The letters concerning the Presiding Bishop's stance on California's immigration posture [TLC, Feb. 26] are unfortunate for what they omit.

Fr. Neri serves as a rector in Monterey County and can attest to the deplorable manner in which Salinas Valley immigrants (legal and illegal) of Hispanic ethnicity have been treated for decades ... so could former Episcopal acolyte John Steinbeck. I know Fr. Neri can also attest to our Christian responsibility to resist immoral laws, and Proposition 187 is the latest in a long list of American statutes that demands our outrage; witness our country's despicable treatment of African-Americans, or California's systematic discrimination against anyone even remotely different from the Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon, protestant (that's us, friends!) mob that includes the "whole catastrophe" of political ideology, right and left, Earl Warren or Ronald Reagan.

A bishop such as Edmond Browning, who exemplifies Christ's lament that a "prophet has no honor in his own land," must regrettably gauge the success of his ministry by the volume of "hate mail" such as by Archdeacon Seeks, from a diocese that has left the mainstream of Christian theology, and, most sadly of all, that typifies that hatred, distrust and enmity that has replaced the love of Christ in our world. During this Lenten season, may we all pray for a return to the Christian principles of concern for one another that caused our Lord to make the most supreme sacrifice of all: to encourage us to do what is right, not expedient, for the least of these brothers and sisters who dwell in our very midst. It seems that many of us clergy have trouble rendering to Caesar, but a major problem in rendering to God!

(The Rev.) PHILIP S. REINHEIMER

Redding, Calif.