Theologising Migration

The Asian church has begun to respond and reach out to migrants. However, this concern for the other is patchy and lacks robust theological foundations. This work uses otherness and liminality as lenses to examine the scripture in order to understand God's heart for migrants and the responsibility of His people towards them. It ends with some pointers towards concrete action by the church. This book weaves a rich tapestry of historical, sociological, anthropological, biblical and philosophical portraits of migration focusing on East Asia, with a robust theological and missiological response and accompanied by an extensive literature review. Of excellent scholarship, the book is infused with a persuasive exhortation to God's community as a missional entity to fulfil its obligation to obey the ""alien mandate"" - to love the Lord our God and to love the migrant as ourselves. Dr Woods' book is particularly relevant in today's context of an unprecedented global migration phenomenon which provides many open doors for God's community to share the good news of Jesus. As this is faithfully done, migrants may come to believe and belong as they are delivered from spiritual and physical bondage. This is a book that will deeply challenge both our minds and our hearts and should spur us into action. Rev Dr Patrick Fung, General Director, OMF International Sociology and theology meet in a highly productive synthesis as the author tackles one of today's unignorable global challenges - migration. The focus may be East Asia but the lessons to be learned from this outstanding piece of research are relevant for anyone who cares about God's mission in the world today. I found the two chapters of Biblical reflection particularly useful. They provide a centrepiece that adds great value to the analysis and practical recommendations that begin and end the study. Dr Jonathan Ingleby, Formerly Head of Mission Studies, Redcliffe College Paul Woods is a reflective practitioner who has previously ministered among Chinese migrants in the UK. He has moved from engineering, through linguistics, and into theology. His theology PhD is from AGST Alliance in Singapore. He previously taught at Singapore Bible College and is now on the faculty of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.

Dieser Band versammelt die Beiträge der 10. und 11. Konferenz des Comeniusrats protestantisch-theologischer Fakultäten in Mittel- und Osteuropa und den Niederlanden: "Wege zur Versöhnung zwischen Konfliktparteien" fand 2015 in Komárno, Slowakei, statt, "Theologie in einer Welt der Ideologien: Autorisierung oder Kritik?" 2018 in Kampen, Niederlande. Die Autoren erörtern eine Vielfalt von (inter)disziplinären Fragen, konkreten Aspekten und Implikationen des christlichen Glaubens für die Gegenwart. Zu diesen gehören die Suche nach Wegen zu individueller und gesellschaftlicher Versöhnung auf christlicher Grundlage, die Vermischung von Theologie und Ideologie, wie Kernelemente christlicher Existenz – (biblische) Geschichten, Traditionen, Formen der Erinnerung – die Grenzen zwischen Theologie und Ideologie klären oder verwischen und wie diese Elemente die religiöse Mobilisierung fördern. This volume collects papers from the 10th and 11th conferences of the Comenius Committee of Protestant Theological Faculties in Central and Eastern Europe and the Netherlands: "Roads to Reconciliation Between Groups in Conflict" took place in Komárno, Slovakia, in 2015, "Theology in a World of Ideologies: Authorization or Critique?" was hold in Kampen, Netherlands, in 2018. The authors address a range of (inter)disciplinary issues, concrete questions and implications of the Christian faith for the contemporary world. These include exploring roads to Christian inspired individual and societal reconciliation, conflation(s) of theology and ideology, the ways in which core elements of Christian existence – (biblical) narratives, traditions, memory practices – contribute to erasing or maintaining the boundaries between theology and ideology, and how these elements contribute to religious mobilization.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the theological challenge presented by the new post-Brexit epoch. The referendum vote for Britain to leave the European Union has led to a seismic shift in the ways in which parts of the British population view and judge their compatriots. The subsequent rise in the reported number of racially motivated incidents and the climate of vilification and negativity directed at anyone not viewed as ‘authentically’ British should be a matter of concern for all people. The book is comprised of a series of essays that address varying aspects of what it means to be British and the ways in which churches in Britain and the Christian faith could and should respond to a rising tide of White English nationalism. It is a provocative challenge to the all too often tolerated xenophobia, as well as the paucity of response from many church leaders in the UK. This critique is offered via the means of a prophetic, postcolonial model of Black theology that challenges the incipient sense of White entitlement and parochial ‘nativism’ that pervaded much of the referendum debate. The essays in this book challenge the church and wider society to ensure justice and equity for all, not just a privileged sense of entitlement for some. It will be of keen interest to any scholar of Black, political and liberation theology as well as those involved in cultural studies from a postcolonial perspective.

