Pastor Mark Knutson on Strengthening Sanctuary and Responding to Trump’s Threats

There is an ancient precedent for churches providing sanctuary to the most vulnerable. In the U.S., that has long included refugees.

Now, an interfaith network in Portland is swiftly organizing its response to Trump’s attacks on immigrants – specifically, his recent rejection of longstanding precedent that barred U.S. immigration agents from making arrests at hospitals, schools and places of worship.

“Sanctus is the word from Latin: holy,” Pastor Mark Knutson of Augustana Lutheran Church in Northeast Portland told The Skanner. “So the church is a holy space that should never be violated by violence and hate. And that’s what these laws are.”

Knutson is a member of the Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform, as well as the Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice. Knutson and his congregation have practical knowledge of providing protection and aid: In 2014 while undergoing the immigration process, Francisco Aguirre spent 81 days living in Augustana Lutheran Church to escape deportation to El Salvador, where much of his family had been killed. He was ultimately able to remain in the U.S. and now leads Spanish-language services at Augustana.

Knutson wrote his doctoral thesis on sanctuary, calling it “a playbook for congregations” that he hopes to soon publish.

Knutson spoke with The Skanner by phone the day before he was scheduled to meet with two young men detained at an ICE facility in Portland. – “As clergy they have to let me in with them to find a resolution so they can have due process,” Knutson said.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Skanner: What does it require of the church to offer sanctuary?

Knutson: Just to have one person, you need a full team of people because you never want them to live in a church alone. In the past, we always had two people staying the night who had to be vetted. And then we had people who work on food. You can build it as you go. That’s what we did originally. We created a small apartment within the church. It took many volunteers just for one person. It’s not easy for anybody to live in sanctuary – you can’t leave.

The other thing that’s really important is to integrate them into the life of the church. We have a lot of nonprofits that we’ve birthed over the years, and staff in the office so the person doesn’t feel alone, and they can actually volunteer and help design what it’s going to be like for them. It’s really important to have ownership for anybody who has to live in sanctuary.

When Augustana provided sanctuary in 2014, was it clear the church was under surveillance?

Oh yes. The first time we did it, ICE circled the church for days. So if the person would have stepped out of the church, they would have been apprehended quickly.

What was your exposure to this concept of sanctuary prior to 2014?

I grew up with that in the church, in Portland. “Sanctuary” has a broad spectrum of meaning, but it means everybody who comes in needs to treat each other with respect; there can’t be violence. Everybody’s welcome, but if you can’t maintain that humanity alone, you have to leave. To house somebody, too, was part of what I learned growing up.

I was director for youth ministries (for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) in Chicago for eight years, and we worked on the new sanctuary movement back in the eighties and nineties. We had visitors from churches that were doing (sanctuary work) in Phoenix, and we had letter-writing campaigns with teenagers here writing to teenagers in El Salvador, one of the countries under duress from civil war.

I’m a student of the civil rights movement…I went on a pilgrimage with one of our professors from Wesley Seminary in Washington, D.C., and we did a triangle – Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma. It was profound. You go to Montgomery, and here’s this big state capital on top of the hill. You walk down a path and there’s the first Confederate White House, still pristine, kept up with a visitors center – it’s terrible. And standing on the steps of the capital where (George) Wallace would spew hate, there’s a statue. That’s Jefferson Davis. It was still standing in 2019 when we were there.

We were all amazed by what we saw. Just down the hill, down the steps, across the street, is Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, a little two-story church. I’m a very spatial person, I have to see where things happened, and out of little churches like that came a movement – or the movement took a huge step forward. That’s what’s always inspiring.

To be part of a sanctuary movement, even if (the church) is not used as a sanctuary, it speaks to the community, saying you’re safe.

People are with you.

It’s all part of a whole. Violence against the Black community and others, in terms of law enforcement, or racism in this country – it’s part of that whole. It’s not just (immigrants) from

Central America, it’s other countries. I had a student from Sudan come to my office; he’s scared. He asked me, can I come? I said of course.

