Sanctuary

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Sarah Johnson put down her garden tools, eased into a patio chair in her backyard in Palo Alto and slowly unveiled her anger about bloody El Salvador. "I would rather fill this country up with people," she says, before sending refugees back to death or danger in El Salvador's civil war. It will take time, she says, to reverse United States policy in Central America; meanwhile, she does what she can to help hide refugees from U.S. immigration authorities. "If churches weren't speaking out, it would be even worse than it is."

Dan Grunau, talkative like a self-assured country preacher, speaks differently from a North San Jose living room, where a portrait of Jesus hangs on the wall. "I don't go to church on Sunday to get upset," he says. He abhors the thought of sheltering Salvadorans who entered the states illegally. "I don't believe any group, especially a group of Christians, can advocate breaking a law because they feel their cause is right."

Johnson and Grunau have never met, but they know all sides of this argument. Each worships at a church that recently took a stand on the question of aiding illegal refugees from El Salvador. The congregations at Johnson's First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto and Grunau's Reformation Lutheran Church in Milpitas each debated whether to defy the federal government - and face the penalty for harboring an illegal alien: imprisonment for up to five years and a $2,000 fine.

Specifically, the churchgoers were debating whether to join a nationwide network of churches that are running an "underground railroad" for refugees. The network started in Tuscon and Berkeley last year and quickly spread to Chicago and Seattle. It now includes some 65 churches, four in Santa Clara County. The network has provided shelter or transportation to about 500 refugees.

That's a small percentage of the 300,000 Salvadorans who have crossed U.S. borders secretly and without immigration papers. They flee a war that has killed at least 42,000 people since 1979 and has involved U.S. military advisers and $717 million in economic and military aid.

Shortly after the sanctuary movement started, refugees and the U.S. role in El Salvador replaced routine bible study on the Sunday program at the two Palo Alto and Milpitas churches. When the debates were ended, the two congregations stood at opposite poles.

Reformation Lutheran Church sits on Main Street across from a K-Mart and the Milpitas Senior Center. With its white-walled interior and finely patterned wood-beam ceiling, Reformation Lutheran is newer, smaller - and less affluent than Palo Alto's First Presbyterian.

"By most standards, it's an average congregation," says Ron Hansen, vice-president of the Church's council. "That's why an issue like this would come before it and not be tossed out without a hearing."

One of the congergation's staunches proponents of sactuary was Christine Jenkins. A former refugee herself, she fled East Germany during the Cold War. "There's nothing worse than having to leave your country," she says in her slight accent. "or to be in a country where you don't know who are your friends or foes."

Jenkins, 47, and her husband Don, 51, own a San Jose printing shop. For the past two years, they had been learning about Latin America by reading and by attending meetings, some sponsored by the Santa Clara County Council of Churches. In March, they took Berverly Johnson, a friend who is an accounting clerk at Norther Telecom, to a workshop where sanctuary churches made presentations.

Johnson immediately identified wtih the refugees' plight. "I could almost see my family being massacred," she said. "I'm sure it goes back to the fact that I have traveled in the Americas. I feel like I know the people."

Soon afterward, Johnson brought the issue to Reformation Lutheran's nine-member council. The council included Jenkins and Grunau, whose positions came to typify the arguments pro and con.

Jenkins, the former refugee, felt compelled to give aid. "It doesn't make a difference if I help 1,000 or one," she said. "That one would be enough. I would label it a Christian gift to help someone in need."

Grunau, who writes engineering instructions for Lockheed missile systems, balked at sanctuary because of its legal ramifications. He had supported his church's aid to Vietnamese refugees only a few years earlier. But, he saw the Salvadoran situation as "totally different. Rightfully or wrongfully, they are illegal aliens." Had sanctuary been legal, he said, the church would have adopted Salvadoran families promptly, had piles of clothes and household goods waiting. But it wasn't legal - and Grunau and other members of the congregation found it unconscionable.

Grunau - and 14 other members of the congregation - have security clearances for their jobs with defense contractors. That, too, brought forth objections. Giving sanctuary - breaking the law - was not just "walking around with a picket sign," Grunau explained. "Civil disobedience would be undermining my job."

The initial debate, held on two Sundays in April, attracted about 25 people. The discussions were not shouting matches. "You have these debates and then you go kneel at the altar together," Christine Jenkins says. "These people who were against sanctuary are very Christian, wonderful people."

