A Baptist charity in North Carolina is helping a group of Afrikaner refugees resettle after they traveled to America to escape what the White House is calling “race-based persecution” in their homeland of South Africa, which generated a firestorm of backlash from the woke left.
For context, on May 26, 2025, coverage from The Christian Post confirmed that Welcome House Raleigh (WHR), a Baptist ministry in North Carolina, had agreed to help three Afrikaner refugees — a married couple and a single adult — resettle after arriving in the United States on May 12. The news that the Afrikaners were receiving aid came just weeks after the Episcopal Church announced that it was refusing to aid the refugees, who White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller reportedly described as “victims of race-based persecution.”
In an interview with The Christian Post, the Rev. Mark Wyatt, director of WHR, said that his organization was surprised when he heard that the Afrikaners were coming to North Carolina, saying that his team “didn’t actually imagine” that they would be in a position to help the refugees. Wyatt continued, “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.”
In addition, Wyatt was critical of the Trump Administration’s canceling of the refugee resettlement program, expressing disappointment that the president had arguably disrupted Christian humanitarian work. However, Wyatt explained that his organization had decided to help the Afrikaners, nevertheless, saying that his team had “been praying about it, referring to the Scripture on it, and that we felt that our mandate to help was broader than the humanitarian help…”
Furthermore, Rev. Wyatt explained that he and his team believed that they had a “Gospel mandate” to help the Afrikaners, explaining, “The Gospel does not give us an exclusionary clause to say, ‘We’ll only help neighbors we want to help, neighbors we want to love.'” He added, “The [parable of] the Good Samaritan speaks to that.”
Concluding, Rev. Wyatt told The Christian Post that his team felt strongly that they were not supposed to exclude the Afrikaners from their humanitarian efforts, saying, “We don’t feel that the Holy Spirit is giving us an exemption clause to withhold welcome, withhold hospitality, withhold love to a neighbor, even if that neighbor is a questionable person.”
WHR agreed to provide aid for the three Afrikaners not long after Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe of the Episcopal Chruch wrote a letter on May 12, 2025, explaining that his denomination was ending its involvement in federally funded refugee resettlement, saying that the Episcopal Church was “investing our resources in serving migrants in other ways.”
In addition, Bishop Rowe appeared on ABC News on May 12 to defend his denomination’s decision to withhold support from the Afrikaners, saying that the church “can’t be ourselves…and take this step of re-settling White Afrikaners from South Africa. Our church has a long commitment to racial justice and reconciliation.”He added that the church was withholding aid because of “historic ties with the Anglican Church of South Africa.”
Watch Bishop Rowe’s statement:
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