Activist Targets Evangelicals on Immigration

"I've heard people in churches saying things about immigrants that would make me kind of cringe," Soerens says.

On this night, he is speaking at Community Christian Church in Naperville, a megachurch with several sites in Chicago's western suburbs.

In neighboring Aurora, where the church has a campus, the number of immigrants has grown so steadily that some of its schools are mostly Latino. Their presence, and their struggles, have drawn notice in the broader church.

Soerens' presentation is called, "Who is My Neighbor? A Christian Conversation About Immigration." A small crowd of older couples, 20-somethings and young families is scattered around the auditorium, some with pens poised for taking notes.

Soerens barely mentions politics. He almost never talks about advocacy on a first visit to a church.

Instead, he reels off Bible verses, from Deuteronomy, Zechariah, Malachi and more, and speaks of the Christian duty to be hospitable toward strangers, even lawbreakers.

Then, one-by-one, legal and illegal immigrants, some clutching their children, take the stage to tell how they face separation from their families. Pastors from other churches who helped sponsor the event pray over each immigrant and ask the audience to participate.

"I think the rule of law is important and I don't think that we should pretend that the law wasn't broken," Soerens says later. "But we don't look at people and say, 'These are citizens and these are aliens.' We say, 'These are all people made in God's image.' That's everyone."

Several prominent evangelical leaders agree.

They have publicly supported some steps that would ease a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

In July, when President Barack Obama gave a major speech seeking to restart his stalled immigration overhaul, he was introduced by influential pastor Bill Hybels, founder of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois. Other well-known evangelicals attended, including the Rev. Richard Land, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Yet, as Soerens has found through his work, evangelical churchgoers are in a far different place. Law-and-order is still the focus and sympathy for illegal immigrants is thin.

Soerens is trying to change that, one church at a time.

Soerens is an alumnus of Wheaton College, the Illinois school known as the "evangelical Harvard." He is tall, clean-cut and tireless.

At age 26, he is already an author. He and fellow advocate Jenny Hwang wrote, "Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate," a book that grew out of their church presentations on the Bible and immigration.

To better live out his beliefs, he moved into a dilapidated apartment complex across from a strip mall, among the few places in Wheaton where new immigrants can afford to live.

He leads a Bible study for young people in the building. A small fellowship group he formed for Spanish-speakers in the complex now holds weekly worship at a local chapel.

"Scripture is at the core of who I am," he said. "I'm evangelical and biblical, not a liberal in evangelical clothing."

Soerens is based in Wheaton for World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group for theologically conservative Christian churches. World Relief has been settling refugees for the U.S. State Department for decades.

He started as an intern, studying microfinance in Nicaragua, then returned to the Wheaton office, conducting workshops on applying for citizenship and counseling immigrants on their chances for being naturalized. That job, he said, was mainly "giving people bad news."

He began his outreach to pastors last year, largely in Chicago's western suburbs.

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