(RNS) — Less than a week after her death, Renee Good is being compared to Christian martyrs who were killed while witnessing for their faith.
The public policy arm of the Presbyterian Church (USA) said Tuesday (Jan. 13) that Renee Good, a Minnesota protester killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on Wednesday, gave her life for the sake of others, like Jesus or Martin Luther King Jr.
“We lament and mourn the loss of Ms. Good, a widow of a veteran, a wife and a mother who put herself in harm’s way not out of any desire to do harm, but to observe and bear witness to the actions of ICE,” the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness, a PC(USA) agency, said in a public statement.
The statement, which begins with the words of Jesus from the Gospel of John, that “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” compares Good to King, the slain civil rights icon, and to a group of Catholic women who were killed in El Salvador, saying Good has joined “a sacred lineage of faithful witnesses who have risked and lost their lives in defense of human dignity.”
“In the coming week, we will remember the life and witness of the martyred Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who called this nation to a ‘radical revolution of values,’” the Public Witness office said. “Values that demand divestment from racism, materialism and militarism. Ms. Good’s life and death echo this same moral call.”
Good, who grew up Presbyterian and took part in several mission trips, was a part of the PC(USA), a prominent mainline Protestant denomination.
“Ms. Good was one of us. She was a fellow Presbyterian,” according to the statement.
“Her story is a testament to the power of the Presbyterian mission and a challenge to our conscience,” the statement claimed, citing a tribute to Good from a Presbyterian church in Illinois. “We mourn a fellow Presbyterian whose quiet smile and creative spirit touched lives from Colorado to Northern Ireland to Minnesota.”
The Presbyterian statement comes at a time when Americans remain deeply divided over the immigration policies and practices of the Trump administration, and where fierce debate rages over who was to blame for Good’s death.
Good had a brief confrontation with ICE officers while her car was parked in the middle of a Minneapolis street, according to videos of the incident, which have gone viral online. She told an ICE officer, “I’m not mad at you,” then attempted to drive off when ICE officers tried to open her car door.
One of the officers was standing by the front of the car and fired at Good as she pulled forward, wounding her fatally. Her car then rolled down the street before colliding with parked cars.
Trump officials have labeled the shooting self-defense and claimed Good was trying to attack officers with her car, in what Kristi Noem, head of the Department of Homeland Security, labeled an act of domestic terrorism.
President Donald Trump labeled Good a “professional agitator” who “violently, willingly, and viciously ran over the ICE officer.” And federal investigators are reportedly looking into any ties between Good and her widow, Becca, and anti-immigration activists — a move that led six federal prosecutors to resign Tuesday, according to The New York Times.
The father of Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot Good, has reportedly said that Christian faith is an important part of his son’s life.
“You would never find a nicer, kinder person,” Ed Ross told the Daily Mail. “He’s a committed, conservative Christian, a tremendous father, a tremendous husband. I couldn’t be more proud of him.”
The Rev. David Black, a PC(USA) pastor in Chicago who was shot with pepper balls while protesting at an ICE detention center in Broadview, Illinois, said Good’s death reveals “the cost of Christian witness.”
“When Jesus saw evil in the world, he put his body in the way and was tortured and executed by the state because of it,” Black told RNS in a text message. “Renee’s life and death now stand within the lineage of Christian witness — not as a political slogan or a caricature, but as a summons to the church and to the broader society to see where people are oppressed, and to be present with them not merely in thoughts and prayers but with the presence and solidarity of our whole bodies.”
The Presbyterian statement included a call to advocacy on behalf of ICE detainees as well as a quotation from Becca Good, in tribute to her late wife, whom she called a Christian who believed “We are all here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.”
RNS national reporter Jack Jenkins contributed to this report from Minneapolis.
