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Standing with the Vulnerable & Acts of Solidarity

As we process the heavy news reaching us from Minneapolis and across the country, we are reminded that our call to follow Jesus often involves risk. Our faith is not practiced in a vacuum, but on the streets where justice and mercy are most needed. The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia are calling us to transition from "watching with concern" to active witness.


Please read the following statements from Bishop Stevenson and Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe regarding the events in Minneapolis. We have also included specific ways you can advocate, mobilize, and give to support our siblings in Minnesota and immigrant communities facing fear today.


Standing in Solidarity with Our Siblings in Minnesota

Dear Friends in Christ,


In solidarity with our siblings in Minnesota, the Diocese of Virginia stands firm in our shared call to love Jesus, embody justice, and be disciples.




As a Diocese we are committed to racial justice and the dignity of every human being. We refuse to let the light of our hope be shadowed by despair. We follow a Savior who was himself a migrant and who commands us to care for the “least of these.”


How you can act:

  • Advocate: Urge your senators to reject further ICE funding and call for de-escalation.

  • Mobilize: Support Migration with Dignity Sunday, and local peaceful demonstrations to protect our democracy.

  • Give: Support the Diocese of Minnesota’s “subversive love” through donations to Casa Maria.


I will be releasing additional personal reflections soon. In this moment of reckoning, let us love.


Faithfully yours,

The Rt. Rev’d E. Mark Stevenson


From Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe: Death and despair do not have the last word


Dear people of God in The Episcopal Church:


Like Jesus, we live in frightening times. His earthly ministry began, as we heard in today’s Gospel reading, when John the Baptist was imprisoned by authorities who wanted to silence his preaching and prophesying.


Jesus knew what happens when earthly powers persuade human beings to fear one another, regard one another as strangers, and believe that there is not enough to go around. In Jesus’ time, the power of these divisions motivated John’s beheading and Jesus’ own death on the cross at the hands of Roman authorities. 


In our time, the deadly power of those divisions is on display on the streets of Minneapolis, in other places across the United States, and in other countries around the world. As has too often been the case throughout history, the most vulnerable among us are bearing the burden, shouldering the greatest share of risk and loss, and enduring the violation of their very humanity.


But we do not grieve without hope. The Christian story is full of people who lived in frightening and brutal times, and who followed Jesus’ call that we heard in church today. His proclamation turns us away from the fear born of sin and death and toward the kingdom of God, toward Christ’s ministry of justice, reconciliation, and love. “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view,” the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 5:16), exhorting them to reject the divisions of their time in favor of being ambassadors for Christ.


This is God’s call to The Episcopal Church now, and it is not an easy one. In the United States, we no longer live in a time when we can expect to practice our faith without risk, and we are confronting what vulnerable communities of faith have experienced for generations. Our right to worship freely as one church, committed to the dignity of every human being, has been curtailed by the fear that too many immigrant Christians face when they leave their homes. Peaceful protests, a right long enshrined in the Constitution, are now made deadly. Carrying out the simple commands of Jesus—feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, visiting prisoners, making peace—now involves risks for the church and grave danger for those we serve. As Christians, we must acknowledge that this chaos and division is not of God, and we must commit ourselves to paying whatever price our witness requires of us. 


In the coming years, our church will continue to be tested in every conceivable way as we insist that death and despair do not have the last word, and as we stand with immigrants and the most vulnerable among us who reside at the heart of God. We will be required to hold fast to God’s promise to make all things new, because our call to follow God’s law surpasses any earthly power or principality that might seek to silence our witness.


To those of you who are in the center of the storm, please know that I am praying for you as you embody the love of Christ in your ministries and communities. To those of you who are watching with concern and fear, I ask you to pray for those who have died in protests and detention, for those who witnessed their deaths, and for everyone who bears authority and responsibility in this moment, that they may exercise wisdom, restraint, and courage. Pray too, especially in the days to come, for the witness of our church in these times and for a hedge of protection around all the beloved children of God who live in fear this day.


The Most Rev. Sean Rowe

Presiding Bishop

The Episcopal Church


IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: Duccio, di Buoninsegna, -1319?. Christ Calling the Apostles Peter and Andrew, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=49261 [retrieved January 27, 2026]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duccio_di_Buoninsegna_036.jpg.

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