Immigrant Communities Need Immigrant Pastors
To the editor:
I am writing because Pastor Carlos Chavez of a La Grange Baptist Church was apprehended on Sept. 18 by local law enforcement and is still detained at an ICE facility in Houston while his wife and children remain at the family’s home in Giddings. Pastor Chavez is from El Salvador and has been in the US some 15 years. His church is La Primera Iglesia Bautista Hispana (First Hispanic Baptist Church) in La Grange. I have spoken with church members and an elder in his congregation, and my own pastor contacted his wife.The people I have spoken with do not know of any reason for his detention beyond unresolved immigration requirements.
Rural Texas communities have a long history of relying on immigrant pastors to serve immigrant congregations. My paternal grandfather, Josef Hegar, and his cousin Josef Barton came from Moravia in 1906 to answer a call to serve Czechspeaking congregants in Texas. Both went first to Eden Theological Seminary in Missouri for doctrinal education. Their denomination, which at that time and for decades operated exclusively in Czech, is represented in our county by Fayetteville Brethren Church. Both pastors married within their religious tradition. They and their wives served rural Texas congregations and provided religious education for many years, often “riding circuit” to multiple churches.
During the same era, Fayette County welcomed Pastor Robert Heise of Westphalia (Germany) to serve St. John Lutheran Church in Ellinger in 1900. He married, and soon lost in childbirth, a German wife and later married her sister, who came from their home country to help raise his daughter. In 1903 local immigrants came together in La Grange to organize a German-speaking Lutheran congregation, also to be led by Pastor Heise. By 1908 there was an additional congregation in Prairie Valley. Rutersville, Mecklenburg, Smithville, and Winchester became part of the pastor’s circuit by 1917. The demand for worship in German was clear. After 41 years, in the new political era of 1945, Pastor Heise resigned from St. Paul’s Church, after which the more fully bilingual Pastor Flachmeier came to serve the Evangelical Lutherans of La Grange. My own German maternal great grandparents we founding members of First Lutheran Church in Floresville, a congregation with a similar history.
How are the needs of today’s immigrants and their children or grandchildren different from those of our forebears? People arriving in a new place have long gathered to practice their faith in familiar ways. That helps explain our local range of Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Brethren, Church of Christ, and Pentecostal congregations, as well as Cowboy Churches and other non-denominational ones, including those with distinct racial or ethnic identities. All that has changed is that the national political environment is far less welcoming to immigrants, a short-sighted view that fails to recognize communities’ need for bilingual teachers and other professionals, public school students, tax payers, younger residents and workers of all types.
Descendants of Czech Pastors Hegar and Barton have included a La Grange algebra teacher and rancher, an army colonel, a pastor, an author and musician, a school librarian, additional teachers, and at least two university professors. Their sons served in the military; two were killed in combat in World War II. If anyone thinks that Spanish-speaking residents will ultimately contribute less to their communities than Czech, German, or English speakers, they will be proven wrong.
I cannot see how our community is served by the continued detention of a pastor whose family and congregation are here. Fayette County has welcomed immigrant pastors before. Let us remember that history as we consider Pastor Chavez, his family, and his congregation today. And let’s put Fayette County on the welcoming side of history.