What Role Do Migrants Have in this Divine Drama?
Dear friends,
I recently read an essay by my friend Alberto La Rosa Rojas that has stuck in my mind. I’ve read dozens of books offering Christian perspectives on immigration, and contributed to a few of them myself. But the focus of these reflections tends to be on how the Bible should inform how we treat immigrants… not how to be immigrants.
Alberto – who was born in Peru, was raised in a first-generation immigrant household and an evangelical church in suburban Chicago, and now is a theologian at Western Theological Seminary in Michigan – comes to the biblical text with some distinct questions shaped by his own experience:
What does it look like to be faithful to God as an immigrant? What ethical responsibilities do we immigrants have to the people and places we left behind? And how are these realities part of what it means to inhabit a Christian story of creation, fall, reconciliation, and new creation? As I dove into the literature on the theology and ethics of migration, it quickly became clear that most engagement with this topic focuses on the responsibilities of the host nations and their citizens but rarely on the calling and responsibilities of migrants. Somehow, in the attempt to be hospitable and just amid the reality of migration, the church and the academy have obscured the agency and responsibility of migrants themselves. So, what role do migrants have in this divine drama playing out in history?
I’ve often included prayer requests in these monthly emails focused on praying for the U.S. church’s response to immigrants, that we would reflect God’s character – and the polarized divisions within the United States make it clear to me that this must be an ongoing prayer and a point of discipleship.
But we make a mistake, according to theologian Juan Martinez, if we think of immigrants only as objects of mission in need of welcome, compassion and advocacy; yet neglect to recognize that they are also agents of mission, with gifts to contribute and God-ordained roles in the “divine drama playing out in history.”
This month, I’d invite you to join me in praying for immigrants within our communities and our churches:
- That they would recognize themselves and God’s unique call upon them within the pages of the Scriptures
- That their experience of liminality, being from one place but in another, would allow them to teach the larger Church what it means to find our primary identity in Christ and his Kingdom, being in this world but not of it (John 17:14), while still celebrating the particular places that are a part of God’s larger story
- That pastors and other leaders serving in primarily-migrant contexts would have divine wisdom to shepherd and disciple those who have experienced displacement
Dr. Alberto La Rosa Rojas will be a part of a live virtual conversation discussing the “theology of migrant experience” next Tuesday, July 23, at 2:00 PM Eastern Time, hosted by my friends at Comment Magazine. Register here if you’d like to join the conversation live.
In Christ,
Matthew Soerens
National Coordinator, Evangelical Immigration Table
