New Sanctuary Movement Launches

After two months of hard work, we finally launched the New Sanctuary Movement yesterday at a huge press conference at St. Paul's near Columbus Circle. It was pretty amazing. Rising up and taking a stand in society, for churches to proclaim that they are stepping right into the middle of the immigration debate and the actual environment of raids and deportations the government has created - and to insert ourselves physically between the government and the people we love and are determined to protect. We proclaim the churches of this nation as a place of sanctuary for those pursued by a system run amok.

If you know of anyone in fear of deportation, please connect me with them. If you would like for your church to consider joining us and becoming a Sanctuary Church, please write me (jkursonis@yahoo.com).

Personally the experience yesterday was unique in my life. As I said before we did a few small press conferences recently, so that gave me some good preparation - but this thing was crazy.

Cameras and reporters everywhere - and they didn't stay still, they were moving all around getting all different angles. I was one of six speakers - the others far more experienced at this and pretty big religious leaders in New York City. So I did my best to be the emergent voice and to call evangelical churches into the fray.

I think some of my friends didn't kind of believe me when I talked about this being a major national press conference - here's a partial list of who covered it:

Associated Press

New York Times

ABC News

CBS News

Reuters

CNN

Catholic News Service

Religion and Ethics Newsweekly/ Jim Lehrer Newshour

Fox News Channel Live

Telemundo

Sing Tao Daily

Fox News Channel--Weekend Live

Tucker Carlson Live

BBC World News Service

Religion News Service

Chicago Tribune

CNN Radio Network

MSNBC

Fox News

USA Today

So just turn on the TV or open a newspaper and you can read all about it.