Under the Fig Tree

By Craig Goodwin-Ortiz de León

I am white. I am in a gay marriage. My husband is a brown immigrant. And I am afraid—not only for us, but for what I see unfolding around us.

The government is already detaining people off the street, often without clear cause, without warning, without accountability. They are targeting brown people, immigrants, those who speak with accents or don’t carry the right papers. And much of the country shrugs. These aren’t hypotheticals or distant threats. This is happening now, and we are watching it unfold in real time.

I can’t help but feel that they are perfecting their craft—testing how much cruelty the public will tolerate, how far the machinery of fear can go before someone dares to say, enough. First they target immigrants. Then they erase queer lives from classrooms, policies, and public memory. And if history has taught us anything, it’s that this kind of power never stops with the margins. Soon it will be journalists, activists, people of faith who dissent. Anyone who doesn’t conform. Anyone they don’t like.

As a follower of Jesus, I cannot ignore these patterns. Jesus, too, was a threat to power. He healed on the Sabbath, lifted up the poor, and dared to speak of a kingdom not built on dominance but on love. He was executed by the state with the blessing of religious leaders. Not because he broke the law—but because he exposed its injustice.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Oscar Romero lately. When he began to speak out against the violence and repression in El Salvador, they said he was being political. He wasn’t. He was being faithful. Romero said, “A Church that suffers no persecution but enjoys the privileges and support of the things of the earth—beware! It is not the true Church of Jesus Christ.” He stood beside the poor, the displaced, the disappeared—until they killed him too.

Romero’s words still echo today. So does his warning.

We are watching something shift in the soul of this nation. Christian symbols are being weaponized to justify exclusion. Law is being used not to protect the vulnerable, but to punish them. Silence is being misnamed as peace.

But peace is not silence.
Peace is presence.
Peace is solidarity.
Peace is refusing to look away when your neighbor is being targeted.

I am afraid. But I also believe. I believe that the Gospel still speaks, still convicts, still calls us to stand with those at risk—even when it costs us. Especially when it costs us.

I believe that God is still with the oppressed. I believe Jesus walks with the immigrant, the trans person, the queer couple, the asylum seeker, the single mother, the unhoused veteran, the addict, the prisoner. And I believe the Church must walk there too.

Now is not the time for neutrality. Now is the time for clarity.