Immigrant Neighbors Among Us

How do different Christian denominations in the United States approach immigration issues? In Immigrant Neighbors among Us, U.S. Hispanic scholars creatively mine the resources of their theological traditions to reflect on one of the most controversial issues of our day. Representative theologians from Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Methodist/Wesleyan, Pentecostal, and Independent Evangelical church families show how biblical narratives, historical events, systematic frameworks, ethical principles, and models of ministry shape their traditions' perspectives on immigrant neighbors, law, and reform. Each chapter provides questions for dialogue.

With so many people around the globe migrating, how should Christians and the church respond? Leading Latino-American biblical scholar M. Daniel Carroll R. (Rodas) helps readers understand what the Bible says about immigration, offering accessible, nuanced, and sympathetic guidance for the church. After two successful editions of Christians at the Border, and having talked and written about immigration over the past decade, Carroll has sharpened his focus and refined his argument to make sure we hear clearly what the Bible says about one of the most pressing issues of our day. He has reworked the biblical material, adding insights and broadening the frame of reference beyond the US. As Carroll explores the surprising amount of material in the Old and New Testaments that deals with migration, he shows how this topic is fundamental to the message of the Bible and how it affects our understanding of God and the mission of the church.

This interesting collection was written by John Robertson Henry, a pastor living in New York City during the 1900s, who wrote of his experience living and working with immigrants of various ethnicities and races in the United States. He gave his perspectives regarding their reasons for coming to the country and also describes some of the cultural habits the immigrants bring with them to the United States.

In the present situation in the world, values of tolerance, compassion and hospitality appear to be more contested. The debates among European leaders have come to center around how to "protect us" from refugees, rather than protecting the precarious lives of the refugees.The authors agree that we should not stop looking for practices of hospitality. We need to better understand what hospitality is, where it is practiced and also why it is practiced. Hospitality is not necessarily something we possess as an inner quality or as something disconnected from others. Rather it is practiced in specific ways in in particular spaces. The thesis is that we have to look for the characteristics of hospitality in "the other spaces" that Michel Foucault once called heterotopias.Five specific cases are analyzed: - a monastic garden for interreligious dialogue in Austria, a Lutheran congregation that accommodates a project for undocumented migrants in Western Sweden, a busy intersection in downtown Oslo where substance-users stay (and most others pass by), a voluntary organization that works for the creation of alternative life forms in inner city Copenhagen, and, finally, some aspects of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City.The authors are theologians, sociologists and a PhD candidate in diaconia, an illustration of the interdisciplinary composition of the book.

Similarities between “Playboy” Donald Trump and “Holy Man” Martin Luther? Scandalized by such a thought? Through the rediscovery of the Gospel, the great Reformer realized he was the object of God’s love, not His anger and wrath. Both Luther and Trump understood that God’s ways are not always our ways, and that God can choose and work through sinners. Neither twin understood themselves to be saints but were free to be themselves. They are gifted yet flawed human beings driven by optimistic visions of what the Church and State should be. Drawing insights from history, Scripture, and theology, Swartz illustrates numerous similarities in his Twins’ separated by five centuries. The times, events, and circumstances they encountered exhibit uncanny parallelisms: elite establishments, social media, swamps, walls, and plagues. Even more striking is how their “political stance” and personal traits mirror each other: coarse and filthy speech, pugnacious reactions, and use of derisive nicknames. There’s also a resemblance in their spouses as they became the “Maligned Housewives of the Black Cloister and the White House!”

The Holy Spirit is sculpting you. Like the work of an artist who molds a lump of clay into its intended shape, the Spirit's sanctifying work lies in shaping people into the image of Christ. Avoiding either a "Spirit-only" or a "Spirit-void" theology, Leopoldo Sánchez carefully crafts a Spirit Christology, which considers the role of God's Spirit in the life and mission of Jesus. This understanding then serves as the foundation to articulate five distinct models of sanctification that can help Christians discern how the Spirit is at work in our lives.

A fresh response to the problem of illegal immigration in the United States through the context of Christian theology.

Welcoming the undocumented resident refugee into the life of the polis is a challenge for some communities and a moral imperative for others. This books provides a Christian ethic for church leaders, congregants, and their churches to discern a way of welcoming their neighbors who are refugees residing in the US without authorization. Grounded in political theology and the Presbyterian-Reformed faith tradition, the ethical debates presented here and the legal overview of US immigration and alienage laws applicable to the undocumented resident lead to practices of worship, witness, and welcome for churches that can be tailored to different contexts. When Jesus challenged the sharp lawyer to love his neighbor as himself, the lawyer asked Jesus: “who is my neighbor?” Jesus responded by telling him the parable of the Good Samaritan. Then Jesus asked the lawyer: “who was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” And the crestfallen lawyer answered: “the one who showed him mercy.” Jesus told him “to go and do likewise.” This book assists faith communities to find mercy for those undocumented refugee neighbors who many would condemn. It points a path towards doing the “likewise” of mercy in ethically defensible ways.