Two clergymen suspended in East London sham marriage probe
The charge is that Reverend Brian Shipsides and the Reverend Elwon John were part of a conspiracy to help several Nigerians evade British immigration laws by performing fake marriages.
The artcle brought back some unpleasant memories. My wife is a legal immigrant from Tanzania. It is deeply distressing to us that there are members of the clergy willing to use their positions to help break US immigration laws through such contrivances as "sanctuary churches" and sham marriages.
The ELCA is a denomination prides itself on supporting illegal aliens in the US and in calling for "immigration reform". Yet when my wife and I requested help in obtaining a visa for my wife (we had just been married in her home country of Tanzania and were struggling mightily with the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam) the ELCA ignored our requests for assistance. As one fellow ELCA missionary put it, if my wife had been an illegal alien from Latin America the ELCA would have fallen over itself to help us. But because she was a legal immigrant, the ELCA could not have cared less, even though we were their missionaries.
Time has caused most of my anger to dissipate, although probably it will never go away entirely. But the fact remains that the ELCA is less a Christian church than a radical secular political party run for the benefit of the greedy few. The ELCA cares most about political causes. People, not so much.
