Abstract
Immigration is woven into the DNA of the United States.1 From the early movements of indigenous peoples across the Bering Strait into the Americas to the arrival of Spanish and English peoples on the continent from the fifteenth century, the fates of migrants and the land now known as the United States have been intertwined. Christianity played a role in many of these journeys. Stories of faithful Puritans fleeing persecution for a New World of religious freedom—famously, the Mayflower Pilgrims from Plymouth in 1620—are embedded in the national imagination, and churchgoers were among those complicit in the forcible uprooting of Africans to work on slave plantations in the colonies.2 Today, the United States is the top migrant destination country in the world with 40 million foreign-born residents out of a population of 309 million.3 The majority of both native-born people and immigrants are Christian. In this chapter, I explore contemporary intersections between migration, migrants, and church in the United States and employ the metaphors of faces and facing to do so.
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Notes
Anthony Reddie, ed., Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010).
David Ford, Self and Salvation: Being Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 17.
Mary Friedmann Marquardt, Timothy Steigenga, Philip Williams, and Manuel Vásquez, Living “Illegal”: The Human Face of Unauthorized Immigration (New York and London: New Press, 2011), 9;
Susanna Snyder, Asylum-Seeking, Migration and Church (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).
UNHCR, Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (Geneva: UNHCR, 2010), 14. For the story of one refugee, see
Dave Eggers, What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng—A Novel (New York: Vintage Books, 2006).
Ting-Yin Lee, “The Loss and Grief in Immigration: Pastoral Care for Immigrants,” Pastoral Psychology 59 (2010): 159–169, 160–162.
Monica Boyd and Deanna Pikkov, “Finding a Place in Stratified Structures: Migrant Women in North America,” in New Perspectives on Gender and Migration: Livelihood, Rights and Entitlements, ed. Nicola Piper, 19–58 (New York and London: Routledge, 2008).
Kristin Heyer, Kinship across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012), 25, 157.
Douglas Massey and Magaly Sánchez R., Brokered Boundaries: Creating Immigrant Identity in Anti-Immigrant Times (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010), 120.
Jacqueline Hagan, Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 57.
Peggy Levitt, “Religion as a Path to Civic Engagement,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 31, no. 4 (2008): 766–791, 778.
Peggy Levitt, God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing Religious Landscape (New York: New Press, 2007), 12–13, 22.
Charles Hirschmann, “The Role of Religion in the Origins and Adaptation of Immigrant Groups in the United States,” in Rethinking Migration: New Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives, ed. A. Portes and J. DeWind, 413 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2007).
Cecilia Menjívar, “Religion and Immigration in Comparative Perspective: Catholic and Evangelical Salvadorans in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Phoenix,” Sociology of Religion 64, no. 1 (2003): 21–45, esp. 28.
Peter Phan, “The Experience of Migration in the US as a Source of Intercultural Theology,” in Migration, Religious Experience and Globalization, ed. Gioachinno Campese and Pietro Ciallella, 150–151 (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 2003).
Douglas Massey, ed., New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008).
Audrey Singer, “Twenty-First-Century Gateways: An Introduction,” in Twenty-First Century Gateways: Immigrant Incorporation in Suburban America, ed. Audrey Singer, Susan Harwick, and Caroline Brettell, 26 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2008).
Leonie Sandercock, Cosmopolis II: Mongrel Cities in the 21st Century (London and New York: Continuum, 2003), 111. For more on receiving population fear, see Snyder, Asylum-Seeking, Chapter 5; and Marquardt et al., Living “Illegal,” Chapter 3.
For a history of US immigration policy, see Eytan Meyers, International Immigration Policy: A Theoretical and Comparative Analysis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 27–62.
Daniel Kanstroom, Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 7.
Doris Meissner, Donals Kerwin, Muzaffar Chishti, and Claire Bergeron, Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery (Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2013), http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/enforcementpillars.pdf (accessed February 27, 2013).
Pew Forum, Faith on the Move: The Religious Affiliation of International Migrants (Washington, DC: Pew Forum, 2012), 12, http://www.pewfo-rum.org/faith-on-the-move.aspx (accessed January 24, 2013).
Diana Eck, A New Religious America (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).
Jehu Hanciles, Beyond Christendom: Globalization, African Migration, and the Transformation of the West (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008), 270.
Carolyn Chen, “Accidental Pilgrims,” Panel at American Academy of Religion, November 2012. See also Carolyn Chen, Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
Pew Hispanic Center and Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2007), 2, 42, http://www.pewforum.org/uploadedfiles/Topics/Demographics/hispanics-religion-07-final-mar08. pdf (accessed January 25, 2013).
Parish Strategic Plan, 2012. See also Daniel Vélez Rivera, “Transforming Lives, Transforming Communities: The Ministry of Presence,” Anglican Theological Review 93, no. 4 (2011): 645–652; and
Susanna Snyder, “Moving the Anglican Communion: Ethics and Ecclesiology in an Age of Migration,” in The Oxford Handbook of Anglican Studies, ed. Mark D. Chapman, Sathianathan Clarke, and Martyn Percy, 559–576 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
For examples, see Marquardt et al., Living “Illegal,” 185 –186; and Karen Leonard, Alex Stepick, Manuel Vasquez, and Jennifer Holdaway, eds., Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2005).
R. Stephen Warner, A Church of Our Own: Disestablishment and Diversity in American Religion (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 257–262.
Pui-Lan Kwok, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (London: SCM Press, 2005).
Ada María Isasi-Díaz, En la Lucha: Elaborating a Mujerista Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2004).
R. S. Sugirtharajah, “Thinking about the Vernacular Hermeneutics Sitting in a Metropolitan Study,” in Vernacular Hermeneutics, ed. Sugirtharajah, 92–115 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).
Jung Young Lee, Marginality: The Key to Multicultural Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1995).
Clive Pearson, “Out of Place with Jesus-Christ,” in Out of Place: Doing Theology on the Crosscultural Brink, ed. Jione Havea and Clive Pearson, 65–81, 78 (London: Equinox, 2011).
See, for example, Jonathan Edwards, “A Biblical Perspective on Immigration Policy,” Backgrounder: A Biblical Perspective on Immigration Policy (Washington, DC: Center for Immigration Studies, September 2009).
Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, rev. ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1–3.
Emmanuel Lévinas, Ethics and Infinity. Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 99.
Ibid., 86; Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 194.
Judith Butler, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 38.
John Fife, Presentation at Society of Christian Ethics, Chicago, January 2013. See Snyder, Asylum-Seeking, on different types of Christian engagement with immigrants; and Heyer, Kinship; Donald Kerwin and Jean Marie Gerschutz, eds., And You Welcomed Me: Migration and Catholic Social Teaching (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009); and
M. Daniel Carroll R., Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), for recent theological reflection.
Daniel Groody, “Jesus and the Undocumented Immigrant: A Spiritual Geography of a Crucified People,” Theological Studies 70, no. 2 (2009): 298–319, esp. 312.
“No more Deaths: No Más Muertes,” http://www.nomoredeaths.org/ (accessed January 29, 2013). For more details, see Robin Hoover, “The Story of Humane Borders,” in A Promised Land, A Perilous Journey: Theological Perspectives on Migration, ed. Daniel Groody and Gioachinno Campese, 160–173 (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2008);
Ananda Rose, Showdown in the Sonoran Desert: Religion, Law, and the Immigration Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); and
Helene Slessarev-Jamir, Prophetic Activism: Progressive Religious Justice Movements in Contemporary America (New York: New York University Press, 2011). 91. See
John Fife, “Civil Initiative,” in Trails of Hope and Terror: Testimonies on Immigration, ed. Miguel De La Torre, 170–175 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009), 172.
See D. Mosley, Faith beyond Borders: Doing Justice in a Dangerous World (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2010).
USCCB, Welcoming Christ in the Migrant (Washington, DC: USCCB, 2011), January 24, 2013, http://www.usccb.org/about/migration-and-ref-ugee-services/national-migration-week/upload/M-7–267-NMW-Brochure. pdf, 8.
For more on national church statements and views in the pews, see Marie Marquardt, Susanna Snyder, and Manuel Vásquez, “Challenging Laws: Faith-Based Engagement with Unauthorized Immigration,” in Constructing Immigrant “Illegality”: Critiques, Experiences, and Responses, ed. D. Kanstroom and C. Menjívar, 272–297 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Ibid., 54, 114–122. For more on root causes, see Andrés Solimano, International Migration in the Age of Crisis and Globalization: Historical and Recent Experiences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
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Snyder, S. (2016). Faces of Migration: US Christianity in the Twenty-First Century. In: Padilla, E., Phan, P.C. (eds) Christianities in Migration. Palgrave Macmillan’s Christianities of the World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137031648_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137031648_12
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