Press Release from St.

James Episcopal Church

Hendersonville, NC
June 30, 2016
In light of the news reports that surfaced on WLOS earlier this week and in the Times News
this morning claiming that St. James is actively sponsoring a refugee resettlement effort, as
the Senior Warden of the Vestry of St. James Episcopal Church, I am compelled to clarify some
misconceptions about the position of the church.
Our Vestry, which is the governing body of the church, received a presentation by members of
our parish Outreach Commission in March of this year. This came about because our Rector,
The Reverend Dr. Joel Hafer, asked the Outreach Commission to form a subcommittee to look
into the process of hosting immigrant families. No country of origin was selected or even
suggested by the Committee or the ministers of the church.
This subcommittee has been working through Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), which is
an arm of the national Episcopal Church. This organization is one of 9 refugee resettlement
agencies vetted by the FBI and the United Nations that establishes approved refugee
resettlement affiliate offices throughout the United States. EMM has a network of 33 local
affiliates in 22 states.
The subcommittee acknowledged the complications they had encountered in discovering what
is necessary to host a refugee family and ultimately learned that a sponsor had to be within 50
miles of an EMM agency to qualify. The closest agency to Hendersonville is in Knoxville,
Tennessee, well over 50 miles distant. Additionally, and per the EMM rules, any sponsor must
work with an agency in the state to which they have moved. The nearest in state agency to
Hendersonville is Interfaith Refugee Ministry (IRM) in New Bern, NC. The subcommittee will
continue to pursue possible sponsorship by encouraging one of the 9 existing EMM
immigration agencies to open a resettlement affiliate center in our area, but this is as far as
this process has gone.
Although this subcommittee originated as an arm of the St. James Outreach Commission, with
the blessings of our clergy, numerous others have joined the committee representing the
Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina and other Henderson and Buncombe County
churches of varied denominations. It is a misconception that this effort exists solely at the
behest of St. James. At no time did the Vestry vote to sponsor a specific family and in fact the
session with the members of our Outreach Commission was informational and exploratory only
and did not require a Vestry vote. No refugees will be coming to Hendersonville tomorrow,
next week, next month or possibly even in the next few years.
The Vestry of St. James recognizes that this effort follows what we did approximately 20 years
ago in sponsoring a Cambodian refugee family and several years before a family from Poland.
The Vestry and leadership of the parish also acknowledge that times are much different post
9/11, and any sponsored family will need to be fully vetted by many government agencies and
have the full sponsorship and approval of a refugee resettlement agency. This is not going to
happen quickly and, given the current political will of our elected representatives, may not
happen at all. However, the Vestry agrees that the question what would Jesus do must be
asked.
If there are further questions or you require clarification on any of these statements, please
feel free to reach out to me on my cell (828-696-5220) or contact The Rev. Canon Mark
Stephenson, Executive Director of Episcopal Migration Ministries, at (212) 716-6256.
Eugene Gene Carr
Senior Warden, St. James Episcopal Church