Is there any kind of training for churches that want to reaffirm their spaces as sanctuaries?

We’re working on that right now…My doctoral thesis is entitled “Always Step Out in Faith: Sowing the Seeds of the Sanctuary, Solidarity and Hope in Troubled Times,” and it’s 110 pages with documentation of things we’ve done, legislation we’ve worked on. We went back to DC and started the new sanctuary movement with 600 churches back in 2014, and now there’s thousands. We wrote a resolution that called for all Oregon Lutheran churches to become part of the sanctuary movement. That can mean many things – it can mean supporting, it can mean actually doing it. And then we took that churchwide, to 10,000 congregations, and they passed it in 2019.

One thing I’d say for any congregation to consider: we’re very interfaith in Portland. We’re part of the Albina Ministerial Alliance, and we’re all in conversation right now. We’re organizing. We’ve been in conversation on so many issues, Black lives matter, police reform, same sex marriage, healthcare for all.

For any congregation doing this, as Dr. King would say, you need to be tough-minded and show a little heart, because you will get hate. I just listened to four (hate) messages – I always listen to the messages in the morning before my young support staff arrives, and there are some messages where people just scream and yell and call you all kinds of names and say you’re breaking all the laws, and going to hell. That’s not easy to deal with. And I’m used to it, from over the years. It kind of throws you for a minute.

But then you get a lot of love back. We’ve had so many people call in who want to volunteer, who offer legal assistance – we’re organizing now. We have different teams, a lot of colleagues and allies throughout the state.

The overwhelming response in Oregon and Southwest Washington, and around the country, has been so positive. People want to do something – they feel sick about what’s taking place and everybody’s looking for an action to take together. That is very uplifting.

In terms of the hate piece: We got to sit at Dr. King’s table, and we see this one black telephone there in the house, and I thought, for Coretta, when (MLK) was traveling, who’s calling? Is it Martin, or…? The professor said they’d get 50 calls a day. The majority were hate. So when I think about dealing with hate stuff, it is so tame in comparison – I’ve got an answering machine. My wife doesn’t pick up the phone. So the little black phone became a symbol to me of what they went through.

Have you changed anything at the church in response to Trump’s threats?

I had to change the signage on the church just now. It says we’re a sanctuary, no violence, no guns, all are welcome. But we have another sign up saying, This is God’s house, and it’s private property in parentheses underneath, because you’re not supposed to enter private property. It says you can only enter in peace. It says, if you are ICE, you must gain permission to enter this place.

If someone comes to your church asking for sanctuary, are you going to have to do anything differently now?

I honestly don’t know…I went to Centennial High for a school play, I want to Grant for something else, and they have signs up now about what to do if ICE comes into the building. Gun drills, fire drills, earthquake drills, and now ICE drills. That’s insidious. So if somebody came (for sanctuary), we don’t know what the reaction would be. Do we stand at the door and say you cannot come in without a warrant, or even with a warrant?

And we’re not hiding people. We’re very open about it. Because our goal is to get a process going, with legal representation. There are 25,000 Oregonians who are here, if they just had legal representation, they could get documents they need to stay. That’s why we’re pushing (Oregon Senate Bill) 703.

Our job is to diffuse things when a person is going to be torn away from their family, their job, their home. We are going to stand up to any oppression. We don’t know what the outcome will be. But we do know this: the second we have somebody there, if ICE does show up, we have a system to notify every press person around, and all our teams – we could have 100 people show up immeiately to stand peacefully around and surround ICE.

Can you imagine if somebody came into our church, where we have a long red aisle up to the altar – can you imagine ICE coming in by force and dragging a human being down a long church aisle? That would go viral tomorrow. And people would rise up in many other places.

More info: Augustana Lutheran Church will host a Sanctuary Sunday on Feb. 16 at 5 p.m., with a 45-minute rally service followed by 45-minute breakout sessions that will train in five key areas for future mobilization, with an emphasis on Dr. King’s Six Principles for Nonviolent Direct Action. For more information, visit https://augustana.org/. Those interested in volunteering are asked to email [email protected].