In Spokane, a church mixes politics and faith with a song about Anne Frank and ICE

Dressed in church choir black, the women standing at the front of the Unity Spiritual Center in Spokane, Wash., last Sunday began to sing a new song that likens the U.S. treatment of asylum seekers to the Holocaust.

“Could they see you run for your lives as the forces of hatred pursued you, found you,” the choir sang.

“Where was their humanity?”

Midway through, the pronouns shifted − no longer “they,” but “we,” a switch from the past to the present. “Do we know? Do we know?” they sang. “Can we hear your pleas for asylum when fleeing, afraid for your lives?”

The choral arrangement, For Anne in the Attic, was written by Janice Mayfield, a local woman who penned the words after rereading The Diary of Anne Frank amid the countless headlines about U.S. immigration enforcement.

“You’d have to not be paying attention to notice all the parallels with what’s happening to our immigrant and asylum seekers today − the violence, the inhumane treatment, putting them in essentially prison camps,” Ms. Mayfield said.

‘Can we hear your pleas for asylum when fleeing, afraid for your lives?’ Listen to a performance of For Anne in the Attic in Spokane, Wash., written by Janice Mayfield.

The Globe and Mail

The choir has plans to post a video of the performance on social media, blending the music with footage from the 1940s. It hopes, too, for subsequent performances, including at a local synagogue.

Even so, there is little likelihood that a song from a conservative corner of Washington state will become a new anthem of American protest − or even that many people will know it exists.

The Sunday performance nonetheless points to a larger shift in the U.S., as the intensity of the second Trump term pushes politics deep into every facet** **of American life.

Across the country, apolitical spaces have found themselves flooded with political affairs. In places such as Washington, parenting chat groups have struggled to keep discussions focused on diaper struggles and stroller recommendations rather than deportation raids or Middle East violence.

In the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, political considerations have altered fundamental patterns of work as construction companies schedule jobs at night as a shield against immigration raids.

And in progressive sanctuaries, political subjects are being raised in new ways.

In the Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe has spoken out directly against the practices of the Trump administration. “As Christians, we must acknowledge that this chaos and division is not of God, and we must commit ourselves to paying whatever price our witness requires of us,” he wrote in January.

“It’s a time for being outspoken about the issues of our time,” said Rachel Endicott, the priest in charge of St. James Episcopal in Pullman, Wash.

She preached last weekend about how individuals and the community can deal with people too afraid to leave their houses because of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents mobilized by Donald Trump to expand deportations.

“If you don’t speak out now, when are you going to speak out?” she said.

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Berkeley, Calif., is the first U.S. ‘sanctuary city’ in 1971, and University Lutheran Chapel played a part in that by deciding to protect objectors to the Vietnam war.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail

At the University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley, Calif., Rev. Kwame Pitts says political considerations should now influence fundamental elements of church – including who she will allow inside.

“Would I welcome an ICE agent into this church if they want to come worship? Absolutely not,” said Rev. Pitts. The same, she said, applies to the considerable numbers of everyday Americans who support what ICE is doing. “They’re not worth talking to, either, quite frankly.”

The mixing of politics and faith is, of course, nothing new in the U.S. For decades, conservative churches have built their congregations into reliable Republican voting blocs. Four in five evangelical Christians voted for Mr. Trump in 2024.

Among those who have embraced politics from the pulpit is Ken Peters, a pastor who has led a pro-Trump patriot church in Spokane – and strongly disagrees with the premise of For Anne in the Attic. “There’s zero comparison between ICE and policemen enforcing good American law and the Nazis trying to exterminate an ethnic group,” he said.

Mr. Peters has watched progressive congregations grow more political, which he sees as evidence of widening social fissures. “Our country has a massive divide. And it’s not healing up,” he said, describing the political left in religious terms: “They’re demonic. I think they’re evil.”

Yet the number of patriot church parishioners has dwindled in the past year, he said. “Our church actually grows better when the Dems are in power,” he said.

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The Unity church’s board decided ‘we have to stand for something,’ says its spiritual leader, Dennis Ashley.

Progressive congregations, meanwhile, have found new vigour.

On Sunday, greeters at the Unity Spiritual Center marvelled at the number of cars filling the parking lot, as people gathered to hear For Anne in the Attic. A year ago, the church might have balked at a performance with such political overtones. But as the country’s political environment has grown increasingly tense, “the board finally came to say, as a church we have to stand for something,” said Dennis Ashley, the congregation’s spiritual leader.

“We want to stand for people and human rights – and people who are more downtrodden − which I think is the traditional role of the church, to help people who can’t help themselves.”

No one expects a church performance to bend the political imperatives of the Trump administration. But perhaps, they hope, it can form part of a chorus of change.

One member of the choir works at the local sheriff’s office, but is critical of what she sees as a lack of respect for the rights of immigrants.

Another is a Canadian who recently took U.S. citizenship after 30 years in the country, out of fear that nothing short of a passport can provide protection against arrest.

Susanne Croft, 72, came of age during an era of protest. Now a widow and retired, she is not comfortable with the conflict of street demonstrations. But “I believe that the singing of these extremely powerful words not only changes each of the singers – in our bodies − but it turns us into a broadcasting station, sending that sympathy and solidarity out to those who don’t have the safety to gather the way they do,” she said.

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Susanne Croft, centre, likens the singers’ work to a ‘broadcasting station’ for solidarity.

Others have found personal meaning in communal song.

At a time when violence is often in the news, “it sucks, and it’s hard and it’s numbing,” said Makiah Blunt, 26. Her family immigrated to the U.S. from Haiti. She worries that the colour of their skin and the accent of their voices** **will make them targets.

But in the choir, she said, “it feels empowering to be among like-minded people, especially when it comes to white people − if they’re willing to also put themselves on the front lines.“

“That feels like having an active, very visible ally.”