Marching for justice

LOUISVILLE — On Sunday, the Rev. Dr. Leah Ntuala, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Seneca Falls, New York, will embark on her “Marching for Justice: 78 Miles for the Constitution.”

With a goal of covering about 25 miles each day, Ntuala plans to walk from Seneca Falls, the site of the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848, to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Batavia, where she plans to arrive Wednesday morning.

She’s invited anyone who’s interested — including members of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform — to join her at 10 o’clock Wednesday morning outside the detention center. As part of their oversight responsibility, committee members may tour detention facilities, which are generally off limits to the general public.

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“I walk because we are living in unprecedented times,” she said. “I can no longer continue with daily life as though everything is normal, because it is not.”

Her march is designed “to ensure that our living, breathing Constitution holds the line — to preserve democracy … and to affirm the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. I march to take back the title ‘Christian’ from Christian nationalists.”

Ntuala, who is 47, has served FPC of Seneca Falls for 15 years.

“Like a lot of people, I call [elected officials] and write letters and maybe go to a protest,” she told Presbyterian News Service. “It was beginning to feel like it wasn’t enough.”

After Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were killed — police have charged Vance Luther Boelter with the killings — and Ntuala learned he had ties to Christian nationalism and was himself a pastor, “I thought I needed to do more … I was always bothered that [for many Americans] Christianity was so narrowly defined in this way.”

“I think you can be a Christian and a patriot,” Ntuala said, “but not a Christian and a nationalist.”

“I want to reclaim the title away from the nationalists,” she said. “Call yourself a nationalist, but leave the ‘Christian’ out of it.”

She’s worked with pastors and churches she knows both in the Presbytery of Geneva and the Presbytery of Genesee Valley to help support her march. Some of those churches are active in refugee support, and members plan to march alongside Ntuala from their town west to the next town, while others plan to show up with signs of support.

In her reading of Scripture, Ntuala has found “ways to have community when there’s discontent” as well as “how to have conversations about hard things and what it means to hold space for one another. Jesus had shared meals all the time with people who disagreed with him.”

Ntuala noted that Tom Homan, President Trump’s border czar, is from upstate New York. Emil Bove, Trump’s former personal attorney who’s now being considered for appointment as a federal judge, is a graduate of Mynderse Academy Senior High School in Seneca Falls. “I know his parents,” Ntuala said. “They are lovely.”

“Both of those men have well-documented stances on immigration,” said Ntuala, whose husband is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Kenya. “We worry: when will it end? U.S. citizens have been detained, and their paperwork has not been believed.”

Earlier this year, Ntuala informed the session at First Presbyterian Church that she planned to express her views more frequently in letters to the editor and in other ways. “We ministers aren’t anonymous” because “we hold that office. I told the session I will use my title when I write letters to the editor, and people will connect me to the church. They voted that was OK.”

“We are a light purple congregation, but we’re still purple, and that’s my favorite color,” she said. “These are my friends and neighbors, the people we worship with. You don’t want to put people in an awkward situation if we can avoid it. One session member said, ‘Don’t worry. If you get arrested, we will have your bail money.’”

“I don’t want that to happen,” Ntuala said of any possible arrest. “People are worried about me, a woman going off by herself who will be met by people along the way.” She placed an app on her phone so family members can trace her progress along the way.

As a clergyperson, Ntuala has been checking with friends to see if they know anyone who’s being held at the facility. That way, she can pay a visit as a chaplain.

“We aren’t the first group to protest at the detention center. We will stand and hope for some media” to show up, she said. “We are biblically mandated to welcome the stranger.” But that doesn’t necessarily mean open borders, Ntuala said.

John the Baptist is a biblical figure with whom Ntuala has long connected. “By nature, I am a dissenter or an agitator,” she said. “Sometimes that means asking the question no one else is asking. … Like John, I am not always gentle with my words. I try to model Jesus’ ministry, but I feel I am more John the Baptist than Jesus.”

Faith in action is an important part of her ministry. “It’s not like I saw a burning bush that wasn’t consumed,” she said, “but I have been shaken out of my monotony.”

“I am someone who’s more of an out-on-a-limb dissenter, and a person who is still learning,” she said. “The notion of being fueled by Jesus and coffee sits right. This time, I’ll be adding trail mix to that.”