Presence 1: Live a Public, Political Faith
The Church can live out a public religion, as it was always meant to.
Christianity was never intended to be a privatized faith, as though it has no bearing on life outside one’s mind or bedroom. This recognition does not mean undoing the separation of Church and State; it means Christians being vocal and active in the political sphere. We have no credibility to comment on policy if we do it entirely from the pew and not from the square.
The gospel is political. It is about a King and a Kingdom, about spiritual revolution, about law and justice and mercy and grace. It is for everyone and affects everything, including the poor and the refugee. The Church needs to act like it, thereby bringing the uprooted to the fore of the Church’s mission, rather than leaving them in some distant, irrelevant place of memory or conscience.
Presence 2: Lead Dialogue
Living out a public, political faith means the Church should be eager to lead the cultural dialogue about human rights, about making peace and ending violence, about just economics, about protection of the environment, and about neighborliness that looks passed color and creed. We are called to be servants, but that does not mean leading from behind. It means leading by example.
Presence 3: Participate from the Grassroots to the Halls of Government
The Church must get involved socially and legally with the defense of human beings and their rights before men. It can be present at borders and in refugee camps. It can campaign for the needy not only from NGOs in the North America, but from slums and foreign capitals. Advocate for the establishment of broader, stronger human rights standards nationally and internationally, and for the enforcement of existing standards. When those standards are not upheld, sign petitions, call representatives, and hold leaders to account. And apart from moving through existing federal and transnational organizations, the Church can create and commit to its own resolutions regarding human rights and the fate of refugees around the globe. The government has programs that provide housing, education, counseling, and legal services. There is no law that says the Church cannot do the same. And there are divine laws that suggest it must.
Governments will not end their policy of sanction, just as they will not disabuse the international system of a culture of war, but the Church can do better. It can influence for the movement of essential goods—food, water, medicine, blankets—to all people, regardless of the policies of their governors. The Church can influence society. It can transform governments, businesses, neighborhoods, and minds. It can be a beacon of hope for future generations. By the power of the Spirit, it must be.
Presence 4: Be Zealously Diverse
The Church can be excited to be multicultural. It can happily welcome foreigners and refugees. It can joyfully provide sanctuary to those seeking asylum. It can be many-colored and many-tongued in order that it can speak into all instances of oppression at home and abroad, and have experience and credibility when speaking into issues of ethnicity, nationalism, race, and interfaith dialogue.
The Church should be a bridge between cultures. Not a barrier. Not a prop of segregation. Diversity is not the goal of the Church, but it is a reality of the Church—one that spurs more welcome and less fear.
Presence 5: Seek the Kingdom before the Country
As Christians, let’s not view God as a real estate agent, tying the Church to lands and temples. That is what modern Israel did with Zionism and Isis has done with its caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Such a mindset is isolating and minimizes God, associating him with certain peoples and places, when he has claim on the whole world and all the varied people in it.
The Church must resist its own tendencies toward Christian nationalism and ethnocentrism. It must be concerned about people far more than it is concerned about places. Such a posture will showcase our love of neighbors over neighborhoods and our desire for God over idols.
Presence 6: Value Life
The Church must value women as highly as God does. Speak against their abuse. Encourage their contribution. Empower them. Ensure their equal rights before God and men.
It must care deeply about the rights of children. It can love providing the opportunity for education for displaced people in North America and in impoverished, under-schooled places around the world. It can see sojourning children as equal to those in its Sunday school classrooms, committed to providing them with food, warmth, and mental and physical care.
The Church can support the rights of indigenous peoples, including their right of return. It is able to value the lost and lonely, the foreigner and the dispossessed. To seek them as the Lord sought them.
The Church can be life-giving and life-affirming for refugees. Maybe that looks like offering refuge or sponsorship, or maybe it is made real for us by lobbying and sending workers for the protection of women against violence, the legal defense of children evicted by war, or standing in the way of political moves that try to limit such protections. What it certainly means is giving a voice to the voiceless.
