We’re ministers in Jeff Sessions’s church. His immigration stance defies our values.

The attorney general’s words and actions led us, and hundreds of fellow United Methodists, to write a letter formally charging him with violating church doctrine.

By Monica Corsaro and David Wright June 20 at 3:40 PM

Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared that if immigrants enter the United States without documentation and with a child, “we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law.” In recent weeks, as Americans have, rightly, become increasingly outraged by this practice, being carried out in our names, he has tried using the Bible to justify these actions: “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13,” Sessions said, “to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.”

It was a poor scriptural choice. As Washington Post columnist Elizabeth Bruenig wrote last week, Sessions breaks from Christian teaching, “inventing a faith that makes order itself the highest good and authorizes secular governments to achieve it.”

And his view runs counter to the theology and values of the United Methodist Church, to which Sessions belongs, and of which we are ordained ministers. That’s why we, and hundreds of our clergy colleagues and parishioners, wrote a letter of formal complaint to Sessions’s local church leadership, charging him with child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination and dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of doctrine of the United Methodist Church. Though President Trump announced Wednesday that he’ll sign an executive order allowing detained immigrant families to remain together while in custody — a welcome development — we remain troubled that family separation was ever contemplated, or implemented, by Sessions.

Our early movement in America was, partly, an act of civil disobedience — a rejection by our founders of the decision of British leaders of church and state to withdraw the ministry of the Anglican communion from the colonies during the Revolutionary War. Through the course of American history, many Methodists have resisted some of the worst legacies of this nation. At our best, we have fought against slavery, argued for women’s right and been at the cornerstone of the labor movement. As individuals and as a denomination, we often fall far short of our ideals; but we try to live by the words of our founder, John Wesley, who said, in part two of his sermon, “The Law Established Through Faith”: “do good, as we have time and opportunity; to do good, in every possible kind, and in every possible degree, to all men.”

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