In Search of Sanctuary’s Locale: Comparing Sanctuary Public Schools and Sanctuary Churches in the U.S. Context

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Religion and Schooling across Differing Socio-Cultural Contexts

Proposal

In response to the 2016 presidential election, hundreds of K-12 public school districts declared themselves as “sanctuary” campuses, as a way of extending certain legal protections and creating a welcoming environment for undocumented students (Jones, 2017). At the same time, hundreds of churches, primarily of Christian denominations, also declared themselves as sanctuaries, providing assistance and advocacy for undocumented peoples as well as “mixed-status” families. These sanctuary provisions addressed a critical need in a global era of anti-immigrant rhetoric as well as legislation. For example, the Trump administration, imprisoned asylum seekers, separated children from their families, cut the number of refugees allowed into the country to its lowest level since 1980, and significantly ramped up deportation measures (National Immigration Law Center, 2018).
This paper works with data gathered from the second phase of a major research project on sanctuary U.S. public school districts and Christian churches. The overarching goal of the project is to examine sanctuary policies and practices toward an understanding of how “sanctuary” is being defined and understood within this particular historical period and socio-political context and what sanctuary practices look like in action. During the study’s first phase, the researchers analyzed sanctuary resolutions of ten public school districts and ten churches located across the United States. In this second phase, and with institutional grant support, the researchers have conducted 55 interviews within but also beyond the original school districts and churches examined. Study interviewees have included church leaders and staff, school principals, school teachers, academics, and leaders from both secular as well as faith-based Non-Governmental Organizations. Researchers have conducted interviews in the cities of Chicago, Madison, New York, Denver, Toledo, Findley, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Malibu, and Pasadena.

While there is exciting scholarly work on progressive religion and the sanctuary movement (Lippert and Rehaag, 2013; Yukich, 2013), there exists scant academic work on sanctuary public schools, and to the researchers’ knowledge no work at all comparing sanctuary public schools with the sanctuary churches. The word ‘sanctuary’ derives from the Latin roots, sacer and sānctus, both invoking the concept of holy. Within the Judeo-Christian tradition, sanctuaries have referred to a special type of cultural jurisdiction for those fleeing harm; one set off from the regular activities of life, and deriving its authority from its sacred nature which itself originates from a transcendental power (Cunningham, 1995). Ostensibly “secular” forms of sanctuary, particularly with regards to immigrants, became prominent in the 1980s when several U.S. cities declared themselves as sanctuaries for people fleeing civil wars in Central America. The histories of these city sanctuaries are not separate from faith-based sanctuary movements. As Jennifer Ridgley (2013) writes, municipal policymakers have in fact drawn legitimacy from the same religious traditions that inspired church sanctuary, “and religious organizations across the country have played an important role in early campaigns for sanctuary policies” (p. 219). Hence, city sanctuary “has been transformed away from its religious roots” and into a “more institutionalized mechanism of local government” (p.228). The project researchers see sanctuary public school districts as sanctuary cities, wherein the substance and meaning of “sanctuary” have been incorporated into their legal and institutional spaces (Ridgley, 2013). The project makes a significant contribution to understanding exactly how the identified public-school districts have indeed incorporated the substance and meaning of sanctuary into their spaces, and the degree to which these iterations of sanctuary differ or have been “transformed away from” the iterations of sanctuary that we find within churches.
This paper will specifically focus on “the locale” of sanctuary, or where the ontology of sanctuary lies. The researchers conduct their analysis through Hilary Cunningham’s (1995) historical examination and framing of sanctuary movements, with particular attention to the power of a “covenant community,” or a community bound by a solemn agreement and cause, to mobilize around sanctuary seekers, as well as through an examination of institutional sanctuary identity through symbolism and symbolic power, primarily through David Kertzer’s (1988) work, Ritual, Politics, and Power. With particular attention to the (ontological) location of sanctuary, the researchers also investigate the degree to which, at least in the U.S. context, sanctuary might be operating as a “floating signifier” (Hall, 1997; Lévi-Strauss, 1968) whose exact meaning is indeterminate and is instead relative to its sponsoring institution’s history and context.
Indeed, the paper finds that churches and schools have differing ontologies regarding how and where sanctuary resides. At the same time, analysis suggests that churches and public-school districts are similar in very interesting ways and even similar in their differences; both churches and schools define their sanctuary subject through a claim to their respective jurisdictions, and both also position the sanctuary subject as part of the wider communities which they serve, as well as the sanctuary subject as one deserving of compassion rather than contempt. Finally, in legitimating their sanctuary identities, both churches and school districts reference foundational texts as sources of transcendent authority, allowing them, as Kertzer writes, ‘to place adjudication beyond human will,’ and hence beyond the proclivities of any particular governing body.
The paper’s topic is of much relevance to CIES 2023, particularly with respect to the sub-theme of Social Justice and Inclusion. How are sanctuary school practices making students feel accepted and welcomed, and part of a larger “covenant community”? How are they making students and families feel secure? In what ways might non-sanctuary-identifying schools as well as churches learn from and perhaps adopt some of these practices? The project has tremendous relevance for the study of schooling and society and will appeal not only to academics but also to religious as well as secular school leaders and policymakers.

Author

• Bruce Collet, Bowling Green State University