Migration and Public Discourse in World Christianity

Afe Adogame, Raimundo Barreto Jr., Wanderley Pereira da Rosa, Raimundo C. Barreto

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781506433691
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506433707
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Although humans have always migrated, the present phenomenon of mass migration is unprecedented in scale and global in reach. Understanding migration and migrants has become increasingly relevant for world Christianity. This volume identifies and addresses several key topics in the discourse of world Christianity and migration. Senior and emerging scholars and researchers of migration from all regions of the world contribute chapters on central issues, including the feminization of international migration, the theology of migration, south-south migration networks, the connection between world Christianity, migration, and civic responsibility, and the complicated relationship between migration, identity and citizenship. It seeks to give voice particularly to migrant narratives as important sources for public reasoning and theology in the 21st century.

II

MIGRANTS’ EXPERIENCES AND RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE

CHAPTER 4

MIGRATING THEOPOLITICS: THE EFFECT OF UNDOCUMENTED PARISHIONERS ON THE PASTORAL THEOLOGY OF LATIN AMERICAN EVANGELICALS IN THE UNITED STATES

João Chaves

Introduction

An overwhelming number of American evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s rhetoric of tough immigration policies did not change the stance of most American evangelicals; in fact, some evidence suggest that it may have strengthened the group’s support for his campaign. The theopolitical^[1] anxieties of American evangelicals, however, were not limited to the US context as different iterations of such imagination attained global reach through the agency of evangelical missionaries. Historically, Latin American evangelicals affiliated to several denominations internalized the often-conservative political tendencies of American evangelical missionaries, and despite the qualified indigenous contextualization of missionary tendencies, the American evangelical conservative imagination was effectively disseminated among significant groups in the region. Evangelical denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention—the largest Protestant denomination in the United States—sent missionaries to Latin America and helped maintain denominational identity and practice through their continuous control of institutions of cultural output, such as seminaries, universities, publication houses, and denominational periodicals.^[2] Such environments ensured that, both theologically and politically, there is an affinity between American evangelicalism and Latin American evangelicalism that characterizes the identity of both groups. Among Brazilian Baptists, leaders who migrate from Latin America to pastor churches in the United States, therefore, are very often ideologically close to American evangelicals when they leave their native countries. The reality of immigrant, Latin American churches in the United States, however, challenges central aspects of such conservatism. At the center of the challenges presented to Latin American pastors in the United States is the need for a theological apparatus that responds to their immigrant context.

The last few years have seen several theologies of migration and theologically informed calls for Christians to advocate for immigration reform that gesture toward the need for a theology of the new immigrants. As the issue of US immigration policy became highly contentious since the administration of George W. Bush, a number of books attempting to respond biblically and theologically—from a wide spectrum of Christian perspectives—to the tensions generated by the perceived injustices of the American immigration system were published.^[3] The majority of these works represent theological reflections produced by academics for the consumption of academics or highly educated clerics. The religious convictions and practices of most immigrant Christians themselves, however, remain largely unexplored in terms of their theology of migration. Except for immigrants who belong to the intellectual and clerical establishment in the US—which is not a representative group—the theopolitical convictions of the common immigrant remains mostly neglected. In other words, scholarly works focused mostly on producing theologies for immigrants, not on documenting immigrants’ theology.

This chapter represents an exception to the general scholarly production on the connection between theology and US immigration as it focuses on documenting theological commitments of immigrants rather than producing theology for the potential benefit of immigrants. More specifically, this chapter explores how the challenges posed by undocumented parishioners push Latin American pastors and denominational leaders in the United States to revise their theopolitical conservatism. I will look primarily at Brazuca^[4] Baptists and will explore the ways in which Brazuca Baptist pastors and denominational workers in the United States change after migrating. In order to pastor faith communities comprised of primarily migrant parishioners, Brazuca Baptist pastors often change their stance on theology, American immigration policy, and political tendency because of their exposure to the conundrums created by the presence of undocumented parishioners.^[5] The challenge of undocumented presence, therefore, deeply affects the dynamics of immigrant churches in terms of leadership ideology and, given the influence of these leaders in their respective communities, it informs the public witness of evangelical immigrants.

Brazuca Baptist Churches and Undocumented Immigrants

Undocumented immigrants have a central place in Brazuca Baptist churches. Although most Brazuca Baptist pastors are documented, most Brazuca Baptist parishioners are not, and the sheer presence of undocumented immigrants in some Brazuca Baptist churches is so great that it accounts for the reason for their existence.^[6] The issues raised by the overwhelming presence of undocumented parishioners generate a moral tension for Brazuca pastors. Whereas Paul Freston noted this tension in relation to Brazuca Protestants in general, his comments are particularly applicable to Brazuca Baptists. In their Brazuca Baptist communities, the members are forced to adapt social conservatism that typifies Brazilian Protestantism in order to cope with so many of their members being outside of the law.^[7] No formal theological system can fully articulate the theological reasoning that legitimizes Brazuca Baptist beliefs and practices regarding the presence of undocumented parishioners. However, one can attempt to account for the fundamental anxieties behind the rudimentary theological dispositions of Brazuca Baptists who are pushed to make theological concessions to their otherwise socially conservative tendencies. Freston helps in this regard as he points out that a rudimentary theology of the undocumented includes arguments such as: God created a world without borders; Jesus was an illegal immigrant in Egypt; Jews are ordered to treat the aliens well; and the United States is a land of immigrants.^[8] But behind these explicit theological apologies, there is a more fundamental and more practical feeling: that there is something within the law itself that is deeply immoral and that United States immigration law is fundamentally damaging to the humanity of undocumented brothers and sisters.

As Kara Cebulko argued, undocumented status changes the role of the church in immigrant life,^[9] given that the church often becomes a place that gives people a measure of protection from the struggles of undocumented living. Church life, however, is also changed in the process as legally documented pastors arrive to lead these churches, armed with religious visas and theopolitical tendencies heavily informed by US evangelicalism, and are confronted by the reality that these churches are backed by money earned by undocumented workers and that they can neither ignore their members’ narratives of migrant experiences nor side with the system that oppresses them.^[10]

Though the adaptation of Brazuca Baptist pastors’ theopolitical conservatism to the reality of undocumented immigration is by no means seamless or automatic, the existential, ministerial, and financial price of non-adaptation is too great for them to bear. The testimonies of influential Brazuca Baptist pastors in regard to this crisis of documentation reveal the tension created by their moralistic tendency, pointed out by Freston, and the reality of United States immigration dynamics. Two longtime pastors in the United States...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• The World Christianity and Public Religion Series
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Introduction: Migration and Public Discourse in World Christianity
• Shaping Identities: Transnational Networks and Religious Discourse
• Migrants’ Experiences and Religious Discourse
• Migrants’ Narratives as Theology
• Migration, Public Policy and Civil Discourse: Theological Formulations
• Brazilian Pentecostalism and Migration: Two Stories
• Index