This article is the first in a series on faith and protest.
(RNS) — Two years ago, the Rev. Quincy Worthington did not consider himself an activist. The minister of a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation in Highland Park, Illinois, he was outspoken on issues such as racial justice, but his public advocacy was mostly limited to statements and attending an occasional protest.
Last fall, however, Worthington found himself hauling fellow faith leaders off the pavement after they had been beaten and arrested by state police for protesting outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Chicago. He has endured enough tear gas and pepper balls, shot by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents, that he now knows when to tighten the straps of his gas mask.
And as the immigration resistance gained national attention, Worthington appeared on a network news show to make theological sense of it all.
But it was when his daughter’s high school teacher mentioned to the class that Worthington was an example of someone “trying to make a difference” that he found himself grappling with the impact of his actions. “I’m just some guy, you know?” he said.
The Rev. Quincy Worthington. (Courtesy photo)
Worthington is one of hundreds of local faith leaders who over the past year engaged in high-profile and, in many cases, high-risk activism against the Trump’s administration mass deportation effort. As the Department of Homeland Security rolled out immigration enforcement campaigns in cities across the country, clergy rushed to learn how to stay safe while using protest tactics that employ encrypted messaging apps, updating nonviolent strategies last used widely during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
That era may be the last time that a faith-based coalition, mostly made up of mainline Protestants and Jews, has so publicly and collaboratively resisted government authority on a social issue they regard as a spiritual one. Today’s clergy and their congregations were supported by networks of faith activists who pass tactics, rhetoric and even songs from one …