MEADOR: Iowa priest stays true to faith's easily lost ideals

"Those people who have been making trouble all over the world have now come here."

It's a description you'd expect to read of some sort of radical political organization. Perhaps Bill Ayers' Weather Underground or some equally subversive group.

Yet the context of that original statement is actually Acts 17:6, found in the Christian New Testament as a description of the early Church leaders, including the Apostle Paul, when they arrived in the Greek city of Thessalonica.

Sadly, that legacy of holy hell-raising has largely been lost in contemporary Christianity. Christianity has become one of the most fundamental building blocks for the American empire, which has often been built upon greed, imperialism and abuse of military force.

And it's for that reason I'm grateful for Rev. Lloyd Paul Ouderkirk.

Ouderkirk, a Catholic priest in Postville, Iowa, came out of retirement in May of this year, after an immigration raid swept through Postville that led to the arrest of nearly 400 illegal immigrants for document fraud at the Agriprocessor Plant.

Most of the immigrants were sentenced to time in prison and were deported after they served their time. However, the state did release some on humanitarian grounds, since their children were American citizens and needed someone to provide for them.

But, ironically, the government took no steps to provide for the released immigrants - they simply kicked them to the curb in Postville, leaving them with no means to provide for the very children whose existence was the theoretical reason for their release.

This leaves the immigrants seeking political asylum or temporary residency in the United States. In the meantime, they're left wearing ankle bracelets to monitor all their movements, unable to be hired for jobs of any kind and unable to provide for their children, since they have no documentation.

Let's be clear: These are not immigrants looking to destroy America. They're not sitting around lazily doing nothing. All those interviewed simply desired a better life for their children and thought America could provide it.

And the thanks they receive from our government for their earnest, but perhaps naive, move? Deportation, which breaks up their families or forces homelessness, making it impossible to provide for their families.

Enter Ouderkirk.

Ouderkirk is leading the charge in fighting for a just resolution for these immigrants.

As reported in a CNN story, most of the immigrants have turned to Ouderkirk's St. Bridget's parish for food aid, lodging, medical aid and other needs. These acts of mercy are costing the church $80,000 a month, and funds will likely last only until the end of the year, but Ouderkirk stands by his decision to support them.

"I think every elected politician - no exceptions - should bow their heads in shame," Ouderkirk said.

"Upset? Yeah, I'm upset. I mean give me a break ... If the elected politicians couldn't do any better than this to come up with a good, just immigration law, they should hang their heads in shame."

He continued, "It's pathetic when you have what was labeled by the man who directed the raid here as a 'very successful raid.' How successful is this when it does this to the children and breaks up families?"

Ouderkirk serves as a shining example of the sort of subversive Christian mischief that Jesus commends to the church in Matthew 25. He calls his people to give food to the hungry, to visit those in prison and to give clothing to the homeless.

Elsewhere, he defies religious power-brokers by healing people on the Sabbath - an act the aforementioned religious types saw as blasphemous and illegal.

Later in the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul travels the empire announcing, "Jesus is Lord" - a seemingly innocuous statement, until one person realizes that in his context such a statement would have been considered treasonous against the Roman Empire and against Caesar, which explains why Caesar eventually executed Paul.

Simply put, the Christian posture toward power structures is as follows: When their demands are not incompatible with our calling as Christians, we submit. That's why Jesus told the disciples to pay a tax to Caesar.

But when the existing power structure engages in destructive behaviors - and they frequently do - we must be a prophetic voice in the culture that condemns the abuses. Further, like Ouderkirk, we ought to meet the needs of those oppressed by the abusive power structures.

Sadly, the contemporary church is often a vehicle for oppression. If you take away the evangelical vote, perhaps President Bush wouldn't have been re-elected, and then, perhaps, Katrina relief efforts would have been handled with some degree of competence.

Or perhaps prisoners of war wouldn't be tortured in ways that blaspheme the God in which evangelicals confess belief.

The Christian church has a profoundly unique and beautiful opportunity in the modern world to be a voice for the oppressed. We have the opportunity to model counter-cultural values that honor the marginalized and promote peace within our cultures. The Christian life, modeled after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, offers us the tools we need to address these complex issues.

It gives us a framework in which to understand and respond to them in ways that bring about real and lasting change.

But we'll never experience the joy of such a life until we embrace the calling to be God's instruments in the world to promote peace by modeling the humility and grace of the God we claim to worship.

Until we learn this hard lesson, we'll continue to be an unintentional cog in the machinery of oppression.

But perhaps someday we'll learn. And when we do, I bet we'll all look a lot like Rev. Ouderkirk.

Jake Meador is a junior English and history major. Reach him at jakemeador@dailynebraskan.com.