Episcopal presiding officers sign court brief opposing Trump administration’s asylum policies; Episcopal News Service (ENS), February 17, 2026

  David Paulsen, Episcopal News Service (ENS); Episcopal presiding officers sign court brief opposing Trump administration’s asylum policies

"The Episcopal Church’s two presiding officers, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris, have signed onto a “friend of the court” brief along with a long list of other ecumenical and interfaith leaders in support of a lawsuit objecting to the Trump administration’s treatment of asylum-seekers.

The lawsuit was filed by Al Otro Lado, a California-based organization that supports refugees and migrants. Its class-action lawsuit seeks to end the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of turning away asylum-seekers at the border based on criteria that, opponents say, does not follow U.S. immigration law. At issue are administration policies under which border officials have ordered those migrants to remain in Mexico or have denied them asylum because they did not first seek asylum in another country.

The case is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.

The Episcopal Church has long spoken in favor of upholding the dignity of refugees and migrants while citing the biblical call to “welcome the stranger.” Such beliefs were cited by the presiding officers and the dozens of ecumenical and interfaith partners in the “friend of the court” brief. The Episcopal Diocese of New York and Episcopal Divinity School also joined the brief.

“Many of these faith traditions are practiced across every country on Earth and have roots stretching back thousands of years,” the brief says. “All make safeguarding the stranger a core component of faith, a duty obligatory upon not just the individual but upon society as a whole.”

The brief also describes asylum as “a core religious and moral tenet of our society, with a history as old as humanity itself.” The signatories warn of “how extreme, and untenable, the government’s interpretation of our asylum laws is from a historical, religious and social perspective.”

“From the first days of its founding, this country has welcomed the stranger fleeing persecution,” the brief says. “Stopping outsiders at our border and preventing them from lawfully seeking asylum is contrary to our civilization’s longstanding understanding of asylum and antithetical to asylum’s understood role in a moral, democratic society.”"

With Dreadlocks and Yoga, Oslo’s Bishop Practices an Atypical Evangelism; The New York Times, December 12, 2025

Lynsey Chutel, The New York Times ; With Dreadlocks and Yoga, Oslo’s Bishop Practices an Atypical Evangelism

"“When Putin and Trump, in their different ways, are using Christianity, my religion, in a very politicized, destructive way, it’s really important for me that we, as a church, lift up our voices for justice, for solidarity, for welcoming the stranger among us, for less differences between poor and rich.” Bishop Gylver told journalists in the days before her ordination.

Since formally assuming her new role, her public utterances have become a little more circumspect.

“As a bishop, I should not point to specific people or parties to say, ‘This, and not this; that and not that,’” she said during an interview in September. “I don’t even have to name them, but we have quite a few world leaders that are practicing and articulating Christian faith in a way that is very foreign to me...

As part of her emphasis on inclusion, she raised the Rainbow flag over the Oslo cathedral to celebrate Pride Week in June. It was a precursor to the church’s formal apology to Norway’s L.G.B.T.Q. community this October for decades of discrimination."

What happened to mercy?; The Washington Post, November 13, 2025

 Thomas Banchoff , The Washington Post; What happened to mercy?

"Decades ago, Pope John Paul II made a plea for mercy. His 1980 encyclical “Dives in Misericordia” (“Rich in Mercy”) emphasized God’s forgiving love toward humanity and decried a widespread tendency to “remove from the human heart the very idea of mercy.” Instead of mercy, John Paul saw a rise in “spite, hatred and even cruelty.”

Mercy is painfully scarce in our politics today. When the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, appealed to President Donald Trump from the pulpit in January to show mercy toward the vulnerable, the president bristled and demanded an apology. In the months since, his administration’s policies have been rife with cruelty, from eliminating life-giving aid programs abroad to threatening to withhold food assistance for more than 40 million Americans."