Silence is not neutral: A call to Christian witness- by Bishop Carlye Hughes

More from the Diocese. Read here. 

Addressing the current conflict around immigration, Bishop Hughes reminds us that silence can be misinterpreted as agreement, and encourages Christians to engage in meaningful, compassionate conversations grounded in the teachings of Jesus – even across deep differences. (Time: 6:18 | Read the transcript.)

This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark. I have been asked in the last few weeks by people, both in our churches and people from other denominations and people from no faith tradition at all, including people who don’t believe anything. I’ve been asked while in church. I’ve been asked while in the grocery store. I’ve been asked all along life’s way from people, how are we supposed to talk with people about immigration when the opinions are so strong and fixed and finite and polar opposites? How can we be in conversation about what we’re seeing?
So I think it’s important to recognize that our reactions to what we’re seeing, are a way of God’s Spirit talking to us saying, you’re called to say something. You are called to do something. When you see someone being hurt, when you see someone’s rights being trampled, when you see someone being treated unfairly or without dignity, without respect, and treating in ways that are not humane at all, and you have a reaction to that that tells you that person needs help. That’s the spirit saying, your job is to help them. And part of helping right now is learning how to talk about this and how to talk about it across difference, because what we’re being fed by people who are motivated to keep us separated and to keep us in polar opposite camps, what we’re being fed about them is that the others will not listen.
And there may be truth to that, but still, whether we think someone listens or not, it’s important for us to think through what it is we want to say. So there’s some areas that I think are really important to prepare ourselves to be able to talk succinctly into this. One, as people of faith – and I’m speaking directly to Christians right now – as people of faith, get yourself in the gospels. Read Jesus’s words. What did he say about taking care of the people who were the least among us? How does he treat people who are other, or people who are in trouble? What does he say about talking with people or being with people across differences? And what does he say about how we are to treat the people that we think of as our enemies. Use his words as guidance and motivation, and pay attention to the ones that resonate the most with you, and say those to yourself over and over and over again until they become part of your very own vernacular.
My own example of that, as I say so often, if I have a problem with my sibling, my brother or my sister, I go directly to deal with them before I take myself to the altar. I don’t sit and stew over something. I go directly to them. That’s my way of internalizing something that Jesus said about how we are to work with other people. You need to find your way to do that.
Secondly, I recommend that you spend as much time as you can reading people who are writing about these things, reading people who are writing – and you don’t have to just read books, they have articles that are online, many of them you can see on videotape, but people who have for years been talking about injustice and how we are to treat people with justice. Read Catherine Meeks. She’s out of our own tradition in the Episcopal Church. You can find her online, and you can find her in books. Read William Barber, who’s been leading the Poor People’s Campaign for as long as I possibly can remember, and knows something about treating people who are the least among us. Read our own former Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, who talks eloquently, both in writing and in words, about who we can be as a nation, who we can be as a people, when we all are one. We are powerful when we are one. Read Desmond Tutu. Read Matthew Desmond. These are people who are writing about the inequities that we find in the world, but read them and pay attention to the things that they talk about and how they give you a sense of real ways, not just feelings, but very practical ways to talk about some of the things we’re facing.
The next thing I think is important is to pray, to ask God to give you the words, to help you think this through, to help you frame what it is you want to say.
And then lastly, I would say, practice. These four things: looking at Jesus’s words, looking at the words of experts, looking at the thinking of experts, spending time asking God to guide you, and then practice with people that you know. You don’t want to just go practice in the middle of something happening in your family or in the workplace or with someone who you do not know at all, but you want to get your legs underneath you, in terms of how to talk about what you see happening with migrants, and what might be a more excellent way than what we’re seeing right now. It’s a starting place, and it takes time.
And I want to encourage you to spend time figuring out how to have those conversations, because now is the time to speak. Being silent is not working for us. Being silent is heard as approval. And I think kind of regardless of where you sit politically in any of this, when we look at the humanity of it, it takes the politics away. I’m always aware that at a graveside, when people are grieving, there is no party, there is no political party. There is simply sadness and a sense of loss. And the people who help those who are mourning.
So, do the work that it takes to figure out how to speak into this time rather than being afraid of it or silent during it.



​