Where did all the religious leaders go in times of deportation?

BALTIMORE – As the Trump administration does its best to ignore vulnerable children, terrorize immigrants with dark skin, and cut thousands of government workers from their livelihoods, a question lingers in the air.

Where, in the name of God, are the voices of protest from America’s religious leaders?

A month into Trump’s second coming, our great religious leaders must have noticed by now the roundups of immigrants, the cutbacks on international aid to the poor and the sick, the threats to birthright citizenship, the families who have been here for years but now find themselves terrified at the thought of some big-booted men in uniforms yanking them from their homes.

Maybe they’ve even heard about Jocelyn Rojo Carranza.

She was 11 years old and lived in Gainesville, Texas. But now she lives no more. She took her own life after classmates at Gainesville Intermediate School bullied and taunted her.

“They were going to call Immigration so they could take her parents away and she would be left alone,” her distraught mother, Marbella Carranza, told CNN affiliate KUVN.

Jocelyn’s story is one of the most heart-wrenching of those facing immigrant families across the country – part of the Trump administration’s stunning shakeup of a nation that once saw itself as the embodiment of Judeo-Christian values but now watches as Trump surrounds himself with the wealthiest men on earth and prepares to enrich them even further while cutting programs aimed at helping the needy.

And we wait for the voices of religious faith to raise a chorus of protest – not on political grounds, but on simple morality.

Instead, we have Trump greeted warmly, a few weeks ago, at the National Prayer Breakfast, particularly by members of the evangelical community. Protestant evangelicals, reportedly representing about one-quarter of the country, voted heavily for Trump.

But even those religious groups that oppose Trump have spoken with muffled voices – or not at all. They saw the response to Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde, who dared beg Trump for mercy in a public place.

At a prayer service marking Trump’s inauguration, Bishop Budde, in the gentlest tones, told him, “In the name of God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in this country who are scared now.”

With his usual lack of grace, Trump on his social media site called Budde “a so-called bishop” and “a radical Left hard-line Trump hater.”

“She was nasty in tone,” Trump lied, “and not compelling or smart. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job. She and her church owe the public an apology.”

Is anybody still waiting for a response from other clergy?

Well, there was the prominent evangelist Rev. Franklin Graham, a strong Trump supporter, who immediately called Budde “a socialist activist.”

And there was Robert Jeffress, a long-time Trump supporter and pastor of Dallas’ First Baptist Church, who posted on X his “disgust” that Bishop Budde “insulted rather than encouraged our great president.”

For decades, religions in America have faced a common problem: empty pews. Just this week, two of this city’s oldest and most treasured Catholic churches – St. Vincent de Paul and St. Leo the Great, in Little Italy – announced they were merging.

Add that to the dozens of churches around Baltimore whose closings were announced in recent months. Lack of parishioners, everyone.

It’s part of the great secularization of America. And why is that? Partly, it’s because former parishioners yearn for relevancy from the pulpit, and not merely broad religious cliches.

And what’s more relevant than the arrival of the second Trump administration and the cruel attacks on the generosity of America that was previously taken for granted?

Among religious leaders, there has been some random, and muted, criticism of Trump – but nothing that has captured the anxiety and outrage felt by millions of Americans.

The Reverend Gabriel Salguelo, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, said, “If it’s true that the administration is worried about violent (immigrant) criminals, why did they pardon over a thousand people who acted violently in the Capitol?…Why then try to rescind the 14^th Amendment, depriving children of birthright citizenship? They’re not violent criminals. They haven’t even been born.”

In late January, a broad array of Jewish groups sent a letter to the president opposing his “plans to launch mass deportations, build massive detention camps, and conduct sweeping raids.”

The letter noted that such issues are “deeply personal to the Jewish community.”

Whoever imagined such comparisons between an American government – and Nazi Germany’s?

And yet, whoever imagined such a muted religious response in the face of it?