Christianity and Migration

Our time has been dubbed the “Age of Migration” and as such it urgently calls for a reinterpretation of the Christian faith in a way that speaks both from and to the experiences of migrants. This book offers a fresh and systematic re-articulation of the fundamental Christian beliefs in the perspective of migration. Peter C. Phan, a leading Catholic theologian, offers here the first attempt to elaborate a comprehensive Christian theology of migration. The book begins by discussing the nature and method of Christian theology, human mobility as a permanent feature of human existence, the categories of migrants and types of migration, and the intrinsic relations between migration and religion, especially Christianity; it argues that Christian mission induces migration and migration transforms Christianity. The second part presents a new theology of God: God the Father is the Primordial Migrant, God the Son the Paradigmatic Migrant, and God the Holy Spirit the Personal Power of Migration. The book goes on to discuss the Church as an Institutional Migrant, worship and popular devotions in the life of migrants, the ethics of mutual hospitality, the theology of land, the duty of migrants to remember where they come from, why they must remember, and how they must remember. It ends with reflections on the connection between migration and eschatology. Christianity and Migration offers a new approach to a pressing moral issue.

Peter C. Phan is the Ignacio Ellacuria Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University. His research deals with the theology of the icon in Orthodox theology, patristic theology, eschatology, the history of Christian missions in Asia, liberation, inculturation, and interreligious dialogue. He is the author and editor of over 40 books and has published over 300 essays. He is the first non-Anglo to be elected President of the Catholic Theological Society of America and President of the American Theological Society, and in 2010 he received the John Courtney Murray Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Catholic Theological Society of America for outstanding achievement in theology.