Mary Ann Lundy oral history, 2022.

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  • speaker
    Hi, my name is David Staniunas I'm records archivist at the Presbyterian Historical Society. I'm joined by Marianne Lundy, currently of Santa Fe, New Mexico. We're going to talk about the sanctuary movement in the Presbyterian Church, in and out Presbyterian Church and Marianne's involvement
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    in Santa Fe. Yeah, yeah.
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    Where did I say you were joining us from
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    somewhere out here in the West? I see. Okay. And I felt
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    like there were the period we're talking about is in the early 1980s Presbyterian churches, Quaker Activists, Methodist Churches a whole bunch of different religious people undertook the work of shielding people who had migrated over the border, who were fleeing persecution in El Salvador and Nicaragua and Honduras undertook the work of protecting those people over the period from, I guess, about 1981 until 1986. These activists and their network of supporters faced surveillance indictment and prosecution for shielding and transporting refugees and asylum seekers from Central America. That movement, in defense of the poor and the stranger against the United States, is unjust immigration enforcement and against the U.S. war machine that provoked the migrants fight
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    and against the 1982 Refugee Act that we had passed. Let's start
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    it up. Let's start it up. That would all become called the sanctuary movement. Maryanne, about this time you were involved in Riverside Church in New York City's participation in sanctuary. Can you tell us how you came to be involved there?
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    Yeah, actually, I was involved in St. Luke Presbyterian Church in Wayzata, Minnesota, which was an early sanctuary church. My husband, my then husband, Dick Lundy, was the pastor of that church, and we were one of the first to bring out a Salvadoran refugee into our midst. And I went to work in 1982 for the YWCA of the USA. I was commuting and a commuter marriage. And I, after some weeks and looking at churches, I got involved with Riverside since I was a graduate of Union Seminary, which is right there by Riverside. I knew of Riverside and and knew Bill Coffman, who was William Sloan Conference. Then the minister and and several of my colleagues were involved in Riverside. So while I didn't. Really give up my membership in St. Luke Presbyterian Church in Minnesota. I also you could be a minister, a member of Riverside at the same time that you were with others. So I was involved and right away jumped in to being involved with social issues. And at this time, my church in Minnesota had become a sanctuary church side, he's very much aware of the sanctuary movement and. I couldn't figure out why Riverside wasn't a sanctuary church and. So we formed a sanctuary committee. Several of us, the co-chair of that committee with me was Donald Wilson, who was a Presbyterian pastor and was on the national staff chair of Social Justice. And so we began the process of working about whether we would become a sanctuary church. The crazy part of this whole thing is that Bill Coffin, who's so well known for everything he was involved in and their peace program, had been very well known. Bill was not convinced that the sanctuary movement was very crucial and that it was going to make a difference, or that we were going to see that change in the way we'd hoped. And so we really realized that the first thing the community had to do after if we were going to be involved was to help convince Bill that this was an important movement in the United States. So one of the first things we did and as we were in contact with a lot of both refugees in the New York area and with other churches, we decided we'd have to convince Bill. So we had a dinner on Shrove Tuesday and we invited declined. Who was my husband then to come from? Why said because they had become a sanctuary church where the Salvadoran refugee, who'd been a part of Duarte's bodyguards as a as a refugee, it was very highly the. The John Fife had called Dick to find out if that was possible because they knew they had to get Rene Hurtado or the sanctuary person bear out of the Southwest because he was he was going to be known very quickly. So he became their sanctuary person and we all got involved at St. Luke's Social Justice Church, but it was pretty small. Anyway, Dick came spoke at the Shrove Tuesday supper and the committee. I think there were about 30 people there. Maybe we were all very excited because we felt so strongly that this was important, but we knew we had to convince Bill. We had invited him also, and he was somewhat convinced, but not all. So that began that work, and Bill later became very much a part of the whole movement as well and supported what we were doing. And we knew that New York City was a prime place to have refugees by then. We had also formed a movement in New York, in New York and New England, so we had a lot of churches sort of waiting and interested in becoming sanctuary churches. And I spent a lot of time speaking during the week nights to churches in New England and the New York area. Don Wilson, my co-chair, was a word a lot because he was on commissions for the national, the World Council of Churches. And so Don wasn't always there to do the speaking, but was very knowledgeable about where all this involved. So we decided that we, the committee, voted yes. We were going to become a sanctuary church and we did. And then Bill Conference slowly got on board and thought this was going to amount to something after all and became very supportive. He went to a national meeting of sanctuary people later. I think that really helped convince him this is going somewhere. So all was going well, and then the whole trial started to be put into place. And I must say that when I would go home on weekends to Minnesota, I would go home every third weekend and our phone would ring all night, and we were under a lot of harassment and that the local police decided they would come by our house all night because we were getting so many threats from people. And that continued much more after it became public that I was involved with the sanctuary movement. I was called, I was listed and so as an unindicted coconspirator. And so that that's the way it became so public in terms of the Minnesota sanctuary movement. Yeah.
