Sometimes I imagine heaven as the church basement of my childhood.

I grew up in a picturesque Southern California town nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, where our bustling non‒denominational evangelical church seemed to anchor the community. The church basement was where life happened: funeral lunches, wedding receptions, family movie nights, holiday potlucks and more. It was a joy-filled place where I could simply show up and know I would be fed, known, and loved. That basement felt like home and maybe even heaven.

In that church, I was faithfully taught the stories of the Old and New Testaments and memorized many of Jesus’ teachings. I often marveled at how beautiful our sanctuary was and assumed that if anyone was hungry or thirsty, they could walk through those doors and their needs would be met. Everyone could experience what I did.

Isn’t that what my Bible and my Sunday School teachers had taught?

Our church sat on the main street of town, and across from it was a park where day laborers gathered each morning hoping for work. For a short time, the church ladies brought them coffee, but the elders quickly put a stop to it. We could not give coffee to “those men,” they said. It was “too political” because they were undocumented. (I won’t repeat the dehumanizing language they actually used).

When I heard this, my young idealistic heart broke. The church I loved was not what I thought it was (thirty years later, I still carry that heartbreak). But at the time, I felt a glimmer of hope when I noticed the Catholic parish up the street. They seemed to care for immigrants and the marginalized in ways my church never could. I would later learn about Catholic social teaching and the theology behind the radical generosity that the parish embodied.

Now as a middle‒aged Catholic convert living in another small town, I find myself, once again, heartbroken by older men within my church. Faithful Catholic men I had assumed were wiser than me are using the same dehumanizing language my childhood elders once did. Except this time, we are not debating whether our neighbors deserve a cup of coffee. We are debating whether they deserve to live in fear, to be abducted, or to be put in cages.

As the late theologian Rachel Held Evans wrote, “If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them.” The February 19th rebuttal by members of our local parish illustrated this all too well.

As an adult, I am thankful that I have the ability to deliver a cup of coffee or a bag of groceries to my neighbors regardless of what leaders within my church say. But I imagine there is at least one young person watching whose heart is breaking at their church’s response (or lack thereof) to suffering in our town and across our state.

I pray they know their heartbreak is holy and justified. And I pray they may also find a glimmer of hope in the “church ladies” who continue to be “too political” by giving rides and delivering groceries to their neighbors regardless of skin color, religion, or immigration status.

They are the Church too.

— Sarah Schneider is a New Ulm resident