Reformed Public Theology

A Global Vision for Life in the World

Kaemingk, Matthew, Matthew Kaemingk

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781540961976
• eBook ISBN:
  9781493430857
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

The Reformed tradition in the twenty-first century is increasingly diverse, dynamic, and deeply engaged in a wide variety of global and public issues, from the arts and business to immigration and race to poetry and politics. This book brings together the insights of a diverse group of leading Reformed thinkers--including Nicholas Wolterstorff, Makoto Fujimura, Bruce Ashford, John Witvliet, Ruben Rosario Rodriguez, and James K. A. Smith--to offer a contemporary vision of the depth and diversity of the Reformed faith and its global public impact.

IMMIGRATION

1

Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers

The Migratory Beginnings of Reformed Public Theology

Rubén Rosario Rodríguez

Immigration was a defining characteristic of the early Reformation.1 Whether fleeing political persecution, seeking religious freedom, sending missionaries, or welcoming refugees into their midst, the sixteenth-century Reformers were a people on the move. They were constantly interacting with different languages and cultures, crossing borders, planting churches in new soil, and wrestling with biblical demands to provide justice and hospitality for foreigners.

John Calvin’s Geneva offers a fascinating case study of a community of faith struggling to make space for newcomers, all the while resisting the temptations of xenophobia and nativist protectionism. As a community, Geneva was intimately aware of both ends of the immigrant experience. The city not only gathered thousands of dislocated refugees from cultures and kingdoms all over Europe, it also scattered settlers, missionaries, and pastors to different nations all over the continent and beyond. As historian Carter Lindberg observes, “Geneva not only welcomed refugees, it created them.”2 The migratory experiences of the early Reformers had a profound impact on the movement’s self-understanding. Their spiritual and political responses to these profound experiences of dislocation have a lot to offer to twenty-first-century Christians as they wrestle with the contemporary (and enduring) issue of immigration.

John Calvin, himself a French political exile, had fled to Strasbourg and later settled in Geneva, where he established a church order that specifically allowed the city to become a haven for Protestant refugees fleeing persecution from all over Europe. Throughout his life, Calvin worked tirelessly on behalf of persecuted Protestants, especially those from his native France (the Huguenots). The persecution in France sent a massive wave of refugees to Geneva between 1545 and 1555. During this time, the city’s cramped geographic borders and limited resources prevented its citizens from permanently welcoming all refugees. The lack of space combined with a passion for global mission eventually inspired several Protestant resettlement missions throughout Europe and beyond. Through it all, John Calvin and his fellow Reformers fostered a diverse and complex international movement that was both migratory and hospitable, transnational and ecumenical. An enduring message within sixteenth-century Geneva was, quite simply, to offer hospitality when you are in a position of privilege; soon enough, you may find that you yourself are the migrant in need of hospitality.3

Today in the United States, ironically, many self-identified Calvinists willingly support anti-immigrant (and borderline racist) leaders and cruel immigration policies. These Calvinists will sometimes even attempt to use their faith as a tool by which they can calmly turn refugees away and ignore the moral horrors being perpetrated on the US southern border. Their moral and political quietism will sometimes be fostered through politically passive readings of Romans 13 and a vague emphasis on submissive acceptance of the laws and leaders whom God has placed in authority.

In 2020 the US government’s zero-tolerance border enforcement policies created holding facilities that act as de facto concentration camps. These camps viciously squander innocent lives,4 separate children from their parents, and subject the most vulnerable detainees (women and children) to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their jailers.5 Calvinist silence and submission in the face of such cruelty is at best tacit approval of these policies; at worst it is complicity in a new wave of nativist anti-immigrant violence currently plaguing the nation.6