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    Marianne, can I get you? Before we dove into 1985, I'm kind of really interested and in Riverside in, I guess this is 1982 about what was taken. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What what kind of activities followed after the vote?
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    After all, to become you, OK? Yeah, we were going. We were speaking. All of us to church, so we're interested because by then the sanctuary movement was becoming visible. And so we were working with religious communities. Oh, what's the word I'm trying to think of? Monastery groups like the Western Priory, they became very involved through our visits with them and and then just churches in the New York area, a whole lot of them wanted always to have more information. They wanted to be supportive. They took resolutions supporting work. And then, of course, after we had a sanctuary couple, then we really were busy because they were going. We were taking them around talking about what was happening in Central America.
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    Yeah, but that was where was your couple from?
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    Guatemala was a young couple with a baby, and I needed to say that's really what involved me much more because I was now working for the YWCA. I was at a meeting at Trinity University and in Texas. And I got a call from Darlene Nagorski, one of the sanctuary workers who was part of the trial, and she said We have a couple that we think need we need to get from here. We need. She had found out that I was there in Texas who said, Can you come to Tucson and and try and figure out a way to get them to New York City? So I did that actually moved to Tucson and rented the car, picked up the couple. Notified all the people I needed to notify and awfully around driving across the country, stopping in various places like Santa Fe, but I didn't know I would live in some time. And I had a reporter from the Des Moines Register with me who wanted to know more about the sanctuary movement. So the movement already had very close ties if anyone got involved. There were people who were later that the indicted Kogan's of the indicted persons who were very close and sharing information and John Faith. Of course I knew and he was very close to all of us. So I drove across the country with our couple, got there in the sanctuary, and then it was not long before list came out of the people who were indicted and then a list of three people who were to be unindicted coconspirators who were set to testify against the others. And my name was in that list. At first, that had been very confused. They had trouble finding me because I had rented the car to head Wisconsin license plates, so they kept talking about this person they married with from Wisconsin. And I kept thinking, they don't need me, they don't memory anyway. But I they had films of me taking the couple across the country. I was watching Bill Moyers Journal one night it was on CBS. I think in those days and I saw myself getting into this car with this couple. And that was when I realized this was serious. I was sort of in big trouble here. And then the Des Moines Register did a very good series of articles on Sanctuary and was part of that. So I filed the brief in New York trying to say that my mom's present at the trial was simply a way of. Getting back at the churches that this was not serious, I had not I had read that long, long paper for the first time this morning after I was getting rid, I'd forgotten all about it, filed down in New York and it was found that I had to testify anyway. I had been really clear I wasn't going to have to do this. So that began a long series of FBI agents at our door in Minnesota. Every time I'd go home, I was being followed, so there would be an FBI agent or, as my daughter said, the man in the the the big man and the big car with the head, the heavy suit on us all.
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    Now wait, hold up. How old were your children at that point?
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    Jeremy had just gone to college at the University of Wisconsin. Megan was a junior in high school, and so she was the one who stuck with me in this whole thing and was very frightened apart at the time. We talked a lot about that, and then we would get calls all night from her answers. He'd rather go around, I'm sure, who would just do things like, you are being watched and, you know, horses, wolves in the background. That's funny sounds and bells. But that's that it was frightening enough that the police helped her to watch her house to be sure that we didn't get. And then Dick was traveling several times to my husband, them to Latin America, that our church had had a long relationship in Central and Latin America. That is St. Luke, was it? And so they were they were very supportive and very frightened too. And then let's see, where am I here? After we after my lip, my name appeared. I did not. I've lost the case to have to appear, so I'm going to have to appear. And they kept trying. You know, it was just harassment. Every as I said, an FBI agent would come almost every time I get home and repeating myself here and hand me a subpoena saying, you have to be. And it was ridiculous. A trial hadn't yet started. And so finally, I realized I I was going to have to testify. And then I. I decided, well, then the question was I realized I hired a lawyer in New York. We wrote a brief her name was Marsha Levy. And she and I became very close. She did this at no cost a small law firm. And she she was just great. She's just great. In fact, she comes it up in the trial minutes because she said during the trial, Well, I'm getting ahead of myself, so I flew. Finally, I was subpoenaed for the trial. There were three of us. A woman who was a member of the church in Tucson. I'm not sure who's Joan Christchurch. There was a company at
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    St Margaret's in Tucson.