Let’s not only advocate for the uprooted, but also give them a platform to advocate for themselves. Help them tell their stories well. Work with them to start initiatives. Give them full rights and participation in endeavors on their behalf. God loves every refugee as much as every unborn child. The Church needs to live accordingly.
Presence 7: Value Creation
Uphold respect for the environment, both in how we treat creation and what we buy. Don’t be afraid of political correctness or fair trade. They are not the enemy and, in fact, can be a very great good. Such care for our world means we will seek to reduce the natural and manmade causes of uprootedness and promote policies and personal habits that are merciful toward the land and the people who live off it (which is to say, all of us).
Presence 8: Promote Peace and Justice
Find and help allies who are working in conflict resolution, antiracism, and community development. Foster the build-up of healthy civil society around the globe. Oftentimes this will look like facilitating democratization, but democracy is not the ultimate answer—it is broken system. Still, the Church can find union with responsible actors who are working for peace and justice of all kinds.
We need to openly discuss racism, xenophobia, and all other kinds of prejudice that plague our policies and structures. Listen to those who are victims. Seek empathy. Push for demilitarization. Whatever one feels about pacifism or just war, I trust we can agree there is such a thing as a bridge too far. Christians cannot support the indefinite militarization of our world. Arms races are not a thing to be aided or watched in silence. They are to be halted.
Refugeeism is unjust and always violent (economically, environmentally, culturally, or physically). As such, if the Church really wants to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly, it must stand against the sources of refugeeism. Stand, and also move.
Presence 9: Be Consistent
If we are to promote peace and justice, we must do it unswervingly. A single injustice or a solitary bout of war can undo generations of progress. So, please, God, let us heed the words of Syrian priests and Iraqi activists who plead for the West to stop pouring weapons into warzones. How, after all, can anyone trust Western “goodwill” if we sponsor the conflicts that drive children from their homes and support groups who do not believe in coexistence? How can we live with ourselves as we feed the industry of death?
Let us think together about the hundreds of billions of dollars spent every year to buy weapons and equipment to kill people. Let us remember that if even a small amount of this big amount was spent to help the Christians stay in Dohuk, all Iraq would be in a much better situation than it is now. If a small amount was spent on aid to Congolese refugees, there would be considerably less need for refugee camps and resettlement. If a small amount was spent on demining, many more children would have all their arms and legs. I submit that if all of the money presently given in the form of weapons and training to fuel the machine of war were given instead to support refugees and internally displaced persons, to create opportunities for employment, and to build infrastructure, all hubs of refugeeism could quickly begin their turnarounds.
If we preach peace, let us be peaceful. If we teach compassion, let us be compassionate. If we claim Love, let us be loving.
Presence 10: Live in the Freedom That Is Ours
The gift of God is salvation. Let us live in that freedom. Freedom from sin. Freedom from death. Freedom from the powers and principalities of this world. Freedom from ourselves. The Church can live in that freedom and desire it for others. Such freedom is why so much of our response to refugeeism can be done with utter joy! We are not only free from what’s wrong, we are free to what’s right.
Concerned as so many Western churches are about their freedoms—of speech, of conscience, of worship—we can continue to push forward for those rights and at the same time ask ourselves: How concerned are we about those freedoms for displaced people here and abroad? For Muslims and Buddhists and atheists? For exiles and migrants?
The Church can be a buoy for freedom, but not only its own. It must offer utter respect for foreigners, religious minorities, and the uprooted, even if they are not Christian and even if they are not in the West.
The Church also is free to act. Free from the constraints of mortality and isolation. Free from fear. It is free in and to the knowledge that it cannot fix everything. Freedom from the need to do everything gives even greater freedom to do something. This freedom—the freedom of Christ—knows that while we ourselves are not the answer to all the world’s ills, we are clay in the hands of the one who is the first and last, alpha and omega, the final victorious answer.
So be free. Do freedom.
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