Earlier this month, the national Episcopal Church announced it would end a nearly 40-year partnership with the U.S. government to resettle refugees. The decision came after the Trump administration requested that the church assist with the resettlement of white Afrikaners from South Africa.
The Episcopal Church in Minnesota has endorsed the decision.
“I wholeheartedly support the Presiding Bishop’s decision to decline the request to resettle Afrikaners as refugees and end our longstanding partnership with the federal government,” Bishop Craig Loya said in a statement provided to Alpha News.
“While it is painful for us to see a forty-year partnership come to an end, our church’s commitment to racial justice and healing, as well as our deep connection to the Anglican Church in South Africa, makes privileging Afrikaners over refugees who have been thoroughly vetted and lived in challenging and dangerous conditions for many years inconsistent with our core values as followers of Jesus,” added the bishop.
In January, the Trump administration effectively ended refugee resettlement by issuing an executive order that suspended the program. The next month, the administration created an expedited resettlement process for Afrikaner refugees after the South African government enacted the Expropriation Act 13 of 2024.
According to the Trump administration, the new law enables South Africa’s government “to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation,” and “follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.”
The U.S. welcomed the first group of about 50 South African refugees last week, a move Secretary of State Marco Rubio celebrated over the weekend.
“Call it whatever they want, but these are people that on the basis of their race are having properties taken away from them and their lives being threatened and in some cases killed,” Rubio said, according to the Washington Examiner.
Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and is a close friend of President Trump, wrote in March that “there is a major political party in South Africa that is actively promoting white genocide.”
Very few people know that there is a major political party in South Africa that is actively promoting white genocide.
The video below was just yesterday. A whole arena chanting about killing white people.
A month ago, the South African government passed a law legalizing… https://t.co/GHYp6DvGkr
— Kekius Maximus (@elonmusk) March 22, 2025
Under federal government definitions, a refugee must be someone who is of humanitarian concern to the U.S. and is experiencing persecution or fear of persecution due to “race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.”
The Episcopal Church, which has had a decades-long partnership with the U.S. government to resettle refugees, was asked to help resettle white South Africans. However, the church not only opted against helping the white South Africans but decided to end its longtime relationship with the federal government.
In a letter about the church’s decision, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said refusing to resettle white Afrikaner refugees was based on the Episcopal Church’s “commitment to racial justice.”
“It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years,” said Rowe. “I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country.”
The presiding bishop noted that the Episcopal Church will end its partnership with the U.S. government by the end of the federal fiscal year in September, and the church is “hard at work on a churchwide plan to support migrants and refugees.”
In Minnesota, Bishop Loya said the Episcopal Church’s Diocese of Minnesota would support “those on the margins and welcoming the stranger among us with the love God extends to every human being.”
Sarah Prentice
Sarah Prentice has previously written for Campus Reform and worked as an intern at Media Research Center. While continuing to pursue her degree in political science, she worked full-time in communications and media outreach for a pro-woman, pro-life non-profit. Now a fellow at Alpha News during her senior year of college, she hopes to graduate with her political science degree from SUNY Brockport and combine it with her media and communications experience to pursue political journalism. She has a special interest in reporting on stories related to social issues, education, public health, and religious freedom.
