On May 12, 2025, presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church, Bishop Sean Rowe published a letter announcing that The Episcopal Church will be terminating its refugee resettlement grant agreements with the US federal government.
For over 40 years this refugee resettlement ministry has been carried out by the Episcopal Migration Ministries, which has helped nearly 110,000 refugees.
The church took this decision after it was informed by the US federal government that under the terms of the federal grants, Episcopal Migration Ministries would be expected to help resettle white South Africans. Afrikaners are a white ethnic group descended from Dutch settlers.
President Trump has claimed that white South Africans are facing violence and discrimination. On Feb. 5, Trump signed an executive order stating that the policies of the government of South Africa are “fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners” and that the US would “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”
The government policies that the executive order refers to include a recent land reform law that would allow the state to take land away from its owner without compensation, if it is considered to be in the public interest. Currently, the majority of land in South Africa is owned by the white minority.
On May 14, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, primate of the Anglican Church of South Africa, wrote a letter to Bishop Rowe to express his gratitude for The Episcopal Church’s support.
“What the [US] administration refers to as anti-white racial discrimination is nothing of the kind. Our government implements affirmative action on the lines of that in the United States, designed not to discriminate against whites but to overcome the historic disadvantages black South Africans have suffered,” writes Archbishop Makgoba.
“By every measure of economic and social privilege, white South Africans as a whole remain the beneficiaries of apartheid… we are the most unequal society in the world, with the majority of the poor black, and the majority of the wealthy white.”
While the US government has welcomed white South Africans as refugees, the operations of the US refugee admissions program have grinded to a halt.
“It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years,” writes Bishop Rowe.
“As Christians, we must be guided not by political vagaries, but by the sure and certain knowledge that the kingdom of God is revealed to us in the struggles of those on the margins. Jesus tells us to care for the poor and vulnerable as we would care for him, and we must follow that command.”
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops announced in April that it will also end its refugee resettlement program.
