and light an oversized menorah.

Most of the people who peacefully protested the ruling in Dubuque, according to a report by Andy Piper of The Dubuque Telegraph-Herald, drove the 70-some miles from Postville.  But the demonstration was cut short by law enforcement officials who said that the event had gone beyond what had been expected and that they could not allow public-access areas to be blocked.

“This is very troubling for all Jews across the U.S.,” said Amy Dickel, a Postville businesswoman who helped organize the demonstration. “We think this is a new legal thing. [U.S. Attorney] Mr. [Matt] Dummermuth basically has a different legal interpretation that says if you are a Jew, then you are a flight risk.”

…

Demonstrators Sunday held signs reading “Where is the Bill of Rights?” “Equal protection under the law” and “No bail for Jews.”

“Hanukkah is a symbol of freedom and light and hope,” Dickel said. “We think this is one U.S. attorney who is out of hand.”

Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, has appealed in writing to the U.S. Attorney General for the U.S. Dept. of Justice to make a blanket policy that would prevent general use of Israel’s Law of Return in detention hearings concerning Jews.

Agriprocessors, which never fully recovered from a massive May 12 immigration raid, has been placed in the hands of a bankruptcy trustee. The trustee has resumed limited production and continues to work with potential buyers.

Palin, while lauded as a draw for conservative evangelical voters, actually fits uneasily into the theological worldview of the Christian Right. To be sure, Palin’s politics are a close, if not exact match for social conservatives. She is strongly against a woman’s right to choose abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. She is against same-sex marriage and for an expansive reading of the Second Amendment. She is a perfect candidate — so long as evangelicals are able to look past her gender.

But supporting Palin’s vice-presidential bid — and her possible ambitions for 2012 — requires evangelical voters to overlook the “complementarian” conception of the roles of men and women that holds sway among Southern Baptists and other evangelicals. Based on their reading of Scripture, they believe that men and women have distinctly different roles assigned to them by God. Women, in this perspective, are divinely mandated to serve as wives, mothers and keepers of the home. They are not allowed to serve as pastors, and they are obliged to submit to their husband in their own homes and in public.

The power of the belief that women are not eligible to lead came crashing into religious living rooms in September when more than 100 Christian bookstores, run by the Southern Baptist Convention, refused to publicly display an edition of Gospel Today magazine that featured five female pastors on the cover. The magazine had to be withdrawn from public display, said a spokesman, because the story “clearly advocates a position contrary to our denomination’s statement of faith.” Christians could only get the magazine by asking for it from behind the counter, a la Penthouse or Playboy.

How could it be that a female in the White House was acceptable at the same time that females at the pulpit posed a problem?

Albert Mohler, president of the Baptist Convention, offered an answer on his blog: Scripture is vague on the question of whether women can have public responsibilities and besides, Palin has fulfilled her wifely and motherly duties, he argued.

“The New Testament clearly speaks to the complementary roles of men and women in the home and in the church,” he wrote, “but not in roles of public responsibility. I believe that women as CEOs in the business world and as officials in government are no affront to Scripture. Then again, that presupposes that women — and men — have first fulfilled their responsibilities within the little commonwealth of the family.”

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood argued that:

The Bible calls women to specific roles in the church and home, but does not prohibit them from exercising leadership in secular political fields. Rather, the Queen of Sheba is presented in 1 Kings 10:1-13 in a positive light in her interaction with King Solomon. Queen Esther offers an even better example of a woman who appropriately exerted influence for the good of her people without holding the highest position of national authority (Esther 2:17).  In this light, we cannot categorically say that it was sinful for Queen Victoria to lead England as a single woman strictly because of her gender, nor can we condemn Governor Palin or any other woman for seeking the office of Vice President.

But, as any reader of the Bible knows, these are selective readings. Mohler and the council ignore politically inconvenient passages from the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy that make clear that men, not women, should rule.

“Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.” ~ Exodux 18:21

“Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you.” ~Dueteronomy 1:13

In the the book of Timothy in the New Testament,  a woman’s path in life is outlined as follows:

“I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting. In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;

The charitable Christian will leave aside the implications of this injunction for Palin’s notorious  $150,000 clothes shopping spree, and ask how biblical fundamentalists can accept Timothy’s teachings and still celebrate a female politician skilled in forthright rhetoric.

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.” ~ 1 Timothy 2:8-15

The answer is: Not very easily.

For those who believe that there is an all-encompassing plan by God as delivered in the Scripture, the complementarian view is fundamental. The belief in specific gender roles with men being in leadership positions over women cannot be separated from the order that the Bible says God created:

“But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” ~ I Corinthians 11:3

Yet many evangelicals, excited by the worldview expressed by Palin, twist the otherwise inflexible words of the Bible to justify their political passion.

