Amid threats of deportation from the first Trump administration, one man spent 1,330 days under the sanctuary of First and Summerfield Church on the corner of College and Elm Streets. Separated from his family, he lived in a small bedroom on the church’s second floor — adorned with a crayon drawing from his son —  for a nearly four-year period before he was granted a stay in the United States in 2021.

On a Sunday morning earlier this month, people of all ages gathered at First and Summerfield Church, where a sign at the entrance reads “You are welcome here.” The church’s promise to welcome is multifaceted: it serves as a spiritual sanctuary for seekers of faith and also as a physical sanctuary for immigrants who may be at risk of deportation.

This February, the United Methodist Church — with which First and Summerfield is affiliated — along with many faith denominations across the country, joined a lawsuit to ensure that houses of worship are protected against raids by Immigration Customs Enforcement, or ICE. 

A 2011 Department of Homeland Security memo had prohibited authorities from entering “sensitive locations” like churches for years — yet Trump is challenging past precedent.

For decades, the sanctuary movement in New Haven and the surrounding areas has been led by Yale Divinity School alumni who are leaders at several of these churches. The movement focuses on supporting immigrants, whether it be through housing them or providing legal or health services.

“What we do in this world matters, the lives that we live, the way that we treat ourselves and other people, matters,” said Vicki Flippin DIV ’08, who served as the pastor at the First and Summerfield Church amid increased deportation raids in 2017. “If somebody is terrified that they’re gonna be separated [from] their children, it is obvious to me what faith has called me to do.”

As the second Trump administration ramps up deportations and anti-immigrant rhetoric, often fueled by Christian nationalism, sanctuary churches embrace faith to “welcome the stranger,” New Haven faith leaders told the News.

Taking a risk in opening up their church

The sanctuary movement is not new. American churches began sheltering immigrants in the 1980s, during the Reagan administration, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio GRD ’19 writes in her book “The Undocumented Americans.” Then, a group of churches took in nearly 500,000 refugees fleeing Central America. 

But offering sanctuary has carried legal risks. In 1985, the federal government indicted 16 people, including a Protestant minister, two Roman Catholic priests and three nuns, with “conspiracy” to smuggle undocumented immigrants into the United States.

More than 30 years later, during the first Trump administration, Gini King DIV ’84, a retired leader of First Congregational Church in Old Lyme, talked to her congregation to become a sanctuary church.

“I believe that my faith tells me that Jesus was a community organizer,” King said. “He broke the law time and time again, and he was non-violent. That’s what I want to be. That’s who I want to be.”

Jamie Michaels, who took over as lead pastor at First and Summerfield in 2022, also admitted that there has been some fear in the church about the consequences that might befall churches that take in undocumented immigrants. However, she thinks that these concerns pale in comparison to the risks and dangers that immigrants face.

“We have a heritage to lean on, of communities and people who have stood firm in their faith even in the face of those kinds of threats,” Michaels said. “We were never promised that following the love of God and walking on that path would be easy or safe. So we trust.”

For Michaels, taking risks to help those in need is not a political stance but rather a central aspect of her faith.

After taking the job in 2018, Flippin similarly learned that her role as pastor would come to encompass much more than the job description of a conventional faith leader. 

Flippin, Michael’s predecessor who led First and Summerfield during the first Trump administration, recalled feeling concerned by the president’s rhetoric against immigrants as ICE ramped up deportations across the country. For Flippin, housing immigrants, who she felt were labeled as “throwaway people,” in the church where she served as a spiritual leader felt essential to oppose this rhetoric.

“It was a declaration in opposition to rhetoric that treated people like they were not important to their community and not important to our country,” she told the News in February. Yet, the movement to house people in churches to prevent their deportation was not an easy feat. “It was a really labor-intensive move,” she said.

Flippin detailed the congregants’ efforts to donate funds for the immigrants’ mortgages, do their laundry, provide showers, offer food and care for their children. She said it was a “hugely intense community effort” to show that these people were important — regardless of Trump’s rhetoric.

The sanctuary space at First and Summerfield is currently open, although church leaders do not publicize whether anyone is currently residing there due to safety concerns.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, ICE officials would have to receive a warrant signed by a federal judge to enter a private space within a house of worship.

Glenn Formica, a New Haven attorney who has worked on legal cases involving sanctuary in churches, said that the lawsuit involving New Haven congregations — which opposes Trump’s recall of place of worship protection in immigration crackdown — challenges the “fear narrative” that he believes the current presidential administration is “aggressively” advancing.

