BISBEE — Since arriving here in March 2006 to preside over the St. John’s Episcopal Church in Bisbee and the St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Douglas, the Rev. Seth Polley has taken an active interest in border issues. For example, he has helped run the Naco Wellness Initiative, a monthly health screening offered free of charge to people in Naco, Sonora.

In March, Polley and his parishioners conducted a binational border procession in Naco to help promote friendship and human rights in the region.

And last weekend, he helped convene the Arizona Episcopal diocese's border, immigration and migration program group for a conference in Scottsdale on the theme of theology, economics and immigration.

He even traveled to Washington in June as part of a regional task force lobbying Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

For Polley, who came to the area from Virginia after a one-year stop in Tucson, border activism is part of his job.

"The position I was offered was specifically to take care of two parishes in Douglas and in Bisbee," said the 45-year-old minister, who lives in Bisbee with his wife Lori and their 3 1/2-year-old daughter Catalina.

"But the bishop who hired me made it clear that I would have border responsibilities - I'm known as the border missioner."

Those responsibilities range from the aforementioned activities to giving tours of the local border area to traveling to other parishes to talk about border issues.
Essentially, his responsibility as border missioner is to help raise consciousness of the border problem, he says, and particularly as it relates to the migrants who risk their lives to cross into the United States in search of work.

"What motivates me is helping people to understand the realities of what these migrants face, and to understand that the migrants who are crossing are not criminals who are looking to burden the social safety net of the country, but who want to have jobs and provides for their families," he said.
And that, he said, involves convincing people to separate the job-seekers from the smaller number of drug traffickers and smugglers who use the border for criminal activity.

As he has promoted humanitarian understanding on the border, Polley also has become politically active on border issues, as evidenced by his recent lobbying effort in Washington.

But while his activism is part of his job as border missioner, he tries to separate his border issues work from his ministering duties as much as possible.

"I preach about it on occasion," he said, recalling a recent sermon about the Good Samaritan, during which he talked of the need to have compassion towards undocumented border-crossers and immigrants.

"But I don't do it all the time because I'm sensitive to the fact that my parishioners are all over the map in terms of what they think about the issue," he said.

This week, Polley is on a road trip through northwestern Mexico. At his first stop, in the Sonora state capital of Hermosillo, he plans to drop off 180 Spanish-language prayer books at an Episcopal church there.

Then he'll continue on to the western city of Guadalajara to meet with leaders of the church's northwestern Mexico diocese, as well as with some of their parishioners.

"The primary reason for (the visit) is that in Douglas, we're going to be starting a Spanish service," Polley said. "So I wanted to get a little bit of a refresher course on Anglicans in Latin America, and what it is that attracts Mexicans to the church."

HERALD/REVIEW reporter Jonathan Clark can be reached at 515-4693.