Flossmoor pastor ‘represents’ at interfaith protest in Minnesota

The Rev. Julie Van Til, pastor of Flossmoor Community Church, learned that a call had been made for religious leaders of all traditions to gather in Minnesota just four days in advance. Three days later, she was on a plane.

Van Til was one of more than 600 faith leaders from across the country who traveled to Minnesota to participate in mass protests against the state’s ongoing immigration crackdown on January 23.

“We are called to love the stranger and make room for the stranger,” Van Til said. “As a Christian, I believe the spaces we live in benefit from diversity and a population of people who may never have belonged to each other before, to learn to belong to each other for a better future.

Van Til said she was inspired by neighborhood resistance to Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago.

“I admired what was happening on the ground in the neighborhoods here and I knew there was something positive on the ground in the way people treated their neighbors,” Van Til said.

That experience motivated her to travel to Minneapolis when she received a call about a gathering of religious leaders to protest.

“It’s like a monster that diverts its increasingly angry attention to another place,” Van Til said. “It was far away, but so close to home.”

The interfaith coalition Van Til joined was organized by a group called MARCH. In its call to action for religious leaders, MARCH invoked a telegram written by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965, calling on clergy across the country to join him in marching from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery to protest segregation and demand voting rights for black citizens.

“Clergy came from all over the country. Among them was the Rev. James Reeb, who was brutally beaten and later died from his injuries,” MARCH said on its website. “It is in the same spirit – and with the same clarity – that we make this appeal now. »

In Minnesota, the local Unitarian Universalist Association put out a call for donations for cold-weather gear to keep visiting religious leaders warm in freezing temperatures, Van Til said.

“We had tables of outerwear, innerwear, underwear, boots, hats, gloves, heaters, everything foreigners would need to survive, not just -20°, but the wind chill factor on top of that,” Van Til said. “It’s an example of the goodness I’ve seen everywhere.”

In Minneapolis, Van Til was hosted by a local family, one member of which patrolled twice daily around local middle and high schools.

“It’s easy to drive around and feel like nothing’s happening,” Van Til said. “If you’re an average middle- or upper-class person and you don’t take public transportation, you might drive from your home to a familiar grocery store, and maybe go to and from work, without ever knowing anything is happening.”

Or, she said, you could suddenly hear car horns honking and crowds gathering.

“I was picked up by someone I was patrolling with, I said, ‘Oh, there’s a protest,'” Van Til said. “He said, ‘No, no, it’s protection.’ And I thought it was really powerful that people were taking to the streets, not primarily as a political protest. It was to deter violence, to keep their neighbors alive.

While Van Til was patrolling, other faith leaders in the coalition were protesting in other ways, including about 100 clergy who were arrested for kneeling outside the main terminal of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport to protest deportation flights.

“Jesus and his disciples gave us many ways to resist when that authority was unjust,” Van Til said. “Non-compliance. Clogging the wheels of the system just enough to maybe help people pause and realize what they’re doing. Showing mercy to them when they don’t show mercy to you.”

The same day, Van Til joined a protest march in downtown Minneapolis that attracted thousands of people.

Van Til was on the plane home Saturday morning, she said, when she learned that Alex Pretti had been shot and killed in Minneapolis.

“I wanted so badly to turn around and go back,” Van Til said. “But we’re really called to do the unsexy work of connecting with people and caring for our neighbors where we are, to keep this movement going. And movement matters. That’s why Alex was there.”

One of the things that struck her most upon her return, she said, was the positive response from her congregation in Flossmoor. When she returned, many people thanked her for going to Minneapolis.

“I feel like it shows the impulse of so many people in our country, really, who want to help, but especially Christians, who long for representation in the media of Jesus loving his neighbor and standing with the most vulnerable,” Van Til said. “It was powerful for me to see how much it meant to them, that I went and represented that for them.”

elewis@chicagotribune.com