AMHERST — Leaders of an effort to protect immigrants from deportation, including a man who spent 3½ years in sanctuary in an Amherst church, and a Buddhist nun in Leverett whose recent focus has included reflecting on Indigenous people’s sufferings over the past 400 years, are being honored this week.
Margaret Sawyer and Lucio Perez, both part of the Interfaith Solidarity and Sanctuary Network, and Sister Clare Carter of the New England Peace Pagoda, will be recognized with the Joan Lindeman Interfaith Opportunities Awards at a ceremony Wednesday morning.
“We just thought these people have done something extraordinary,” said Peter Blood, a convenor with the Interfaith Opportunities Network, the presenter of the awards, which go to people who improve interfaith understanding and shared action in the Pioneer Valley.
Lindeman, who died at 95 last August, helped found the Interfaith Opportunities Network in 2005. The network has representatives from several faith communities, including members of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Quaker and Unitarian congregations. The awards were first presented in 2013.
Sawyer, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and an organizer with the Pioneer Valley Workers Center, initiated the creation five years ago of Sanctuary in the Streets, a network of churches, synagogues and mosques formed to protect immigrants facing deportation or other threatening actions from government.
The outgrowth of this made it possible for Perez to take sanctuary at the First Congregational Church in Amherst, and for Irida Kakhtiranova to do so at the Unitarian Society of Northampton.
In choosing Sawyer, the interfaith network issued a statement saying that “Margaret’s personal commitment and unfailing enthusiasm for interfaith work, as well as the fact of the organization of the ISSN, were crucial in making this interfaith cooperation happen.”
Perez’s time in sanctuary included practicing and sharing his faith with others, and according to the interfaith network, “He was open to each and every persons’ own faith path while actively maintaining his own faith through a very trying journey and separation from his family. All who met him felt inspired by his faith.”
“What’s extraordinary about sanctuary is that it’s very much an interfaith thing,” Blood said, observing that people took turns visiting Perez, cooking meals for him and driving his family from Springfield for visits.
Carter is part of the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order, which strives for world peace through walks to promote nonviolence, justice and healing in the world. Beginning in 2016, the nuns and monks began a series of annual walks, “Listening to the Call of the Great Spirit: Facing 400 Years of Colonization since the Mayflower Landing and Walking into the Future.”
At the Amherst Interfaith Thanksgiving service in 2019, Carter spoke to members of the interfaith network, which then joined the Peace Pagoda, the Interfaith Council of Franklin County and area congregations in the 400 Years Project, a three-day walk from the Sojourner Truth Memorial in Florence to Unity Park on the Connecticut River. The walk also included a Zoom gathering to listen to Native leaders describe what has happened under centuries of colonization by Europeans.
Carter said she and the Pagoda played a role in catalyzing and focusing Interfaith Opportunities Network members on cultural domination and painful stories about colonization.
“They themselves understand the importance of learning this history,” Carter said. “It’s what we’re still living and breathing, the grief of it, and the loss of it.”
“We’re hoping New England and the Northeast can be a place where it can change,” Carter said.
Blood said the inspiration has included a push for the Legislature to adopt a bill that would change the Massachusetts state flag by removing the image of a Native American.
To view the 11 a.m. ceremony, part of the interfaith network’s monthly meeting via Zoom, send an email to info@interfaithamherst.org.