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    No, there's John sitting on St. Mark's and south side were the two major Tucson churches. And her name was Kate Kelly, and she she had kept overnight refugees. And so that's why. And then the other one was a man who'd been a missionary in Central and South America, Central America, and he was now a pastor of a church in the U.S. But they were using him really for background information on the movement. As it was, it wasn't yet a form movement in Central America. So the three of us and I wrote to them and said, I'm not going to testify, I'm building a case. And so they ultimately decided they would not testify, either. So the three of us refused to testify at the trial. I did it on the grounds of being a Presbyterian elder. And and at that time, the General Assembly of the Church. Jim Anders was the standard clerk, and I just read this thing. It is huge and it's very, very well done. The history of John Calvin, the history of the Presbyterian Church and why this was just an effort to use me rather than a legitimate means of getting someone to testify about what what was
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    what was the the document. You're referring to this
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    process called seepage. Motion to allow filing this brief. Through the District Court Southern District of New York Presbyterian Church USA, this honorable court for permission to file a round of law to quash my subpoena.
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    OK, so the church wrote an amicus brief for you.
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    Yeah, gotcha. Huge. I'm just amazed. I haven't looked at it for a long, long time. It's very, very. I mean, both in terms of it was John C. Moore. I don't know that I ever met him. Attorney for amicus curiae in Brooklyn. It's just marvelous and I don't think I have. I don't think you'd have a copy of it for in my file. I should send it to you just to have it in the file.
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    We may have it from another source. I'll look.
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    Yeah. Yeah, it's very interesting because I'd forgotten all about it and looked at it from court. Anyway, where are we now? We're where I've been named, and so I flew to San. And my daughter was really funny. She was just terrified for me, and she kept saying, she said to me, Mom, I'm flying to that trial. I said, Well, Meghan, that you're in school, that's not necessary. And she said, Well, Bob, I watch a lot of television. I know what happens to people in jail. And you don't know how to act if they put you in jail. So I think I should go down there with you. No, you know what it may be like to be in jail. And in fact, you didn't fly down for my. Well, I thought that was really rare. I don't know what we were going to do anyway. Yeah. And let's see, where am I here? So the list came out of the unindicted, as low as the indicted persons flew down to the trial. And. I was the first one of the three of us to be called, and I made a statement saying I refused to testify on the grounds of my religious faith and the history of the Presbyterian Church, and I'd written a statement that I've never been interviewed several times and I've made a statement from John Calvin about when governments. And that. Actions that are counter to one's faith. One has a not. Not just a right, but one should testify against the government. One should go against its government, not people. I think many people don't realize this part of the Presbyterian tradition that when governments are unjust, you have an moral obligation really from killing himself. And I remember I said this news conference. Read the statement and John Fife was in the back of the room. He would straighten your legs. Yes. Yes. He had never found that statement. And Cowan. And so it was really it just turned out to be an important thing for all of us who were Presbyterian anyway. Then the then the judge refused, although he said, We did have I have a statement I can send you. That was the judge's response. But. Nevertheless, we were sentenced to house arrest during the rest of the trial, so it was about a month or so and I was sentenced to house arrest in Minneapolis, even though I was working there and I was there much of the time they put us on a trip to Latin America. So Megan and I were mostly there and a little frightened a lot of the time. But I could not leave my house, except for a regularly constituted church service for an hour and a doctor if I needed a doctor. So I was pretty much there and mid-winter, no supper. And then when the trial ended, of course we were. I was free. No. But I clearly it was the most dramatic involvement, and it wasn't the only human rights thing to have been involved. Of course. In fact, Amnesty International called me when I was in Minnesota and said they wanted to make me a person of conscience because of this being on my being under house arrest for religious action that I we were released before then. So that didn't happen. And so what else do you need to know? Do you have? You have my statement in the files there. I know a copy of that. You don't have a copy. I'm pretty sure of the the motion to allow the filing of an amicus brief for the Presbyterian Church Thursday and also through the District Court of New York. Yeah, I think it may be true, but I I'm really surprised I had forgotten all about this. Actually, it's very, very thick and I can send it to you if there's any reason
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    We could ask the same question about Riverside Church. What was the fallout of you being on house arrest at Riverside?
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    I have a picture that's just wonderful because I flew. I was called to trial right before Ash Wednesday and I flew after the Ash Wednesday service of Riverside Church, and I have a picture of me and coffin by then. It's very moving. They had they had glued together sheets of paper. People signed this in support of sanctuary and me and I have a picture of it and I can send it to. Don't know if you want a picture, but it probably should be. It's just wonderful. And then I have another picture that I have to find. This is you can't see this somehow. Where can I show and put it right up in front? You that they had? I don't know how many thousands of people signed this in support of of sanctuary. And then the other picture they need to find this was Man Bill Coffin when he brought this out and said, We're going to give this to you. So that was really probably the most moving time and summarizing the whole, the whole thing. This has been so far. I'm afraid I've left out a lot of stuff, but I and what I've left out is, you know, naming people who are supporters and all kinds of amazing things that happened. Let me just check here for one minute. Of course. One thing was I'd never heard of an unindicted coconspirator, I only knew that Richard Nixon was. OK. I learned a lot about the court system like that there. Well, and you know that in 1985, 16 people were indicted and. The. They were not under arrest. They were. But they had limited them, of course. John, try being one of them. Yes. Have you talked with John?
