Remarks for Moral Monday CT/Fairfield County - 12/8/25

We gather here today — people of many faiths, many backgrounds, one shared moral calling — in the season when Jews around the world begin to celebrate Hanukkah, the festival of rededication. And this year, I’ve been thinking a lot about a part of the Hanukkah story we rarely tell — the part about what happens when fear turns us toward empire instead of justice — because it speaks with urgent clarity to our moment.

After the Maccabees won their revolt, Judea was free — but frightened. And in their fear, they did what frightened nations often do: they turned toward the nearest empire. They sent envoys to Rome praising its greatness. They carried a massive golden shield — hundreds of pounds of precious metal — across the sea to win Rome’s favor. They convinced themselves that if they could stand close enough to the powerful, the powerful would keep them safe.

But power did not save them.

Power consumed them.

And eventually, power crushed them.

And in our time, in this country, we can feel that same danger rising — the temptation to believe that fear is strength, that cruelty is security, that the most vulnerable among us must be sacrificed for the ambitions of the powerful.

We feel it not in theory but in the lives of our neighbors.

Just days ago in Queens, a six-year-old boy named Yuanxin was taken from his father after an immigration raid. A child — six years old — disappeared into a system so opaque that even seasoned advocates still cannot confirm where he is being held. His father, held back by barricades at a rally, cried the only words he could still offer his son: “We love you.”

And last week, a young woman — a college student studying in the United States — tried to return home for Thanksgiving break, like thousands of other students do every year. Instead, she was detained at the airport, handcuffed, and deported to Honduras within 48 hours. A promising life uprooted, a family torn apart, a future thrust into danger. Not because she posed a threat. Not because she broke a law. But because cruelty has now become a legitimate tool of policy.

And across the Midwest, Somali families are bracing themselves after the President of the United States declared that Somalis are “garbage he doesn’t want in the country,” while the Vice President banged the table in encouragement. A major newspaper called it “unapologetic bigotry.” You don’t need a policy briefing to understand what that message means to a Somali child walking into school the next morning, wondering if his country still wants him.

And this is not happening only “out there.”

It is happening right here.

Just last week in Stamford, a man our accompaniment team had supported through every required check-in — a man trying to follow every rule placed upon him — was seized from his home without warning. ICE agents threatened the volunteers who stood with him.

These are not numbers.

These are not footnotes.

These are human beings — God’s children — whose dignity is being discarded to feed a politics of fear.

And Hanukkah is not the only witness to what happens when fear replaces moral purpose.

The prophet Jeremiah saw the same pattern in his own day.

Jeremiah lived at a moment when the mighty Babylonian Empire threatened Judah’s survival. And Judah’s leaders — terrified, scrambling, desperate — turned not inward toward justice but outward toward empire. They sought protection from Egypt, the nearest superpower.

They convinced themselves, as frightened societies often do, that if they aligned with the strong, the strong would save them.

But Jeremiah insisted that the real danger was not Babylon at the border.

It was the decay within Jerusalem itself.

Leaders who put their trust in military alliances instead of truth.

Leaders who relied on force instead of equity.

Leaders who justified cruelty instead of repairing corruption.

Jeremiah warned them in no uncertain terms:

No alliance can save a nation that refuses to build its life on righteousness.

No empire can protect a people who abandon justice.

No power can secure a society that preys on the vulnerable.

And our shared moral traditions teach the same:

Safety cannot be built on fear.

Stability cannot be built on cruelty.

And peace cannot be built on the backs of the vulnerable.

So we stand here — on courthouse steps, at noon, in the light of day — to declare:

We do not believe that might makes right.

We do not believe that whoever has the gold gets to make the rules.

We do not believe that any child is “garbage,” or that any human being can be discarded for political gain.

We believe that every person is created in the image of God.

We believe that dignity is non-negotiable.

We believe that bigotry is not strength.

And we believe that cruelty in the name of safety is a lie that corrodes the soul of a nation.

So in this season of rededication, let us rededicate ourselves:

To standing between our neighbors and the machinery of oppression.

To protecting families who are being hunted and communities who are being scapegoated.

To raising our voices when those in power use their platforms to demean, dehumanize, or destroy.

To ensuring that no child — not in Queens, not in Texas, not in Minneapolis, not in Stamford — disappears without someone shouting their name and demanding their return.

May we be fierce in solidarity, unwavering in courage, and abundant in compassion.

May the lights we kindle — lights of justice, lights of mercy, lights of hope — push back every shadow of fear.

And may we build, together, a society worthy of every person God has created.

Amen.