Some Milpitas church members reasoned that the Salvadoran refugees - most of whom are young single men from cities - seem to be the perfect age for the draft. "I don't belive in draft-dodging," said Dennis Graham, 47, who spent 24 years in the Navy. Graham retired as a lieutenant commander from his last post at Moffett Field. "Automatically, we seem to pick on the U.S. government rather than support them," he said. "I don't know that the government's policies in El Salvador are incorrect. I get uptight about people protesting, but I fully understand their right to do so."

Marie Danskin, a 37 year-old aerospace engineer, also defended U.S. policy. "I'm inclined to believe that what goes on in El Salvador and Honduras is somebody's attempt to keep the Communists out. My breaking the law, in essence (would be) showing people I'm against El Salvador's government."

Another member, Stan Anderson, 41, recalls agreeing with both sides. "It is important to our national security that we do everything to support a government that hopefully is favorable to the U.S.," said this 20-year Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam. But Anderson, now part-owner of a computer software company, added that "we incur a moral obligation to the refugees," because it has been fairly well documented that American military aid to El Salvador has been used against the civilian population. The refugees are here, he argued, "because they believe in our institutions."

As the debate progressed, Grunau became alarmed at the low turnouts, despite publicity. He alerted 26 members by telephone about the crucial vote on the issue. On April 24, almost 90 members appeared in a wood-paneled room at the church for the final debate. Their secret ballots, including absentee votes, defeated santuary on a 61 - 31 count. An alternate plan to form a church task force to assist the refugees legally also failed to pass.

First Presbyterian Church gives no hint of being a political repository. Its brick foundation and sharply-pitched redwood ceiling dominate a corner of Cowper Street in a tree-lined residential section near downtown Palo Alto. It is a spacious church where worshipers dress casually. They form a large circle at the end of Sunday service to exchange prayers and greetings.

But facing risks is nothing new for the 400-member church. In 1972, a 19-year-old sailor jumped ship from the aircraft carrier Midway and holed up in the church to protest the Vietnam War. Singer Joan Baez showed up to lend support. It was a divisive issue for the congregation. In more recent years, the church has aided Chilean and Vietnamese refugees and supported a nuclear freeze and farmworkers movements.

"The church is a sanctuary for all kinds of people who are oppressed... and has been historically," said Ann Irons, 41. She believes the international human rights groups which say that Salvadoran refugees face death or mistreatment when deported to El Salvador.

The United States supports the Salvadoran government and contends that most refugees flee harsh economic conditions, not political problems. Irons, who lived for two years in Latin America and teaches English to immigrants, has trouble believing that. She heard that deported refugees are often seized at the airport. "Given the facts we hear," she says, "these people are not just economic refugees."

Salvadorans who apply for asylum - who try to immigrate legally - have slim chances for success. Last year, the Immigration and Naturalization Service granted only 74 Salvadoran asylum applications, rejecting 1,067. There are 25,000 cases pending, including 5,000 in the Bay Area. Since 1980, the United States has deported 25,700 Salvadorans.

Sanctuary came to First Presbyterian's attention through an ad hoc committee (which included Johnson and Irons) that studied Central America for three years. The group focused on the refugees last year after contacting a Berkeley church where a sanctuary program was already under way.

A church debate in February following Sunday service drew more than 70 members and ended in a straw vote overwhelmingly favoring sanctuary. A newsletter questionnaire later drew 58 responses, 80 percent for sanctuary. But the initial reaction from the church's Session, a 15-member elected administrative body, was to stay within the bounds of the law to help the refugees.

"I've always supported the country. I have never committed an illegal act and have no plans to do so," said Paul Jones, 53, a Session member and executive with a large Peninsula business consulting firm.

But Jones, a Korean War Navy veteran, believes "this country's policy towards Latin America simply has to change. I think we need to look closely at our alleged friends who are perptrating a way of life there and also look at those oppressed."

"I don't think people are saying, 'I want to make a political statement and the church is a handy way to do it,' " said Robert McAfee Brown, a renowned theologian and active member of First Presbyterian Church. To him, issues of personal conscience and political policy inevitably are intertwined.

Brown, 63, a professor at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, warned his congregation that "churches historically have a habit of responding to crises too late." Pastor Richard Symes, 52, also spoke in favor of sanctuary, citing Biblical admonitions to aid refugees.

