Product Description: From childhood, D.L. Mayfield longed to be a missionary, so she was thrilled when the opportunity arose to work with a group of Somali Bantu refugees in her hometown of Portland, OR. As the days, months, and years went by, her hopeful enthusiasm began to wear off, her faith became challenged, and the real work of learning to love and serve her neighbors grew harder, deeper, and more complex...read more

Product Description: During the 1980's, citizens of El Salvador and Guatemala fled their countries because of persecution, torture, and death threats. The United States, a signator to the United Nations Protocol on refugees, was legally bound to accept them, but it resisted admitting that the refugees sought anything other than economic betterment...read more

Introduces the community of Jubilee Partners, located in northeast Georgia, discussing its history and its work with Cuban, Southeast Asian, and Central American refugees

Product Description: Book by National Catholic Conference

The death of twenty-one Salvadoran refugees in the Arizona desert in 1980 made many Americans aware for the first time that people were struggling—and dying—to find political asylum in the United States. Tucsonan Jim Corbett first encountered the problem while attempting to help a hitchhiking refugee. What came of that act of altruism was a movement that spread across the country, challenged the federal government, and brought the refugee problem to national awareness. Corbett first worked within the law to help refugees process applications for asylum, but the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service soon began a program of arrests; then he began to smuggle refugees from the Mexican border to the homes of citizens willing to provide shelter, making hundreds of trips over the next two years; finally he enlisted the support of the Tucson Ecumenical Council and persuaded John Fife, pastor of the Southside Presbyterian Church, to open that building as a refuge. When legal action against Corbett and the others seemed imminent, Southside became, on March 24, 1982, the first of two hundred churches in the country to declare itself a sanctuary. Convictions of the Heart takes readers inside the sanctuary movement to reveal its founders' motives and underlying beliefs, and inside the courtroom to describe the government's efforts to stop it. Although the book addresses many points of view, its primary focus is on the philosophy of Jim Corbett. Rooted in the nonviolence of Gandhi, the Society of Friends, and Martin Luther King, Corbett's beliefs challenged individuals and communities of faith across the country to examine the strength of their commitment to the needs and rights of others.

A noted journalist offers an in-depth account of the people of Arizona, and then the nation, who challenged law and risked arrest to protect those fleeing the chaos and violence of Central America in order to answer what they deemed a higher law of conscience

Product Description: Book by Tomsho, Robert

Product Description: In its primary current usage, the term "sanctuary" refers to protective community with people whose basic human rights are being violated by government officials. As a declared practice, it incorporates prophetic witness into protective community; that is, in addition to protecting the violated from the state, the public practice of sanctuary holds the state accountable for its violations of human rights ...read more

Examines the efforts of American church groups to help Central Americans to find refuge in the United States

Product Description: Book by Nawyn, William E.