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Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious
Dialogue
Series Editor
Mark Chapman
Ripon College
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK
Building on the important work of the Ecclesiological Investigations
International Research Network to promote ecumenical and inter-faith
encounters and dialogue, the Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious
Dialogue series publishes scholarship on such engagement in relation to
the past, present, and future. It gathers together a richly diverse array of
voices in monographs and edited collections that speak to the challenges,
aspirations and elements of ecumenical and interfaith conversation.
Through its publications, the series allows for the exploration of new ways,
means, and methods of advancing the wider ecumenical cause with
renewed energy for the twenty-first century.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14561
Darren J. Dias • Jaroslav Z. Skira
Michael S. Attridge • Gerard Mannion
Editors
The Church,
Migration, and Global
(In)Difference
Editors
Darren J. Dias Jaroslav Z. Skira
University of St. Michael’s College Regis College
Toronto, ON, Canada Toronto, ON, Canada
Michael S. Attridge Gerard Mannion

University of St. Michael’s College Department of Theology
Toronto, ON, Canada Georgetown University
Washington, DC, USA
ISSN 2634-6591 ISSN 2634-6605 (electronic)

Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue
ISBN 978-3-030-54225-2 ISBN 978-3-030-54226-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54226-9
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IN MEMORIAM
Gerard Mannion
(1970–2019)
—Scholar, ecumenist, colleague, friend—
Preface
Pope Francis’ challenge to church and society to care for migrants and
refugees inspired the ideas and themes of the conference The Church and
Migration: Global (In)Difference? (25–27 June 2019, Toronto, Canada).
Such a conference contributed to the mission of the Ecclesiological
Investigations International Research Network, which “seeks to serve as a
hub for national and international collaboration in ecclesiology, drawing
together other groups and networks, initiating research ventures and pro-
viding administrative support as well as acting as a funding magnet to
support conversations, research and education in this field.” Ecclesiological
Investigations (EI) came into being initially as a program unit of the
American Academy of Religion in 2005, growing into an active research
network to this day, organizing a number of meetings, symposia and con-
ferences such as the following:
2019: “Stolen Churches” or “Bridges to Orthodoxy”? Impulses for

Theological Dialogue Between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic
Churches. Stuttgart.
2018: The Church and Migration: Global (In)Difference? Toronto.
2017: Theology Without Borders – Celebrating the Legacy of Peter
C. Phan. Georgetown.
2017: The Reformation and Reconciliation. Jena.
2016: Christianity and Religions in China – Past-Present-Future.
Hong Kong.
vii
viii PREFACE
2015: Vatican II – Remembering the Future – Ecumenical, Interfaith and

Secular Perspectives on the Council’s Impact and Promise. Georgetown.
2014: Hope in the Ecumenical Future. Oxford.
2013: Religion, Authority and State: From Constantine to the Secular and
Beyond. Belgrade.
2012: Where We Dwell in Common: Pathways for Dialogue in the
Twenty-First Century. Assisi.
2011: Exclusion by Race, Gender, Culture Threatens Mission, Identity of
the Catholic Church. Dayton.
2011: The Dialogical Imperative: Ecclesiology and Interculturality –
Ecclesiologia e interculturalità. Rome.
2010: Religions, Dialogue and Society: Theological Reflections in a
Pluralistic World. Trichur.
2010 : Being Surprised by God – Embodied Ecclesiology in Local
Contexts. Utrecht.
2010: The Household of God and Local Households: Revisiting the
Domestic Church. Louvain.
2009: Receptive Ecumenism and Ecclesial Learning: Learning to Be
Church Together. Durham.
2008: Church in Pluralist Contexts. Kerala.
2007: The First Conference of the Ecclesiological Investigations Research
Network. St. Deiniol’s.
The Ecclesiological Investigations network was in no small way fueled

by the passion and work of our late colleague, Gerard Mannion
(1970–2019). Gerard Mannion was a central driving force in promoting
the “collaborative ecclesiology” of Ecclesiological Investigations, from
being its founding chair to his extensive work throughout the years. His
indefatigable work brought together numerous practitioners, ecclesial
leaders and scholars from various continents. This community of members
and collaborators in EI were expanded by his international networks
established through various academic positions at Oxford University,
Liverpool Hope University, the University of Leeds, the University of San
Diego, KU Leuven and Georgetown University. He possessed a sincerity,
PREFACE ix
kindness and sense of social justice that served to build lasting bonds of
collegiality. We dedicate this, one of his last publications, to a scholar,
ecumenist, colleague and friend—to Gerard Mannion. May he rest in the
company of the saints.
Toronto, ON, Canada Darren J. Dias

