A broad network of 37 Protestant and Orthodox Christian denominations will announce on Friday a campaign to mobilize its congregants — some 30 million Americans in all — to lobby the president and members of Congress to rescind the executive orders.
In a declaration hammered out over the last month, church leaders call the orders “unjust and immoral” and say they run counter to “the values we as people of faith hold dear: to welcome the stranger and assist those most in need.”
“It is imperative that we speak out against the notion that refugees are a threat to our safety,” the declaration adds. “They are not.”
The president’s Jan. 27 executive order, which he called necessary for national security, barred people from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the country for 90 days, stopped refugee admissions for 120 days and banned refugees from Syria indefinitely. The White House is expected to issue a revised order very soon.
American Christians have been divided over Mr. Trump’s order, according to a poll released last month by the Pew Research Center. White evangelical Protestants supported the order by more than three to one, the poll showed, while white mainline Protestants supported it by a slim margin (50 to 47 percent), and three in five Catholics opposed it.