(RNS) — Ahead of the midterm elections this fall, Pastor Mike McBride, a longtime Black voter mobilization strategist, is spearheading an initiative for church and community leaders to sit down together for Sunday dinners to learn from each other.
Several dinners have been held in U.S. cities — and more are scheduled through June — to bring together dozens of people in 10 municipalities from the San Francisco Bay Area to Atlanta, all to discuss the treatment of immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other concerns related to politics across the country. The events were created by McBride and Live Free, a nonprofit focused on community violence reduction and voter engagement he founded 15 years ago, in an effort to build community involvement before voters head to the ballot box.
“The idea is to unite congregations within cities and regions, to bring our people into a shared space, to hear each other’s stories, to share a meal and strengthen our bonds of connection,” McBride, a Black Pentecostal minister at The Way Christian Center, based in Berkeley, California, told Religion News Service in an interview. “It’s impossible, from the Black prophetic tradition, to say, ‘Oh, we’re not going to respond to the pain of our immigrant loved ones,’ whether they be from Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean, because we’re all connected t …
