Faith and “the toughest immigration law in the country”
By Matt Lacey We are presented with the question: are we called to be Americans first, or Christians first? Are we called to claim our heritage as our coincidental place of birth, or our Christian...
View ArticleImmigration: Is Sovereignty or Law – or Freedom – at stake?
Kahn assumes the United States, as a state, to be a ‘norm’ and does not seem to grapple with anything or anyone external to it: his focus is internal. I would like to suggest that immigrants have been...
View ArticleNew Issue of Political Theology, 12.6
The editors of Political Theology are pleased to announce that the latest issue is now available on the web. Issue 12.6 (December 2011) carries a special section devoted to issues of migration and...
View ArticleThe Politics of Acts 2:1-21
Although often lost in a generic celebration of the giving of the Spirit, this text is one that is filled with questions of ethnicity, language, and diversity. It speaks to the American debate of...
View ArticleThe Crisis of the Social Imaginary of the State: Immigration
The record number of deportations under the Obama administration and the shift in enforcement strategy from worksite raids to isolated, yet more numerous, detentions is a symptom of a crisis faced by...
View ArticleNew Book: Asylum-Seeking, Migration and Church — Susanna Snyder
1) What inspired you to write Asylum-Seeking, Migration and Church? When I was training for ordination in Birmingham in 2004, I started to volunteer with church-based organizations supporting asylum...
View ArticleBlack Political Theology: Resurrection Rather Than Death
The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study hosted a conference at the beginning of this month on Theology and Black Politics. Opening with the question: “What is the Black Church?”, the conference...
View Article“Enforcement First” Is Flawed Immigration Policy
In the public debate surrounding the U.S. Senate’s bill proposing the reform of the immigration system, and now the House of Representatives’ efforts to craft its own bill, one is bound to encounter...
View ArticleThe Politics of Immigration: Genesis 12:1-4a
The first reaction of the reader to Abram's calling, "That's supposed to be me," gives way to the second realization, which is "That COULD be me." And it is in imagining the fear and anxiety normally...
View ArticleSunday Baseball and Other Sins: America’s Pastime and the Decline of Blue Laws
I will say to the people that try to erase the Sabbath from our statute books, we will swim our horses in blood to their bridles before you will ever get us away from it”[1] - Billy Sunday,...
View Article‘To welcome the stranger’ : Evangelicals and the Republican quandary over...
. . . Pastors and church-leaders for the past two years have been very vocal in their efforts to ‘welcome the stranger’ through immigration reform and in so doing are reframing evangelical Christian...
View ArticleThe Politics of Welcoming the Immigrant—Ruth 2:1-23
The United States is engaged in a public conversation about what our responsibility is to the thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who are arriving at our southern border. In the story of Ruth...
View ArticleThe Synod on the Family, Transnational Families, and Women’s Labor – Kristin...
In the weeks following the close of the Synod on the Family, much media attention has focused upon doctrinal issues of communion for remarried divorcees, questions of how to welcome persons in same-sex...
View ArticleThe Immigration Crisis and the New Völkerwanderung
In recent weeks we have witnessed on the European continent a storm-tossed and surging sea-drift of deracinated humanity unlike the world has ever seen since the months immediately following the end of...
View ArticleThe Theological Anthropology of ICE’s “Priority Enforcement Program,” Pt. I...
On 13 August, the main floor of the New Haven People’s Center was characteristically hot and unusually crowded for a late summer evening. About half a dozen lawyers, nonprofit workers, and labor union...
View ArticleThe Theological Anthropology of ICE’s “Priority Enforcement” Program, Pt. II
The telos of border imperialism as described by Walia and served by policies like the Priority Enforcement program is manifestly blasphemous on any number of levels. The most obvious, and the most...
View ArticleThe 2016 Election As A Vote of No-Confidence for Neo-Liberalism
The year 2015 appears to have been a turning point of sorts for the West. Early in the year Greece went through a financial crisis caused by demands for austerity from European central bankers. German...
View ArticlePope Francis’“Inclusive” European Humanism – Frantz Fanon Might Have...
A few weeks ago, Pope Francis gave an address that urged Europeans to renew the humanism forged in the aftermath of World War II. He asks critically, “What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism,...
View ArticleBrexit Throws Down The Gauntlet For Confronting Deep Social Divisions...
Britain’s vote to leave the European Union is a social earthquake that will define the next generation of politics in this country. It has exposed the deep divisions between Scotland and England, the...
View ArticlePTT Dispatches – Taking The Mystery Train To The Global “Street Party” That...
I had a strange experience in Vienna recently that at one level seemed silly, but gave me pause for some deeper reflections. I was running errands, and needed to go to Wien Hauptbahnhof (main Vienna...
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