But, Gordon Weber, a San Francisco tax attorney and ex-Marine, called sanctuary a "band-aid trying to do something with the symptoms and not the cause. The problem is the repressive government in El Salvador. We're not changing that by taking care of a few individuals in the United States." As an alternative to offering sanctuary, Weber suggested the church conduct a massive letter-writing campaign to change American policy.

Another attorney in the congregation predicted sanctuary would have harsher legal consequences for members who were lawyers. She thought the church should concentrate on local community problems, an argument that also has been made in the Milpitas congregation's debate. Another First Presbyterian member warned that the issue could split the church again, as had the Midway sailor's presence.

The church Session took a 7-3 straw vote in February favoring sanctuary. By March 23, a late-night Session meeting in Rev. Symes' study drew an 8-0 vote for sanctuary. Paul Jones abstained. Although not completely opposed to sanctuary, he wanted church members against it to be represented in the final ballot.

The Session's crucial vote was followed by a moment of silence; then members rushed to telephone their families and other members. The next day they held a news conference, at which the county's other sanctuary churches were also announced: San Jose Sacred Heart and Palo Alto's University Lutheran Church and St. Ann's Chapel.

The difference in the two churches' decisions somewhat reflect their denominational affiliations. First Presbyterian's national affiliate at the time of the vote, the United Presbyterian Church of the USA, last year urged its member congregations to adopt sanctuary. The Lutheran Church in America, Reformation Lutheran's affiliate, has taken no position on the issue. Of the 65 churches participating in the sanctuary network, many have the approval of their national organization.

The INS has no immediate plans to enter sanctuary churches looking for illegal Salvadorans, a spokesman says, although agents could obtain search warrants to do so. The INS assumes that church raids would raise a storm of public protest. Indeed, advocates of sanctuary rely on INS reluctance to force the issue. First Presbyterian Member Sarah Johnson, a technical editor at a Santa Clara computer firm, comments that "sanctuary doesn't really seem illegal to me. I'm not afraid of it for myself. It seems like a minimal risk for a maximum return."

Since the church's decision, 60 First Presbyterian members have joined a committee to help refugees. Treading on the riskiest legal ground, nine members volunteered to take refugees into their homes and three offered to provide transportation.

This volunteer network was barely in place when four young Salvadoran men arrived on May 23, coming from a Presbyterian church in Tuscon. The refugees - three skilled workers and a college student, ages 20-22, stayed on the church grounds at first. Church members brought them food and stood round-the-clock watch to guard against unexpected visitors. Later, two of the refugees moved to private homes. The four left in July and all have applied for asylum. Symes estimates that 100 church members helped care for the group.

In Mipitas, despite the victory for his position, Dan Grunau left the Reformation Lutheran congregation. Sanctuary, he said, was the culmination of too many social issues at the church. His family, the only one to resign their church membership over this matter, has found a more conservative worship hall.

For others in the congregation, church life is returning to normal. Still, the vivid images of suffering in El Salvador and the U.S. role in the war there have not faded from members' minds. Ron Hansen says taking part in the debate made the issue more urgent, more personal than any news account could have. When the Salvadoran question landed on the church doorstep, he said, it gave church members "an opportunity to examine how they really felt."

POSTECRIPT:

After four Salvadoran men wo whom we had given sanctuary spent significant time with members of our congregation, one of them said that the best way for people to understand what was going on in El Salvador was to go there. Leaders and members of our congregation did go, despite significant danger, and their experience during that first visit led to many more. In fact, a delegation from our congregation has gone to Central America every single year. Please click this link to visit our El Salvador page to learn more about our partner community, La Canoa - Communidad Octavio Ortiz.

And, in the humble opinion of this web-spinner who went to El Salvador several years ago, 1st Presbyterian Palo Alto made the right decision to offer sanctuary to the victims of misguided U.S. policy which resulted in the torture, rape, and murder of way too many innocents.

Now we need your help! We have 109 years of history we can chronicle here. Please share pictures, illustrations, articles, and other memories that you have stashed away in some dusty closet with me so that I can help build a full historical record here on the web. This will be a "free-time" activity for me but hopefully, over the next few years, we'll have a rich set of images and stories. Contact the webmaster to help!