Religious Identity and Cultural Negotiation

Toward a Theology of Christian Identity in Migration

McGill

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498290135
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Given increasing global migration and the importance of positive cross-cultural relations across national borders, this book offers an interdisciplinary and intercultural exploration of identity formation. It uniquely draws from theology, psychology, and sociology--engaging narrative and identity theories, migration and identity studies, and the theologies of identity and migration--and builds on them in an unprecedented study of international migrants to construct an initial theology of Christian identity in migration. New sociological research describes the social construction of religious, ethnic, and national identities among non-North American evangelical graduates who entered the United States to pursue advanced academic studies from 1983 to 2013. It provides an intercultural account of Christian identity formation in the context of migration, transnationalism, and globalization. It ultimately argues that an integral component of Christian identity-making involves the concept of migration, of movement, toward a transformation.

I

Introduction

1

Background

Every book has its story, the narrative of how it came to be. My motivation to study identity and migration from a theological and sociological perspective has much to do with my own life experiences and identities. My personal interest in migration and identity was shaped by several factors, and, as is often the case in psychological narrative analysis, one starts from childhood. By the age of thirteen, I had moved five times and had lived in three different U.S. states. Secondly, to my parents’ credit, international visitors were consistently entertained in our home, which exposed me at an impressionable young age to a world outside of the United States. During my first eleven years in the Midwestern United States, I recall knowing only one African American (who also happened to be my friend). In high school, however, my family moved to a predominantly Hispanic community, and I became a member of a white minority. My experience as a newcomer and an outsider—though still in a position of ethnic power—formatively prepared me for my future career and field of research.

I first traveled overseas in my second year of university and have since volunteered, studied, researched, or vacationed internationally twenty-three more times. My university friends were also predominantly foreign students. While my daily interaction with differing religious beliefs and cultural patterns was an education in itself, my university studies included a major in psychology and a minor in sociology. My subsequent master’s degree included a combined study of theology and culture. Finally, my doctoral research is a culmination and interdisciplinary application of my previous studies. To this end, I completed an additional eighteen graduate hours in psychology and counseling, which equipped me to conduct in-depth personal interviews.

On a professional level, I served four years as a social services coordinator at a crisis agency during which I further developed my skills in working with those from diverse backgrounds. Concurrently, I began working in the international office of the graduate school I was attending and directed this office from 2004 to 2014. My prolonged engagement with international students from over sixty countries largely led to my choice of this research project. I enjoyed an unusual level of access to this constituency, and I became increasingly curious about how they navigate their various identities in migration.

My marrying interracially also greatly impacted my perspective on the subjects of ethnicity, culture, nationalism, and racialized identities. Lastly, since 2010, I have experienced a transnational identity of sorts as I continued my employment in the United States while also commuting to the United Kingdom as an international student at King’s College London.

This most recent international venture has catapulted me routinely into markedly different ways of life: altered vocabulary, health care structures, currency, cultural mores, and patterns of thinking, etc. I am continually reminded what it feels like to be an international student by my limited freedoms, restricted employment, and different rules by which to abide. Daily, in my personal life, work, and travels, I consider the negotiation of national, ethnic, and religious identity in differing cultural contexts, and this crossing of borders has enriched my understanding of the processual forces involved in migration and identity construction. As much as transition and diversity have made me who I am, I have also made them my own by seeking out new opportunities for exploration and bringing them to bear on my research. To be sure, this work will bear the marks of the Christian tradition that I follow—Protestant and, more specifically, evangelical.

Given increasing global migration and the importance of positive cross-cultural relations across national borders, this book offers an interdisciplinary exploration of identity formation in migration, namely, with theological, psychological, and sociological lenses. To this end, I consider the views of three—Drs. Miroslav Volf, Jenny Hyun Chung Pak, and Stanley Hauerwas—to form a theology of Christian identity (chapter 6).

Part III summarizes my international research on the examination of the social construction of religious, ethnic, and national identities among foreign-born evangelical migrants who entered the United States to pursue advanced academic studies. From eighteen interviews and 405 surveys f...

Table of contents

• Tables
• Acknowledgments
• PART I: Introduction
• PART II: Approaches toward Self and Identity
• PART III: Sociological Research on Identity in Migration
• PART IV: Toward a Theology of Christian Identity in Migration
• Appendix 1: Interview Participants
• Bibliography