Not all have managed to make the leap.

“Those of us who seek a biblical reformation of the family and the defeat of feminism’s vision for women look at the matter in a very different light,” said Pennsylvania pastor William Einwechter, who wrote of the “Feminization of the Family” in 2005.

“Sarah Palin identifies herself with the anti-Christian philosophy of feminism. She uses feminist terminology, identifies with feminist political objectives, publicly praises liberal icons of the feminist movement, and has built her lifestyle around the feminist ideal of motherhood and careerism. … She establishes the feminist principle that if a woman can do something, and she wants to do it, she ought to do it; there should be no constraints placed on her by her family, her church, or her society. She validates the feminist notion that it is fine for a mother to leave the care and training of her children in the hands of others while she seeks her own version of success in the world. Sarah Palin has brought to light the degree to which feminist ideology has triumphed in American culture and in the American church.”

Even on the religious right.

On Saturday three members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus will visit with community leaders and families affected by the unprecedented May 12 immigration raid and take their findings back to Congress. On Sunday opposing viewpoints in the national immigration debate are expected to collide during a rally designed to call for comprehensive immigration reform.

“I wouldn’t say that we are anticipating trouble or violence,” said Postville Police Chief Michael Halse in a telephone interview Thursday evening. “But we realize that when you have two groups of people, each passionate about a message, there is a potential for conflict.”

Conservative estimates from individuals on both extremes of the debate have the town’s current population of 2,300 temporary swelling on Sunday to 3,300 or more. The numbers alone were enough for Halse to contact neighboring law enforcement agencies for assistance.

Halse said he’s spoken with both local and state agencies. To his knowledge, there will be no federal presence in Postville on Sunday.

“Our department hasn’t requested assistance from any federal agencies,” he said.

The rally comes nearly three months after an immigration raid at Agriprocessors, the nation’s largest kosher meatpacker and Postville’s largest employer. Nearly 400 workers were detained in the raid, most of them from Guatemala. Of those detained, 300 had pleaded guilty to criminal charges within 10 days. Since the raid, three members of middle management have been indicted. Two of those are remanded until a September trial date, but appealing that decision. The third has fled the jurisdiction.

The immigration reform rally will begin at St. Bridget's Catholic Church at 1 p.m. with a prayer vigil.

The rally, which was originally organized by Catholic and Jewish groups from Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota, was advertised as a prayer vigil and march through the Postville community.

“[The rally] is a call for social justice,” said Sister Mary McCauley, pastoral administrator for the region that includes St. Bridget’s Roman Catholic Church in Postville. “This is a call to be faithful to our American and religious values.”

The Sunday rally, which was made public during a special City Council meeting when Paul Rael, director of the Hispanic Ministry at St. Bridget’s, requested permission from elected officials for the event. Since the vigil and subsequent march were planned on property that was either public or owned by the church, Rael was not required to obtain a permit. Organizing groups for the original rally are St. Bridget’s; Jewish Community Action of St. Paul, Minn.; and the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs of Chicago.

Gathering information and reporting the names of the organizations involved with the counter-rally hasn’t been as transparent a process.

The pro-enforcement rally is also scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. at Postville City Hall, roughly two blocks north of the church.

Since the City of Postville does not currently require waivers or permits for these types of gatherings, there are no documents registered with the city clerk. Halse, however, said that he has been contacted by two groups: St. Bridget’s and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Susan Tully, a national field director for FAIR, was a Thursday guest on the Jan Mickelson radio show and indicated that her group is planning a counter-rally. In addition a loose-knit blog coalition, Blogs for Borders, has been attempting to raise funds to send members into Postville on Sunday.

Tully, who did not respond to a media request from Iowa Independent, said in a prepared statement that her organization will be in Postville on Sunday “to show show that millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules applaud efforts to finally enforce our nation’s immigration laws.”

In the kitchen, Sister Mary McCauley, pastoral administrator for the region, stands next to the table and begins emptying a tote bag of notebooks, papers and the mail she picked up from the post office. Her eyes play briefly across the small envelope before she flips it and uses a finger to break the seal. One by one, she opens the few pieces of handwritten mail. Any checks inside the envelopes are placed in a stack on the table. In addition to the donations, most envelopes also contain personal notes. Without fail, she pauses to read each one, often smiling while doing so.

The nearly four weeks since the May 12 federal immigration raid at Agriprocessors have been difficult for the small Postville parish, which boasts about 100 members.

