Abstract
The irreversible flow of migrants across the globe is making an impact on the shape of the church of the future. What does it mean to be church among peoples of difference who are struggling to find their place in one space? This chapter attempts to draw an itinerary of the Asian church in migration. It describes some features of the contemporary Asian migration landscape and identifies the migrant ministries highlighted in the Episcopal statements. It then situates Asian churches within four general models of church response to migration and focuses on how their ministries can adopt a more intercultural approach.
Interculturality goes beyond binary thinking of “us” and “they” as well as the exoticization of diversity, in favour of an empowering in-beyond.1
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Notes
Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan (henceforth, CBCJ), Episcopal Committee for Social Activities, “Seeking the Kingdom of God which Transcends Differences in Nationality,” 1992 in Graziano Battistella, CS, “The Teaching of the Church in Asia,” in Caring for Migrants: A Collection of Church Documents on the Pastoral Care of Migrants, ed. Fabio Baggio, CS, and Maurizio Pettena, CS, 1104 (Strathfield: St. Paul’s Publications, 2009). Unless otherwise stated, all the Asian church documents mentioned in this chapter came from the book Caring for Migrants.
See ibid., 26–27; and Masaaki Satake, “Filipina-Japanese Intermarriages: A Pathway to New Gender and Cross-Cultural Relations,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 13, no. 4 (2004): 450.
Savino Bernardi, The Pastoral Care of Seafarers, Exodus Series 8 (Quezon City: Scalabrini Migration Center, 2005), 14. 10. Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, Statement of 29th CBCI General Body Meeting, “Youth for Peace and Harmony,” 2010, no. 8c, accessed February 2011, http://catholicdiocese-lucknow.com/fifth.htm. See also Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, Erga Migrantes Caritas Christi: The Love of Christ towards Migrants (Vatican City: 2004), nos. 38, 56; henceforth, EMCC.
Felipe Muncada, SVD, “Japan and Philippines: Migration Turning Points,” in Faith on the Move: Toward a Theology of Migration in Asia, ed. Fabio Baggio and Agnes M. Brazal, 44 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2008).
James S. Jeffers, The Graeco-Roman World of the New Testament Era: Exploring the Background of Early Christianity (Downer’s Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 1999), 85–86.
Wolfgang Welsch, “Transculturality: The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today,” in Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World, ed. Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash, 194–213 (London: Sage, 1999).
For an elaboration on this from the perspective of Bourdieu’s theory of cultural practice, see Agnes M. Brazal, “Interculturality in the Migration Context: Missiological Reflections vis- à-vis P. Bourdieu,” in Utopia hat einen Ort: Beiträge für eine interkulturelle, ed. Elisabeth Steffens and Annette Meuthrath, 125–134 (Welt aus vier Kontinenten. London: Frankfurt am Main, 2006).
Fernando Nakpil Zialcita, Authentic though Not Exotic: Essays on Filipino Identity (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2005), 211.
Peter Phan, Christianity with an Asian Face: Asian American Theology in the Making (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003), 3–25.
See Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 209.
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© 2016 Agnes M. Brazal and Emmanuel S. de Guzman
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Brazal, A.M., de Guzman, E.S. (2016). Intercultural Church: A Challenge in the Asian Migrant Context. 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_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137031648_5
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