Peter reads the messages originally addressed by God to sojourners in the Old Testament as the same messages God had for the sojourning believers of Peter’s generation. No wonder Peter used these same exhortations to instruct first-century believers in the diaspora. For Peter, the Old Testament was their Scripture. For us today, the Old Testament and New Testament are our Scripture. God’s messages for the faithful sojourners in the Old Testament and New Testament are the same message he has for sojourners of all generations, including ours.

Migrations are contested sites of identity negotiations: they are not simply a process of border crossings but more so of border shiftings. Rather than allowing migrants to swiftly move across stable borders from one clearly defined identity to another, migrations question and renegotiate these very identities. Migrations undermine and re-establish borders along which the identity of migrants (and also that of the supposedly settled population) are constituted, and, as a discourse, migrations serve as a contested site of negotiating identities. Migrations reveal the negotiable character of identities - and representations of migration are themselves a hotspot in contemporary identity constructions. What can theology contribute to the negotiations on migration? The contributions of this volume work towards a reading of migration as a sign of the times. Together, they offer "steps towards a theology of migration." They show that migration calls for a new way of doing. A theology that is exposed to migration as a sign of the times is drwan into the shifting, unsettling, and undermining of borders. This has impact not only on the discourse of migration, but also on the discourse of theology: it calls theology to move away from its search for well-established definitions (literally: borders) of its God-talk and to venture into new, uncharted territory. It loses its fixed, clearly defined grounds and finds itself on the way toward a renegotiation of what it means to believe in, celebrate, and reflect on YHWH - on God who is with us on the way.

In an age of global migration, what is the fundamental theological framework with which Christian theologians and church leaders are to engage its challenges and problems? In this volume, Ilsup Ahn attempts to answer this question by presenting a Trinitarian theology of migration.

The-five volume Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions series is governed by a motif of migration ('out-of-England'). It first traces organized church traditions that arose in Britain and Ireland as Dissenters distanced themselves from a state church defined by diocesan episcopacy, the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and Royal Supremacy, but then follows those traditions as they spread beyond Britain and Ireland--and also analyses newer traditions that emerged downstream in other parts of the world from earlier forms of Dissent. Secondly, it does the same for the doctrines, church practices, stances toward state and society, attitudes toward Scripture, and characteristic patterns of organization that also originated in earlier British and Irish dissent, but that have often defined a trajectory of influence independent of ecclesiastical organizations. The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume V follows the spatial, cultural, and intellectual changes in dissenting identity and practice in the twentieth century, as these once European traditions globalized. While in Europe dissent was often against the religious state, dissent in a globalizing world could redefine itself against colonialism or other secular and religious monopolies. The contributors trace the encounters of dissenting Protestant traditions with modernity and globalization; changing imperial politics; challenges to biblical, denominational, and pastoral authority; local cultures and languages; and some of the century's major themes, such as race and gender, new technologies, and organizational change. In so doing, they identify a vast array of local and globalizing illustrations which will enliven conversations about the role of religion, and in particular Christianity.

This book is the first to analyze the impacts of migration and transnationalism on global Catholicism. It explores how migration and transnationalism are producing diverse spaces and encounters that are moulding the Roman Catholic Church as institution and parish, pilgrimage and network, community and people. Bringing together established and emerging scholars of sociology, anthropology, geography, history and theology, it examines migrants’ religious transnationalism, but equally the effects of migration-related-diversity on non-migrant Catholics and the Church itself. This timely edited collection is organised around a series of theoretical frameworks for understanding the intersections of migration and Catholicism, with case studies from 17 different countries and contexts. The extent to which migrants’ religiosity transforms Catholicism, and the negotiations of unity in diversity within the Roman Catholic Church, are key themes throughout. This innovative approach will appeal to scholars of migration, transnationalism, religion, theology, and diversity.