A Baptist refugee charity group in North Carolina is welcoming some newly-arrived white South Africans with furnished apartments, following the departure of an Episcopal group from a taxpayer-funded refugee program due to the inclusion of said Afrikaners.
The Trump administration’s May 12 acceptance of 59 white South Africans, a minority group in the country also called Afrikaners or Boers, angered the liberal establishment — and the Episcopal Church, Breitbart News reported.
In an appearance on CNN, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe decried how “white Afrikaners are being let in on a fast track” as he explained his church’s decision to withdraw from the federal resettlement program.
That decision has since been contrasted by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina (CBFNC), which is working on furnishing two apartments for three Afrikaner arrivals, the Religion News Service reported.
When the director of the fellowship’s program, called Welcome House Raleigh, received a call from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) asking for help, he answered in the affirmative.
“Our position is that however morally and ethically charged it is, our mandate is to help welcome and love people,” program director Rev. Marc Wyatt told the outlet. “Our holy book says God loves people.”
Welcome House Raleigh has also placed refugees from Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, and Venezuela in homes over the years.
“We don’t get to discriminate,” Wyatt added.
While the program’s housing units are currently being occupied, the volunteers will provide furniture to the refugees — a single person and one married couple — when they are settled in the state.
“We didn’t actually imagine that Afrikaners would come to North Carolina,” the reverend recounted to the Christian Post. “We assumed they would go more Midwest, because as I understand it, many are from the agricultural community, but needless to say, three did come.”
Since the small group of Afrikaners touched down just outside of Washington, DC at Dulles International Airport, South African leaders have doubled down and defended political chants calling to “Kill the Boer,” and leftist talking heads have been slandering the administration’s actions as a “white nationalist agenda.”
According to CNN’s Larry Madowo, President Donald Trump’s argument that white South Africans are facing a “genocide” is a talking point repeated from “white supremacists in South Africa.”
A representative from USCRI, a nonprofit group that also works to place refugees from numerous different countries, acknowledged that accepting the Afrikaners was going to be a big ask to the CBFNC as the controversy swirls.
“In our communication with them, we said, ‘Look, we know this is not a normal issue. You or your constituencies may have reservations, and we understand that. That should not affect our partnership,’” Omer Omer, the North Carolina field office director for USCRI, told the Religion News Service. “If you want to participate, welcome. If not, we understand.”
Wyatt noted that he personally takes issue with Trump’s January 20 suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, telling the Christian Post that he was “not necessarily in opposition to how The Episcopal Church is perceiving this.”
“We’re not speaking on behalf of all Cooperative Baptists in our denomination. It’s our ministry that we do,” he explained. “The Holy Book just does not give God’s people an out here as far as picking and choosing.”
The reverend added, “That’s our position. It’s a position of faith and practice, not a political statement.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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