The Biblical basis of sanctuary 

Rabbi Herb Brockman of Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden, part of the sanctuary movement, compared the current deportation to that of the Nazi persecution of Jews.

“We were hunted down in the 1930s,” said Brockman, referring to the Nazis’ method of deporting Jews in Europe to concentration camps. “As Jews, we are to remember that.” 

He emphasized that while the Nazis committed many atrocities, there were also 24,000 “righteous gentiles” who risked their lives to hide Jews and protect them. When he teaches about the Holocaust, he wants people to know that there are people who resisted the Nazis.

Besides his historical motivations for joining the sanctuary movement, Brockman also cited its biblical basis: the Torah mentions welcoming the stranger 36 times. 

He also spoke of the idea of “cities of refuge,” which were six cities that were set aside for an individual who accidentally killed someone to reside in and be protected from revenge-seekers before a legal trial. 

“This isn’t new,” he said.

Flippin spoke about Matthew 25 as a part of the New Testament that she has always clung to when thinking about the sanctuary movement. At a panel at St. Thomas Moore in February about immigration, panelists also spoke about this verse. The verse asks: “When I was a stranger, did you welcome me?”

“If I see somebody suffering, like somebody is terrified that they’re going to be separated from their children, it is obvious to me what faith calls me to do,” said Flippin.

Shaping a progressive movement to counter Christian Nationalism 

Flippin also spoke of the varied political conclusions that believers might reach based on their reading of certain sections of the Bible.

“People are complex, which you learn when you get to know folks who have different views from yourself,” she said.“We believe in Matthew 25, but we just kind of interpret it a little differently in different arenas.”

In the United States, conservatives and liberals alike have set out to define what role religion should play in politics. Many Christians on the political right subscribe to strands of Christian nationalism — an ideology that is based around the idea that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and should therefore be a Christian nation into the future.

Vice President JD Vance LAW ’13 spoke publicly on his views on immigration as a Catholic at a town hall in September prior to the election. He said that there is a “Christian idea that you owe the strongest duty to your family.” As such, he argued, American leaders should not be overwhelmingly concerned with protecting citizens of other nations. 

“It doesn’t mean that you have to be mean to other people, but it means that your first duty as an American leader is to the people of your own country,” the Vice President said. The town hall was part of Christian nationalist preacher Lance Wallnau’s election-season revival tour, which aimed to make a theological defense of many of the Trump-Vance immigration policies.

Many who have opened up their churches to undocumented immigrants view their interpretation of Christianity as counter to interpretations like Vance’s that are often used to defend deportations. 

“Christian nationalism and other movements like that take the concept of the Kingdom of God and just write it onto a really coercive, oppressive idealism,” said Michaels. “For me, the kingdom of God is a world in which all people can be whole, and all people can be well.”

Michaels said she believes that using scripture to defend agendas of oppression and hate is antithetical to what her faith calls her to do. She views the Bible as a collection of sacred words rooted in love and self-sacrifice for all of creation. This biblical interpretation drives her in her work to provide sanctuary to immigrants. 

Flippin echoed Michaels in that she views Christian nationalism as not in line with her interpretation of scripture.

“I don’t see anything scriptural about it. I feel that it is nationalism, patriotism, and nativism using scripture and the intense emotionality of religion and ritual for its own end, which I find to be blasphemous and offensive,” said Flippin.

Bishop Thomas Bickerton, who serves as area resident bishop for the United Methodist Church in the New England and New York areas, believes that right-wing Christianity is not a “biblical” Christianity, but a secular one. 

“I do not believe that the Bible equates itself with secular society, nor does it equate itself with policies and procedures that are contrary to biblical truth,” Bickerton said. “Biblical truth is not necessarily trying to find a passage in scripture that meets what you believe. It’s quite the opposite.”

Flippin, who left First and Summerfield to become the Associate Dean for Student Affairs at Yale Divinity School in 2022, believes it is important to raise the next generation of faith leaders as competent in “alleviating suffering in the world.” 

She encouraged Yale students to open their minds to this mission.

“It’s really important to notice the incredible long-term efforts that are going on in this city,” said Flippin. “As much as you can emotionally manage it, step into those spaces that are not made for Yale students, but where you have to be there for other people.”

First and Summerfield Church is located at 425 College St.