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    I haven't talked with John, five, now.
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    OK.
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    Can we can we pick back up with Riverside Church, the you want ask?
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    Yeah, I
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    know the family that was fielded by the church. What happened next with them?
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    They went back to Guatemala and they were actually they weren't really. As we learned later, not married under the church in Guatemala, and they separated. They had been picked up because as with many of the people who became refugees, they had been involved in a co-operative in the countryside, and the Catholic Church saw that as very threatening all that kind of organizing. And so they they I don't know what happened. So that was I mean, that's the sad, sad other side of the whole sanctuary movement is those who went back to their countries and were persecuted or killed much worse than before they were involved in the sanctuary movement. I'm sure there are others who stayed as with Rene. So it has both a bad and a good ending, I guess, and not always, but I think the churches who participated became changed entities, there's no question.
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    Yeah, yeah, that's them. Yeah. Reflect more, please, on how the sanctuary movement affected like the whole PC(USA).
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    Yeah. Yes, that was hard because I cannot tell you whether the PC(USA). There's no question my involvement was in the sanctuary movement was out of my membership. In the PC(USA). I met with Jim Andrews, the stated clerk. When I got really scared about what was going to happen and what would this mean to the church for the church against the church and general is just staunch and support and said that they would do anything I needed them to do and that that was when the whole piece was written about that. I'm sure that that whole thing is just amazing to me about. Hello. The loss of the amicus curiae, they wrote, I just I had lost track in my head that that whole thing trying to support my refusal to testify. Anyway. Back to what did you just ask me, I keep losing. Oh yeah, well,
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    Significance of the sanctuary movement to the whole church. Yeah, I think the sanctuary to the whole denomination, how that rattled out through the years and changed people's mind.
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    You know, I think John Fife is clearly the most influential of anybody and that we had more local churches who are members of the sanctuary movement animated domination. And I think there's no question that it this meant a strong sense of resistance without. With. With questioning the government its actions in relation to many things, I would I would still bet that there are churches very much involved with organizations like ACLU in trying to remain true to a vision of intelligent, committed action when an injustice is perceived. I would be surprised if there weren't more Presbyterian churches involved in right now Black Lives Matter movement. I know that was true in Minneapolis, but I just hope that's true. Yeah, but and and. I think that many churches that didn't become sanctuary churches were very, very supportive of others. In fact, I know that's true in giving money and having volunteers and helping shield in finding places for refugees to stay. And I think that would still be true right now with a life at the border. I know my church in Santa Fe is very involved and they were planning, I think, to become a sanctuary church and then the whole the whole thing was over the trial part much faster than people thought it would be. So I think. Well, you know, what do I know about the whole church, but I think they're right now involved in ecology major and and the whole climate crisis. There's a national movement that's very strong right now involved with that, and I think that's it's you'd almost be able to say it's the same congregations that have kept the Catholic faith, so to speak. Yeah. And been involved.
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    I think one very specific thing that comes to mind for me, especially from if we're thinking about the eighty five, eighty six time period is the church also puts out a document on peacemaking called Are We Now Called the Resistance? Yeah. And you you mentioned John Calvin's passage about resistance to an unjust government before and just off the top of my head. I can see a direct relation between the kind of pause or hiatus in the sanctuary movement after eighty five and then a kind of redirection of activity toward that peacemaking document. Does that kind of jive with your experience?
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    Yes. Yes. Yeah. And all kinds of issues around human sexuality and. Now, the creation care congregations that are, you know, I think. Well, I should say, you know, I was director of the women's or the Presbyterian Church or the Women's Ministry. And I think the place of women is just in terms of ministry. Clergy. It's just amazing. And I think that in part has made his has created the kind of climate of openness that we would not have had. And certainly we were one of the first denominations or even the first one who came out with. Or the ordination of LGBT, I think we were the Methodists I know didn't pass it after a second, I guess. Yeah, I think. And I just think a number of those things, a number of actions and that's a very partial view is because there are a lot. Women, the number of women in ministry has increased, so. Profoundly and. You know, then we've got the re-imagining conference as another old story.
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    Oh, that's a whole session. We'll come back for that one.
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    Yeah, I've got some more papers. I wrote about them. Great. I think. It would be interesting to know. I do not know. What kind of. Follow up because I then went to work for the World Council of Churches, so I wasn't as much in tune with what was happening here and then retired, but. I've always been very proud of what the Presbyterian Church has done. I felt like I was not out of tune, what was going on. I was in tune

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