This chapter demonstrates that Calvinists’ moral and political quietism is a tragic betrayal of a long Calvinist legacy of welcoming strangers, resisting tyrants, establishing justice, and stepping across borders and cultures in vulnerability and faith. It will also discredit the common misconception that John Calvin was a cold and pharisaic stickler for the rule of law. Instead, it will offer a more accurate representation of John Calvin as a humanistic reformer whose ecclesiastical and civil polities sought that “every resident of Geneva [be] integrated into a caring community.” Unlike our modern social welfare networks, these church-led ministries were designed to be “real networks of caring.”7 As Scottish Reformer John Knox commented after his sojourn in Geneva, the city “is the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the apostles.”8 John Bale, a fellow refugee fleeing Mary Tudor’s persecution, added: “Geneva seems to me to be the wonderful miracle of the whole world. . . . Is it not wonderful that Spaniards, Italians, Scots, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, disagreeing on manners, speech, and apparel, . . . [yet] coupled with only the yoke of Christ, should live so . . . like a spiritual and Christian congregation?”9 When balancing the biblical demand for the rule of law (Rom. 13) with Peter’s exhortation that “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29 NRSV), Calvin erred on the side of compassion for the immigrant.10 He was firmly convinced that, as citizens and as Christians, we are called to “take as strong a stand against evil as we can.”11

Refugees Gathered in Geneva

During Calvin’s pastoral tenure in Geneva (1538–64), the Reformation was fighting for its very life. The movement was encountering Catholic persecution across the whole of Europe. In 1555, a flood of French refugees fleeing persecution overwhelmed Geneva. Historians estimate that, in the space of a single decade, the population of Geneva grew from 13,100 to as high as 21,400.12

Needless to say, this crushing influx of refugees exacerbated the city’s already strained social welfare infrastructure. In a normal year, about 5 percent of Geneva’s native population depended on regular assistance from the general hospital (more than 500 people). Add to that the massive flow of refugees, and the social welfare agencies would likely have had to serve up to an additional ten thousand strangers during any one-year period.13 Thankfully, not all these refugees would settle permanently in the small city of Geneva. Many would merely pass through to other Reformed settlements and sanctuaries. This pressing need to resettle refugees directly impacted (and informed) Geneva’s later missionary efforts.

One of the constant causes of friction between Calvin and the native Genevans was his spiritual and political insistence on providing hospitality to exiles. This was no inconsequential matter, for what had been a trickle in 1523 became a flood thirty years later.14 By 1555 there were more immigrants than native citizens in the city. Not surprisingly, the natives had some grievances. They complained that refugees were taking jobs and straining resources, that wealthy exiled French nobles were taking over the city, that the culture of the city would be destroyed, and that Geneva itself would decline.

Still, one can appreciate the concerns of the native Genevans. One can even understand their resentment. By mid-century, every single one of their local pastors was foreign born. In claiming their city’s independence years earlier, the Genevans had liberated themselves from the local nobility. Now they had to watch as nobles fleeing from France and Italy entered their gates and wielded a disproportionate amount of influence in their economic matters.15

Anti-immigrant sentiment reached its peak in 1555 under the leadership of Ami Perrin, who called himself a Genevan patriot. Perrin goaded a street mob to threaten foreign-owned businesses in the city. The mob gathered outside the city council to intimidate the magistrates. John Calvin himself stepped into the fray. He stood amid the angry crowd that was chanting, “Kill the French,” and proclaimed: “If you must shed blood, let mine be first.”16 Perrin later sought to oust Calvin by force but was defeated and exiled from the city. Calvin’s public victory allowed him to consolidate his authority as pastor and direct his political support to better care for the needs of refugees.

The French Fund (Bourse française) was established in Geneva to provide diaconal care for French Protestants fleeing Catholic persecution. John Calvin himself quietly supported the work of the French Fund for many years from his own modest income. Apart from emergency relief and medical services, the deacons used this fund to obtain housing for refugee families and to help refugees secure employment in the city. The fund provided tools for the refugees so they could work for themselves. It even paid for vocational training to ensure that the refugees did not depend on charity for their long-term subsistence. Early on, any refugee from any nation who was in genuine need received assistance from the French Fund. However, as persecution spread across Europe, similar funds were established in Geneva by and for the various ethnic communities seeking refuge (Italian, Spanish, Polish, etc.).

The multinational character of the Reformation underlaid Calvin’s commitment to the social and economic practices of the diaconal ministry in Geneva. A similar cosmopolitan character was also embodied in the founding of the Genevan Academy. This international school was designed to educate clergy and doctors to serve in nascent Protestant communities throughout the diverse nations and cultures of Eur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Introduction: Toward a Reformed Public Theology
• Part One: Public Culture
• Part Two: Public Markets
• Part Three: Public Justice
• Part Four: Public Aesthetics
• Part Five: Public Academy
• Part Six: Public Worship
• Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover