Immigrants and Refugees Experiences: an Opportunity for Faith

Abstract

Immigration is common in this increasingly globalized world. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, migration is a mystery in plain view. It consistently provides, on one hand, the occasion for God’s self-revelation to human beings and, on the other hand, it creates a faith dilemma among the immigrants, who can easily interpret their devastation as God’s failure to come into their aid in the hour of need. Hebrew scripture describes the Jewish people’s long saga of uprooting, deportation, Exodus, exile, persecution, dispersion, grief and void in the foreign lands and hope for a return to their ancestral land. A survey of the contemporary immigrants in various parts of the world illustrates similar trends inducing the question, “is immigration a challenge or an opportunity for faith?” Immigration is a psycho-social-geographical transition that involves a series of losses and changes, most of them obvious and expected, but some of them hidden and unexpected. Specifically, the goal of this paper is to present immigration as an opportunity for growth in faith despite the despair and suffering that often characterize the immigrants or refugees experiences. The paper, taking this position, shall propose a contextualized approach of faith witnessing in addressing the issue as we find among the Israelites’ prophets in Babylon.