Unity Church Marketing

What happens when one of the tenets of your religion is obeying the law and the people who are gravitating to you are illegal immigrants?

That is the challenge facing the Mormon Church as they are aggressively reaching out to Latino communities around the world. But just as Cathy Lee Grossman of USAToday points out in her article on “Is Immigration a Religious Issue?”, this subject can bring up some pretty heated debate on either side of the conversation. And the line definitely gets blurred over the confusion between “immigrants” and “illegal immigrants”. Many people unfortunately blend them together.

At some point, all churches (and in this case the Mormon Church) has to come to grips with being compassionate or lawful. Unfortunately, the two don’t always seem to coincide with each other. To be fair, this is not just a challenge that the Mormons alone are facing. Almost every denomination that you can think of is targeting and reaching out to Latino’s. The increased scrutiny may be coming from the fact that the Church of Latter Day Saints is one of the fastest growing denominations, but almost all church denominations from Baptists to Methodists are experiencing similar challenges on where they stand on this issue.

Is “This is the way it is done!” acceptable?

So if your church tenets as it were are to be law abiding, but many of the very people who you recruit are here illegally, what do you do? Do you take the corporate stance and rationalize it by saying, “That is just how it has always been” or perhaps “This is the way it is done, and we will worry about legalities later?”

“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”…a religious or moral issue?

To be clear, immigration is not a religious issue. Demonstrating compassion is. And for any faith to display compassion knows that there are no borders there. While “Do unto others” is not just a catchphrase, it creates a real challenge for many religious leaders who are typically very conservative and right wing leaning.

Many churches have adopted a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” approach.

Whether purposefully or not, most churches haven’t taken a stand or created a policy on this issue. Whether they are LDS Missionaries or other churches reaching out, they typically avoid the question about immigration.

How does this affect your marketing?

And perhaps those Missionaries may just have it right. There job is to deliver their church’s message. It is not to be an arbiter for immigration policies. From my point of view, it shouldn’t. Marketing’s job is to showcase your brand. To create interest and to promote services that your church brand offers. If we see an opportunity, we should try to take advantage of that. While I agree that we should try to do that within the law, it is not the marketing that is breaking the law.

If your marketing approach is law abiding, my opinion is that you shouldn’t ask everyone if they are a citizen. I don’t think Jesus would do it. And I wouldn’t expect marketers to do it. I would love to hear your feedback on this. I am fully aware that this is not cut and dried.