“We had been hearing rumors that there might be an immigration raid for a few days,” Sister McCauley, who serves parishes in McGregor and Monona in addition to St. Bridget’s in Postville, said as she recounted the day of the raid. “About 10 o’clock that morning I got a call and was told that it was no longer just a rumor and that the helicopters were here. I came and went to plant, although it was all blocked off. I remember talking to the chief of police and telling him that when the families were worried and concerned, he should tell them that they could come and connect with one another at the church. Well, as it turns out, they came and connected for six days.”

Although Sister McCauley laughed at the end of the statement, the initial situation, just in terms of physical space, was nearly overwhelming for the church.

“We have this little office here,” she said. “I thought we could allow people to come, see their friends, communicate with one another and answer a few questions. We had about 400 people here that first night.”

Many of those who came to the church were Guatemalan women and their children. The vast majority of those detained on possible immigration violations were men who served as their family’s backbone. The men and 48 women in federal custody had already been relocated to the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, more than an hour away by car.

“At first we just said, ‘Wow! What’s going on here?’ Then we realized that this was really needed,” she said. “The women, in particular, needed a place where they could let their anxiety level lower and be with people they knew. Many of the Guatemalan women had never been alone like that. They came with their little children, and they worried what they would do if one became sick. Their husbands had always been the family member that interacted within the community in those situations. So they had to be with one another, and we knew that being together would finally empower them to get back to their apartments.

“Each day we would kind of say: ‘We’ve been together. We’ve played together. We’ve prayed together. We’ve been nourished together. You are getting stronger. ICE is gone. You can do it.’ As we saw them gaining more and more strength from one another, we would talk to some of the community leaders and let them know that if they took steps to leave the church and get back into their own homes, the others would follow their example.”

When those taking refuge in the church did return to their own homes, the church and its congregation knew its role had changed, but was not complete.

“That first week? I refer to it as sandbagging,” Sister McCauley said. “The river was overflowing and we had to make an immediate response, which was food, shelter and presence. Then the river was beginning to lower, but things had been destroyed. Lives had been shattered. We still had a lot of cleanup to do.”

“Cleanup” has been an administrative response that includes financial, medical and legal assistance, as well as continuing to be a “compassionate presence” within the community. Last week the church hosted a legal clinic that provided residents access to about 15 immigration attorneys. Those who wished to speak to an attorney were given opportunity for private discussions that Sister McCauley hopes provided the people of Postville some direction as they move forward. The most pressing need, however, remains monetary.

“I’m here today and I was here every afternoon last week … approving bills for payment,” she said. “If someone comes to me with a rent or a utility bill — first of all, we’ve done intake interviews, so we know the status of the family and any money that might be coming in. For most of the families that amount is is absolutely zero. There has to be a decision on how much of a rent bill, for instance, we can pay. Rent bills range from $400 to $1,000.”

Sister McCauley’s eyes turned again to the pile of roughly 10 personal checks on the table. The church is currently helping about 120 people, but volunteers are well aware that there are others within the community that have not yet come for assistance. As news and pictures of the immigration raid have faded from the headlines, donations have dwindled.

“If you take the rent amounts and multiply them by the 120 we are serving, you can see that what we take in doesn’t go very far,” she said. “The current need is just tremendous, and we know that there will be future needs for legal assistance and other items like that.”

Sister McCauley said she’s been asked many times how the raid and its aftermath have affected the community and the congregation.

“I’ve thought about it and there are two words that describe it. This has shattered us, and it has strengthened us,” she said. When she opened her mouth to continue, at first no words came. Her eyes filled with tears, and she apologized as she reached into her pocket for a well-worn tissue. Her voice was soft but also resolute when she continued.

“When I say ’shattered,’ I mean that it shattered the families. It shattered the children who were running around and asking, ‘Where is my mother?’ or ‘Where is my father?’ Then there are the poor mothers who are left to care for their children. What is she going to do? How is she going to get back to Mexico? She doesn’t have any money. Should she go back? Should she remain? She is wondering how long her husband is going to be in jail. So, they are shattered, they are afraid, and they are filled with anxiety.

“At the same time, they have found strength and love, and they are giving it to one another. Our St. Bridget’s community and the Postville community and, really, the entire United States community have given strength. When we receive a letter, for example, from Los Angeles, that says that the writer is praying for us, with us, supporting us and concerned about us, then we know that we can go on another day.”

Readers wanting to contact the church should address mail to: St. Bridget’s Hispanic Ministry, St. Bridget’s Church, P.O. Box 369, Postville, IA 52162. Any donation checks should be made out to St. Bridget’s Hispanic Ministry.