Bekah Stolhandske McNeel is a freelance journalist living in San Antonio. She reports on education, immigration, and religion and has been published with Christianity Today, Texas Monthly, and Texas Tribune. She is the author of Bringing Up Kids When Church Lets You Down: A Guide for Parents Questioning Their Faith, from Eerdmans. She can be found on Twitter at @BekahMcneel and on her blog at www.bekahmcneel.com.
Posts By This Author
ICE Is Moving More Quietly. Clergy Resistance Is Not
Bee Moorhead was surprised by the turnout at a July 7 press conference in San Antonio, calling for free and fair elections. The event was simple: a group of clergy, standing in front of San Fernando Cathedral on the city’s Main Plaza, announcing their intention to ask individual lawmakers to sign commitments to defend constitutional voting rights. Important work, she knew, but not usually the stuff of headlines. Moorhead has been organizing clergy around the state as executive director of Texas Impact for more than 20 years, and she said she’s accustomed to being all but ignored by the media and everyone else.
“Faith leaders all over the country, and certainly in Texas, keep speaking up and what comes back is, ‘Why aren’t you saying anything?’” she said. But suddenly, there were microphones and cameras. People were listening to what the group of interfaith pastors, imams, rabbis, and priests were saying about the need to protect voting rights. Something was changing.
Moorhead had launched the policy initiative and called the press conference in coordination with national interfaith organizing group Faith In Us, which formed after clergy from multiple faiths in Minneapolis and St. Paul took a visible role in the resistance movement during Operation Metro Surge. In January, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement was overwhelming the Twin Cities, clergy there began to call for sustained national mobilization of their peers. Faith leaders invited colleagues from around the country to come and train with community organizers and unions in Minneapolis.
Faith Leaders Say End of TPS is a ‘Moral Failure,’ May Tear Families Apart
Despite preparing for the possibility, advocates still felt the grim reality set in when the Supreme Court decided to allow the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for immigrants whose home countries were previously deemed too dangerous to force their return.
Christopher Kerr, executive director of the Ignatian Solidarity Network, said in a statement that the ruling “strips vital humanitarian protections from our migrant neighbors and leaves families in a dangerous place.
“This ruling separates families and uproots students in our schools, leaders in our parishes, and friends in our communities. Catholic teaching reminds us that every person has a right to life and the conditions necessary for human flourishing,” Kerr said. “To force individuals back to nations gripped by violence and instability is a moral failure of our obligation to our neighbors.”
Faith Leaders ‘Disgusted’ by SCOTUS Ruling on Voting Rights Act
Faith leaders joined civic leaders in raising alarm over a recent Supreme Court ruling that experts say could significantly reshape how states apply one of the country’s core protections for minority voting rights. The Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais to block Louisiana from using a racially contested congressional map did not formally overturn Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, but in her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan warned that the ruling has rendered it “all but a dead letter.”
Civil rights organizations and faith leaders immediately shared the sentiment that the conservative court was continuing to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act of 1965 one section at a time.
“The Supreme Court’s decision falsely claims fidelity to the law while stripping it of its power,” said the National Council of Churches in a written statement. “By invalidating a district created to reflect Louisiana's racial and political diversity, and comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court decision silences voices that the Voting Rights Act was designed to uplift. Such an action does not restore our democracy; it wounds it. At a time when the nation should be working to strengthen representation and public trust, this decision moves us backward.”
After Chávez Abuse Allegations, Faith Leaders Refocus on Farmworkers
Anyra Cano learned a little bit about César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers movement growing up in the 1990s in El Paso, Texas, but the state curriculum didn’t go deep. It wasn’t until she became a pastor that she began to dig into the work of the legendary civil rights leaders. She knew she wanted to dedicate her ministry to social justice for the most vulnerable.
Faith Groups Plan for Major ICE Protests in Minneapolis
Clergy and labor leaders in Minnesota are calling for a “Day of Truth and Freedom” on Jan. 23, during which Minnesotans do not shop, work, or go to school. The “pause,” leaders say, is intended to highlight the ongoing violence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the state. “What is happening here in Minnesota is a horror that we’re living through, but we’ve been organizing in preparation,” said Minister JaNaé Bates, co-executive director of ISAIAH, a faith-based collective organizing the day’s events. “It’s not completely a shock.”
An ICE agent’s Jan. 7 shooting of unarmed mother Renee Nicole Macklin Good has become a flashpoint that sparked protests around the country. Bates said the federal agency has been escalating aggression in the Twin Cities for months. On Jan. 18, CBS News reported that there were 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents deployed in Minneapolis—five times the size of the city’s police force—making it the nation’s largest ever deployment of immigration officials. Bates said that as the community has resisted ICE’s presence through patrols, social media awareness campaigns, mutual aid networks, and accompaniment of immigrants to work and school, the Trump administration has escalated retaliatory pressure, threatening to send active-duty Army troops. On Jan. 9, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins notified Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey that her department would suspend $120 million in food assistance funds to the state, giving it less than a week to produce proof that it had not committed widespread fraud.
‘Hope Is Starting to Die’ as Israel Set to Expel Aid Groups From Gaza
Disintegrating refugee tents, babies freezing to death, and extreme malnutrition are samples of the horrid conditions aid workers with the American Friends Service Committee have been witnessing in Gaza as they and other organizations provide the bulk of health and human services in the decimated region. But soon even those services could be gone. Under new registration requirements from the Israeli government, 37 aid organizations are set to be expelled from the region in March.
“It’s a red flag. It’s a shining light that says things are going to get worse,” Kerri Kennedy, AFSC international associate general secretary, told Sojourners. Kennedy oversees the 100-year-old nonprofit’s work in Gaza. AFSC and dozens of other aid groups have protested the new registration requirements and warned that their expulsion is a harbinger of things to come. “I can’t imagine the horrors and the lives that will be lost,” she said.
The Only Promise Refugee Advocates Are Making Amid Trump’s Re-vetting
In late November, a child care worker at The PLACE, a refugee center in Amarillo, Texas, reported to work with a worried look on her face. She asked Brady Clark, whose community development nonprofit helps run The PLACE, if the latest announcement from the Trump administration would affect her family. She was referring to a memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service announcing it would re-interview all refugees admitted under President Joe Biden and beyond—an estimated 233,000 people.
The USCIS memo, dated Nov. 21, said the agency will terminate the refugee status of people already in the U.S. if they are found not to meet refugee criteria. The memo claims the Biden administration potentially prioritized expediency, quantity, and admissions over quality interviews and detailed screening and vetting.
SNAP Lapse Stretches Churches, Food Pantries Past Their Breaking Point
For Deidra Harrison in Nacogdoches, Texas, the lead up to All Saints Day wasn’t what it usually is. In addition to preparing for the usual church festivals and trick-or-treaters that mark the season associated with abundant harvests, Harrison and her team of volunteers were scrambling to meet a growing food scarcity created by the U.S. Government shutdown as it entered its fourth week.
Harrison is the board president for HOPE (Helping Other People Eat) Food Pantry, one of the many food pantries and food banks seeing long lines and high turnout as 42 million Americans brace for delays to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payouts.
Birthright Citizenship Is Under Attack. Christian Leaders Are Trying to Defend It
UNITED STATES - JANUARY 23: A congressional staffer sets up a posted on stage for Rep. Brian Babin’s news conference on the Birthright Citizenship Act in the U.S. .Capitol on Thursday, January 23, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA)
From the first day of his administration, President Donald Trump has sought to end birthright citizenship, meaning that being born on U.S. soil would no longer be sufficient for establishing permanent legal status in the country.
So far, three different judges have blocked the executive order Trump issued on Jan. 20, which the administration has appealed to the Supreme Court. Legal scholars have pointed to over a century of jurisprudence to indicate that birthright citizenship is too well established to effectively challenge. Despite the history, the Trump administration’s attempts have ignited small-scale debates about birthright citizenship, a debate faith leaders say has too often failed to consider the ethical and moral implications of revoking it.
DOGE and Trump Threaten AIDS Program That ‘Kept a Generation Alive’
A child plays at an advocacy wall after receiving a dose of antiretroviral ARV drugs used to prevent HIV from replicating, at the Nyumbani Children’s Home, which cares for more than 100 children with HIV, whose parents died of the disease, while providing them with housing, foster care, and PEPFAR supplies of antiretroviral drugs that accelerate progress toward achieving HIV/AIDS pandemic control, in Karen district of Nairobi, Kenya Feb. 12, 2025. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya
Steve Hoyt didn’t go to the Amecet children’s home in Soroti, Uganda, looking for a child to adopt. The missionary, engineer, and father of two went to the home for orphaned and abandoned children run by the Christian organization Youth With A Mission, to check on a child as a favor for an employee. While he was there, he noticed a baby — he guessed she was about 18 months old — languishing despite the care of the nurses.
Where Is the Spiritual Support for People Trying to Conceive?
The as yet unnamed baby born to Ruth Carter and partner John Traverse from Warrington, Cheshire, England, who are the first in the world to give birth to a baby using EEVA IVF technology, the baby girl, as yet unnamed, weighing 5lb 15oz was born today at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital.
As a homebirth midwife struggling with infertility, Abby Hall Luca intimately knows the gaps in fertility and maternity care. For 12 years she guided couples through the journey of growing their families while not being able to grow her own.
Faith Aid Groups Say Trump and Musk Have Permanently Damaged USAID
Former U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power hugs a person after laid-off USAID workers cleared out their desks and collected personal belongings, during a sendoff in Washington, D.C., Feb. 27, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
On Feb. 13, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze the billions of dollars in life-sustaining foreign aid suspended by executive order in January. The order, which cited “enormous harm” to global networks of relief agencies and the populations they serve, was met with relief by Christian anti-poverty and anti-hunger ministries. But even amid relief, the chaos of the last month has been relentless, say direct aid providers like World Vision and advocates like Bread for the World.
The LA Fires Devastated The Best Defense Against Child Poverty
A damaged children’s toy sits on the lawn of a devastated home, as the Eaton Fire continues, in Altadena, Calif., Jan. 12, 2025. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
When Shimica Gaskins first saw the single-story green ranch style house in Altadena, Calif., she wasn’t in love with the color. But she was in love with Altadena, a community where the Black middle class was not only thriving but creating the kind of social fabric where she and her husband dreamed of raising their two kids. Eight years later, the citrus trees, native plants, and family memories had made the little green house a home. And then it burned down.
I Didn’t Tell My Kids About Santa, Neither Did These Parents
A sidewalk Santa rings his bell on 5th Avenue as people gathered on the streets of New York to do their last minute shopping Dec. 24, 2001. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
In my favorite home video ever, it’s 2020 and my kids are opening their Christmas morning gifts while wearing new ski jackets, even though it was 75 degrees in South Texas, where we live. My son’s 4-year-old hands are still pudgy, and he hasn’t learned to glide his “l” sounds yet, so his raspy morning voice is extra adorable. As he unwraps his gifts, he shouts and cheers and stares at some Power Rangers in adoration.
Harris Declines to Consider Religious Exemptions for Abortion Laws
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., Oct. 23, 2024. REUTERS/Bonnie Cash
In an interview with NBC’s Hallie Jackson on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris suggested she would not make concessions for religious exemptions on abortion laws, one of her strongest allusions yet to where she plans to take the abortion debate if she wins the White House in November.
Faith Groups Respond to Biden’s Proposal to Expand Contraception Coverage
A pack of birth control pills is displayed in this illustration picture taken in Philadelphia, Penn., July 11, 2022. REUTERS/Hannah Beier
The Biden administration's proposal to require private insurance agencies to cover certain over-the-counter contraceptives is getting nods of approval from faith-based reproductive rights advocates. But it’s unclear how other religious groups will respond.
The Long-Anticipated, Inclusive, Children’s Story Bible
‘The Book of Belonging,’ written by Mariko Clark and illustrated by Rachel Eleanor, sits on a shelf. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Ross.
Early in The Book of Belonging, a long-anticipated children’s story Bible, author Mariko Clark includes this paragraph: “Think about how cozy and special you feel when someone asks you about your day or wants to learn more about your favorite foods or hobbies. God made us to belong with God! That means God wants to be close and cozy with us. So all questions are welcome!”
Harris Says ‘One Does Not Have To Abandon Their Faith’ To Support Abortion Rights. What Does That Mean?
Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris gestures as she speaks during a presidential debate hosted by ABC with Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, in Philadelphia, Penn., Sept. 10, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
As Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump discussed abortion policy during their first debate, Harris vigorously defended her vision for federal abortion rights. While she did, she returned to a talking point meant to appeal to religious voters.
“[Under Trump’s abortion bans] a survivor of a crime — a violation to their body — does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral,” Harris said, before connecting morality and faith. “And one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree: The government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”
Harris’ Policy Agenda Could Reduce Child Poverty, Faith Advocates Say
Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Pennsylvania Lt. Governor Austin Davis holding a baby as she arrives at Pittsburgh Airport in Pittsburgh, Penn., for a campaign event, Sept. 2, 2024. REUTERS/Quinn Glabicki
About a month into her presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has begun to reveal glimpses of her proposed White House policy agenda. The big-ticket items — child tax credits, housing incentives, and inflation relief on groceries — are aimed at the segment of the population most affected by the skyrocketing cost of living: young working families. It’s a focus child welfare advocates are welcoming.
Infant Loss Is Tragic and Complex. Abortion Bans Made it Worse
Ken Paxton, Texas attorney general, offers remarks outside in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 1, 2021. Rod Lamkey/CNP/Sipa via Reuters.
In the late spring of 1995, Rebekah Mitchell went into the hospital at 27 weeks pregnant with her second child. Mitchell had a kidney disease that was affecting her own health and the health of the baby. She made it to seven months, and then the baby, whom she and her husband had already named Jonathan, became entangled in the kinked umbilical cord, and died suddenly. Stunned and recovering from the cesarean section required to deliver Jonathan, she kept his body with her in the hospital room for three days.