“It’s alright to pray for lawyers. It’s alright to clap for lawyers — even in church.”
Rev. Jim Wallis offered that quip as he stood in the pulpit of National City Christian Church in Washington, D.C., on Thursday (April 3) during a vigil on the eve of a legal hearing. The next morning, a judge heard arguments in a case where 27 religious groups are suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from conducting raids in houses of worship after a policy change by the Trump administration. During the vigil organized by many of the plaintiff groups, Wallis expressed prayer for their attorneys to be “guided by wisdom, by strength, and the unwavering pursuit of justice.” To applause, he named the attorneys before adding it was okay to pray for lawyers.
“We lift up our prayers, not just for the outcome of a lawsuit — we do that — but also for the families who are directly impacted by these injustices, for the children who go to school afraid every day,” added Wallis, who leads the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University and writes the newsletter God’s Politics. “Faith has always called upon us to protect the stranger, to defend the oppressed, to love our neighbors.”
Like others who spoke and prayed, Wallis argued that the decision to “strip away” the policy protecting houses of worship, schools, and hospitals as “sensitive locations” was “not just a policy change for us, it was a moral failure. This isn’t just politics for us, this is a matter of faith.” He added that “justice for us is not an ideal, it’s our sacred obligation.”
