(RNS) — For most people, being slammed to the pavement by a group of police officers and violently handcuffed in front of a screaming crowd would be a traumatic experience. When that situation befell the Rev. Michael Woolf last November as he was protesting outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Chicago, he says the experience was, indeed, “extremely traumatic” — but it was also something else.
“I had a lot of clarity when that was happening,” Woolf, with a lingering Alabama twang, told Religion News Service in a recent interview.
According to Woolf, a pastor ordained in both the American Baptist Churches USA and Alliance of Baptists denominations, that clarity came from recognizing the significance of a white pastor with U.S. citizenship advocating for immigrant rights. In addition to immigration being an emphasis of his ministry for years, his doctoral dissertation was focused on the Sanctuary Movement, the 1980s-era faith-led effort where houses of worship defied the federal government by offering up their churches as living spaces to migrants from Central America.
To Woolf, the November protest outside of the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois — one of several demonstrations by faith leaders at the site last year — was an extension of that Sanctuary legacy.
“People being willing to stand up for their neighbors, to stand up to the state with all its violence and all its capacity to inflict harm — that’s all Sanctuary values,” he said. “Those are Sanctuary ethics.”
In multiple interviews with RNS, Woolf explained his arrest has prov …
