Immigrant Rights through a Pentecost Lens
Immigrant Rights through a Pentecost Lens:
Divine Polyculture vs. Imperial Monoculture
Publishing at the intersection of seminary, sanctuary, streets and soil has been at the heart of BCM’s work for almost thirty years. Because our books prior to HHH and HARP were similarly deep dives into faith and justice, they maintain their relevance, since threats to ecological and social justice keep recycling across generations, not least in the present moment! So, we occasionally like to remind readers of these resources.
In a blog last month, we commemorated the 10th anniversary of the publication of Watershed Discipleship, a book that many Christians continue to use to reconstruct a bioregional discipleship. This time we want to call out Our God is Undocumented: Biblical Faith and Immigrant Justice, co-authored with my friend Rev. Matt Colwell. (See brief reviews here, here and here; longer ones here , here and here).
This book, too, was a tract for the times. It arose from my own formation as an organizer—educator around immigration issues in the late 1980s (the struggle around IRCA) and early 90s (the militarization of the border). Undocumented is unique for two reasons. On one hand it challenges nativist logics by exploring biblical texts that illuminate deeper theological and social aspects of human diversity, mobility, belonging and justice. On the other hand, it profiles keystone immigrant justice organizers who laid the groundwork for continuing practices of sanctuary and solidarity in the U.S. Thus it remains a germane and helpful resource for our current fraught moment in the U.S., where immigrant communities are scapegoated, targeted and criminalized yet again.
As last Sunday was Pentecost, I offer the following reflection on this intercultural uprising, which is an edited and abbreviated summary of the first chapter of Undocumented (which was based upon a longer version found here). Below that is a link to another recommended webinar by colleagues, centering the voice of a contemporary immigrant.
“How is it that we heard, each of us, in our own native tongue?” (Acts 2:8)
Since the dawn of colonization, the Americas have been defined by the struggle between dominant culture ideologies of conformity imposed by those in power, and grassroots cultural diversity among those on the margins. This tension between delusions of racial supremacy and realities of racial plurality remains one of the supreme challenges facing the U.S., and thus our churches, today. The future of North American society—and the human experiment as a whole—depends upon our ability to live peaceably and justly with intercultural diversity. The question is whether we can, in church and in society, forge models of coexistence-with-congruence rather than unity-by-uniformity.
This question is as ancient as our scriptures. Take two related texts, one from each Testament, which articulate key issues of cultural heterogeneity, social health and human freedom. One is the divine deconstruction of the architecture of imperial homogeneity represented by the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. The other is the multicultural insurrection against Roman imperial monoculture on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2).
The former story—one the oldest in the Bible—is a warning tale that concluded the overall narrative arc of Genesis 1-11. The Creator’s original intention was that human communities be “scattered abroad over the face of the earth” (Gen 1:28; 9:1)—an ancient expression of how diversity is crucial to healthy ecology. But this design has been eclipsed by the rising social and political forces of imperial centralization aiming to reduce “the whole earth to one language” (11:1).
Thus the divine “council” that formed human beings (1:26), and expelled them from the Garden (3:22), now intervenes to disrupt the centripetal, conformist project symbolized by the Tower of Babel: “Come, let us go down and confuse their language” (11:7). Both linguistic and cultural difference and geographic diffusion animate this re-dispersion of peoples (11:8).
This “scattering” is portrayed not as the tragic result of God’s judgment, as is usually preached in our churches, but rather as an act of centrifugal liberation from urban monoculture and superconcentration. Such archetypal movement from center to margins finds further articulation in two more foundational stories in Torah: Abram’s flight from imperial Ur to the margins of Canaan (Gen 11:31-12:5), and the liberation of slaves from Pharaoh’s Egypt to the wilderness in Exodus.
The ancient Hebrews, repeatedly displaced and colonized by urban civilization, seem to have developed a paleo-psychic impulse toward such centrifugality, summarized in the Psalmist’s later reiteration of Babel’s lesson: “Truly, I would flee far off; I would lodge in the wilderness… Confuse, O Lord, confound their speech, for I see violence and strife in the city” (Psalm 55:7ff). Israel’s survival was predicated upon resistance to successive empires through a stubborn maintenance of its own cultural, linguistic and religious distinctiveness and nonconformity.
Centuries later, Jewish Christians surrounded by the dominating architecture and assimilating social forces of the Roman Empire renewed this tradition, as narrated in Luke’s story of the birth of the Christian church at Pentecost. Acts 2 describes the inauguration of the church in the power of the Holy Spirit—though what sort of practices were empowered has been a divisive issue among Christians ever since. Today ecclesial debates about what it means to be “Spirit-filled” still focus on individual charismatic gifts, rather on the church as an alternative social model. But in Luke’s telling, the Spirit ignited a multilingual insurrection at the heart of cosmopolitan Jerusalem under Roman control, in the long tradition of Jewish centrifugal challenges to centripetal empire.
Luke is affirming the diverse cultural contexts in which the Christian movement would soon take flesh as the gospel spread throughout the Mediterranean world. But the echoes of the ancient Babel tale are unmistakable: “And at this sound the multitude came together and were confused because each one heard the apostles speaking in their own language” (Acts 2:6; the Greek sugcheō is the same root word used in the
Septuagint text of Gen 11:7,9). This is not, as usually misconstrued, a reversal of the alleged “curse” of Babel. Rather, Pentecost reiterates the ancient polemic about a divinely-sanctioned strategy to deconstruct pathological imperial homogeneity by reclaiming cultural diversity.
The gift of tongues communicates across linguistic differences without suppressing or eradicating those differences. That is what distinguishes true gospel mission from cross-and-sword conquest in the service of empire, which has characterized Christendom all too often. Unity through the Spirit does not mean monoculture, but the celebration of human variety.
The marginalized local cultures around the world carried by today’s immigrant poor have been eroded by centuries of colonialism, their languages increasingly extinguished by the onslaught of global capitalism’s drive for market homogeneity. The church must reassert the Genesis wisdom of a “scattered” human family by nurturing diversity, and must reaffirm the Pentecostal vocation of native-language empowerment. For in the core narrative of the Bible, God’s intervention is always subversive of the centralizing project of empire, and always on the side of the excluded and outcast, the refugee and immigrant. The Spirit has busted up business-as-usual many times since Babel and Pentecost, and she is waiting to do the same in our own time—if our tongues would but dare to loosen.
Recommended: “A Pastor’s Experience in Alligator Alcatraz ICE Detention”
Pastor Wilber Marenco was taken by ICE in February and held at Alligator Alcatraz. He did not have a criminal record and was not in the U.S. unlawfully, yet was arrested and detained. In this Christian Community Development Association podcast, Christina Foor is joined by Pastor Marenco, who shares his story of detention. He shares his story of migration, reflects on his church’s response in this moment, and how this experience of detainment has affected him, his family, and his community. CCDA encourages you to share this hour-long program with others.
I hope you and your faith community will make use of Our God is Undocumented as you deepen your solidarity work for immigrant justice in your area. You can pick up a copy from Orbis, or email Chris (inquiries@bcm-net.org) –-we always have copies of all our books in the BCM office! Thanks for reading this blog!
–CM
