Episcopal Church Ends Partnership With US Government By Refusing To Resettle White Afrikaner Refugees

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n a letter sent to members of the church, the Most Reverend Sean W. Rowe; the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, said that two weeks ago, the government “informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa whom the U.S. government has classified as refugees.”

The request, Rowe said, crossed a moral line for the Episcopal Church, which is part of the global Anglican Communion, which boasts among its leaders the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a celebrated and vocal opponent of apartheid in South Africa.

Rowe wrote:

“In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step. Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government.”

The announcement came just as flights with Afrikaners were scheduled to arrive at Washington Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, D.C. The first group of entries after Trump declared via a February executive order that the U.S. would take in “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.”

A new South African law means white farmers could have their land taken away without being paid for it. Though framed as a correction to apartheid-era injustice, the law has created an environment where racially motivated persecution may become institutionalized. In response, the Trump administration announced both an investigation into South Africa and the approval of refugee status for 60 individuals fleeing the persecution.

Under current U.S. law, a refugee is described as a foreigner who may face persecution in his home country on the basis of “race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.”

In addition to ties with Tutu, the Episcopal Church has a long history of advocating against apartheid in South Africa. It first began altering its financial holdings in the region in 1966, and by the mid-1980s, the church voted to divest from companies doing business in South Africa.

In a statement, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the Episcopal Church’s decision “raises serious questions about its supposed commitment to humanitarian aid.” She argued:

“Afrikaners have faced unspeakable horrors” and are “no less deserving of refugee resettlement than the hundreds of thousands of others who were allowed into the United States during the past Administration. President Trump has made it clear: refugee resettlement should be about need, not politics.”

The Trump Administration has otherwise all but frozen the refugee program, with Afrikaners among the few; and possibly, the only people granted entry as refugees since January, despite thousands from other countries hoping to enter the U.S. to avoid persecution and violence. Shortly after he was sworn in, Trump signed an executive order that essentially halted the refugee program and stopped payments to NGOs which assist with refugee resettlement including, according to one group, payments for work already performed.

That change has left refugees including Christians fleeing religious persecution without a clear path forward and forced the 10 NGO refugee resettlement groups, seven of which are faith-based, to lay off scores of workers while still trying to support refugees who had recently arrived. Four of the NGO faith groups have since filed two separate lawsuits, one of which recently resulted in a ruling that should have restarted the program. However, refugee groups have accused the government of “delaying compliance” with the court order.

A representative for Church World Service, which is among the groups currently suing the administration, said the organization “has agreed to support one family through remote services,” but pointed to an additional statement from last week that voiced ongoing frustration with the government’s actions.

“We are concerned that the U.S. Government has chosen to fast-track the admission of Afrikaners, while actively fighting court orders to provide life-saving resettlement to other refugee populations who are in desperate need of resettlement,” Rick Santos, head of Church World Service, one of the resettlement NGOs suing the government, said in a statement last week.

“By resettling this population, the Government is demonstrating that it still has the capacity to quickly screen, process, and depart refugees to the United States. It’s time for the Administration to honor our nation’s commitment to the thousands of refugee families it abandoned with its cruel and illegal executive order.”

Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, an evangelical Christian group that helps resettle refugees, said in an email that his group anticipates “serving a small number” of the arrivals who qualify for Office of Refugee Resettlement-funded services. But he said the situation is “complicated by the reality that the government is not bringing them to the US through the traditional State Department initial resettlement process, where World Relief has historically been one of the ten private agencies that implement this public-private partnership, because that process remains suspended.”

He added:

“Our primary response to this situation is to continue to urge the administration to resume that initial resettlement process for a broad range of individuals who have fled persecution on account of their faith, political opinion, race or other reasons outlined under US law — and to highlight the support for doing so from the evangelical Christians who are World Relief’s core base of support, including some very conservative evangelicals who see refugee resettlement as a vital tool to protect those denied religious freedom abroad.”

The admission of 60 refugees is minuscule compared to the thousands of resettlements the administration has attempted to halt. And while critics seize upon this as evidence of selective compassion spurred by bias, the truth is far more practical: Smaller, more culturally aligned groups tend to integrate more successfully into American communities. A handful of English-speaking farmers who share many of America’s civic and cultural values presents far less strain on communities than the resettlement of thousands of individuals from vastly different societies, such as Haiti, where integration challenges are numerous.

America is not an abstract ideological project, but a real country with a culture, a history, and a people. From this perspective, refugee policy must be guided not just by humanitarian instinct, but by national cohesion and cultural compatibility. A nation cannot sustain itself if it is unable or unwilling to discern which refugees will assimilate into and strengthen its national fabric.✪

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