For many immigrants, faith provides a foothold in their new home country
They come bearing Bibles and the mounting strain of a workweek.
Conversation ambles from the headaches of six o'clock traffic to frustrations with the visa renewal process.
Pastor Yenner Wuanti begins to sing, ending the social chatter in seconds. His words remind fellow Liberians why they gather in a Warrenville home amid the fading light of a recent evening.
"What a mighty God we serve," Wuanti sings, reciting the familiar lyrics. "Angels bow before him. Heaven and Earth adore him. What a mighty God we serve."
For a few hours every week, Liberians scattered across the Western suburbs -- distanced by financial pressures that necessitate multiple jobs -- unite in faith and familiarity.
They know one another. They know what it took to get here tonight and what was left behind in the west African country reeling from 14 years of civil war and an 80 percent unemployment rate.
The cultural and spiritual connections that bind them reveal an underlying tenet of immigration to this country: Faith helps.
Whether it is a Polish Catholic mission in Lombard or a Sudanese prayer service in Wheaton, faith provides a foothold in this country, connecting immigrants to one another and larger, American religious institutions.
It fuels what University of Illinois-Chicago sociologist Stephen Warner calls segmented assimilation.
"In the U.S.," he said, "religion is really the way people keep rooted."
Church involvement
Ministering to immigrants -- whether they live here legally or illegally -- thrusts churches to the forefront of a debate simmering from Congress to City Hall.
Many religious leaders couch the issue in phrases like faithful citizenship and civic involvement. Catholic parishes and Muslim student associations dispatched busloads to immigrants rights marches in May in Chicago.
"The Scriptures are full -- the Old and the New Testament -- of where you need to be hospitable to the sojourner," said Matt Hopkins, missions director at Wheaton Evangelical Free Church.
Proponents of tighter immigration controls bristle at the religious involvement.
"Organized religion has no place in helping to determine a public policy issue that affects all Americans," said Dave Gorak of the Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration.
Churches long have been a port of entry for newcomers.
The nearest steeple proved a familiar beacon in surroundings that offered few others. Ethnic congregations sprouted. English mingled with Polish, Lithuanian and Italian in parish halls.
The tradition continues today even as languages change and concerns surrounding immigration mount. Visa delays and rampant demand within the legal system compound problems outside it, inflaming tensions further.
Gorak, for one, takes issue with resettlement programs -- many of them religiously run -- that shift refugees and asylum seekers thousands of miles away rather than to neighboring countries while their homeland recovers from war, famine or natural disasters.
"The odds of them ever going back are slim and none, which takes us back to the problem of runaway population growth," Gorak said.
Current politics aside, many religious leaders and historians alike contend churches fill a vital need in helping immigrants integrate, as they have for centuries.
A 2004 study found churches and sports teams were the two largest integrating institutions for immigrants.
"(Churches) historically have been places immigrants settle and become part of America because they allow people also to have a connection to the culture they bring," Warner said. "It's not a zero-sum game."
Faith can be a powerful compass in playing it.
Sermons as pathway
Providence Rubingisa measures his cultural survival by sermons.
When the 44-year-old arrived from Rwanda in 2002, leaving his wife and eight children in Tanzania, he quickly connected with a church. Yet the pastor's English words meant little to Rubingisa.
Nine of every 10 Rwandans are Christian, the U.S. State Department reports. French and Kinyarwanda are the dominant languages in the mountainous nation smaller than Maryland.
Genocide gripped Rwanda in 1994, killing up to 800,000 and forcing 2 million to flee. Many returned to Rwanda. Fewer than 100,000 Rwandans remain displaced.
Rubingisa is one of them. Few others live in the Chicago area, leaving little possibility of a cultural connection. So Rubingisa sought one in faith at Romeoville's Community Christ Church.
"I was like, 'Oh, God, help me to one day listen to what they are saying,' " he recalls.
Five years later, Rubingisa listens and understands the pastor's words with an ability strengthened by weekly services and Bible studies.
"Now I can follow the whole service," Rubingisa said. "I think one day I will preach too."
New cultures, familiar story
Germans came first.
Lithuanians arrived a few years later along with Slovenians, Croatians and people displaced by the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Then came the Irish and Polish.
A string of Catholic churches sprouted in ethnic enclaves around Waukegan and North Chicago. By 1904, three parishes with Catholic schools existed for the different communities.
The idea was to enroll children in parochial schools for equal servings of religion and English language. For adults, there were social clubs. Anything to provide a cultural tie.
The immigrants changed over time, bringing with them new languages and traditions. Spanish Mass replaced Lithuanian services.
Yet the church remains a pivotal pulse point in the community.
Waukegan's Holy Family Parish -- formed when three parishes consolidated -- now offers English courses, citizenship workshops and a three-day course last month on immigration law and cultural survival.
"Catholic is a religion that doesn't belong to any one group," said Donald McCauley, Holy Family's director for immigrant issues and social services.
A sense of home
The hymn ends, and eight people reach for well-thumbed Bibles.
But first, a prayer.
"Father God, we thank you for taking care of us this evening. … We bless your name," Joseph Dahnweih says, his head bent. "Lord, teach us what we need to know."
A tall man with a soft voice, Dahnweih fled Liberia when civil war erupted in 1989. He now lives in Glen Ellyn, doubling as a grocery store clerk and gas station attendant.
The part-time jobs keep a roof overhead and food on the table for him and his wife, Ellen. Anything extra goes to the couple's six children scattered from Kentucky to Ghana and Norway.
The issues of financial strain, family separation or culture shock confront scores of immigrants, particularly refugees from Africa. There, civil war and political turmoil displaced thousands of people worldwide, often splitting families in the process.
Communal prayer that offers a sense of home -- with conversation floating from English to Dan or Mano, both Liberian dialects -- eases the adjustment, said missionary Emmanuel Taher, who ministers to local Liberian and Sudanese.
"I believe with all my heart they need Jesus. But the Jesus things come second," said Taher, who left his native Ethiopia three decades ago and now lives in Wheaton. "You got to know them first. You got to help them first."
Partnering with American churches is a vital first step, Taher said. The spiritual connection brings immigrants into the cultural fold.
"The idea is we don't want them to be isolated," Taher said.
Created four years ago, the Liberian Fellowship draws about four dozen people to Wheaton's College Church every Sunday night.
The Sudanese Fellowship that began in 2004 with eight people at the Wheaton Evangelical Free Church today includes more than 20 adults, not all of them Christian.
Sudanese Muslims sometimes attend, clinging to a cultural connection in a place with few others. That the familiar blend of Arabic and English, if not the faith, draws them matters little.
"They talk a lot together about their specific situations," said Doug Johnson of Carol Stream, who hosted Sudanese refugees and helped connect the Sudanese prayer group with the Wheaton church that now hosts them. "When they find something that works, they tell the others."