Toronto, ON, Canada Jaroslav Z. Skira
Toronto, ON, Canada Michael S. Attridge
About the Book
The reality faced by refugees and migrants is one of the most serious
issues confronting our world today. We live in a time when the migration
of peoples—a significant number being forced displacements due to
external circumstances—has never been of greater urgency. This situa-
tion demands that churches, faith communities and all people of good-
will explore the root causes and opportunities of migration, the
implications and outcomes of mass human movement and strategies and
courses of action to help alleviate the most acute situations. Likewise,
this reality dictates that just and equitable policies and laws are imple-
mented both within and across nations to safeguard the rights and
futures of all migrants, refugees, displaced and itinerant peoples. This
volume draws together essays from scholars, practitioners and leaders
from around the globe examining the relationship between the church
and migration—historically, in our times and prospects for the future.
The various contributions explore the stories of migrants and refugees,
the journeys they have undertaken, the ways in which churches and
other religious communities, as well as secular and political institutions
and organizations, have sought to welcome them—or otherwise. The
essays analyze key issues and challenges at stake, documentary engage-
ments with migration and ways in which we can learn from the past in
both positive and critical ways alike.
xi
xii About the Book
The book is inter-disciplinary in nature bringing theological, scrip-

tural, historical, anthropological, sociological, pastoral and political per-
spectives into conversation. The remarkable intertextuality of the
volume is evident in the four parts of the book through various tropes:
violence, hospitality, movement, borders, coloniality, ethics, church,
inculturation, dialogue, contextuality and community. Part I groups
together essays that analyze and problematize “hospitality”—a central
trope in theologies of migration—from biblical, theological and decolo-
nial perspectives. Part II groups together richly textured theo-political
essays. They draw on some key hermeneutical concepts like “forced
migration,” “mysticism,” “educational practise,” “crisis,” and “limit-
concept” in order to understand extremely complex realities. Part III
relates migration specifically to ecclesiology. The essays point to the sig-
nificant influence that Francis’ papacy has had on theologies of migra-
tion. The last part consists of stories of migration. They speak to the
importance of the concrete transformational impact migrations have on
communities in diverse contexts: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and
North America.
This volume’s essays arose out of the ecumenical conference The
Church and Migration: Global (In)Difference? (2018), which was
hosted by four member schools of the Toronto School of Theology ecu-
menical consortium: Emmanuel College of Victoria University; Regis
College; the Faculty of Theology, University of St Michael’s College;
and, the Faculty of Divinity, University of Trinity College. As noted in
the Preface, conference was held under the auspices of the Ecclesiological
Investigations International Research Network. We acknowledge the
invaluable support of the Dominican Institute of Toronto, which
assumed the primary leadership and benefaction for this conference, and
without which this conference would not have taken place. We also sin-
cerely thank the following sponsoring institutions: Berkley Center for
Religion, Peace and World Affairs; Georgetown University; International
Institute for Method in Theology; Pontifical Scalabrinian Institute for
the Study of Human Mobility; Ripon College, Oxford; St. Mark’s
College; Toronto School of Theology (in the University of Toronto);
and Tübingen University.
About the Book xiii
Finally, we wish to recognize and thank our collaborators on our con-

ference planning committee, Christopher Brittain (Trinity College) and
Thomas Reynolds (Emmanuel College). A special word of thanks also
goes out to the wonderful work of our conference staff of Jessica De Luca,
Michael Pirri and Sarah Kwiecinski who contributed much to the success
of the event, along with cadres of Toronto School of Theology graduate
student volunteers; and to Mia Theocharis, for her assistance with this
publication. A final word of deepest gratitude we also extend to our
contributors.
Michael S. Attridge
Daren J. Dias
Jaroslav Z. Skira
Contents
Part I Perspectives on Hospitality 1
1 The Church, Migration and Global (In)Difference: They

End in the City 3
Dale T. Irvin
2 Boaz’s Hospitality Towards Ruth: Inspiring Our

Hospitality Towards Latin American Temporary Farm
Workers 25
Martin Bellerose
3 Luke-Acts as Scripture Speaking from and to Migration 43

Julius-Kei Kato
4 The Church, Migration and the Primacy of Motion:

Beyond Hospitality 61
Christopher Craig Brittain
5 Hospitality and Disruption: The Church as Sanctuary 79

Mary Beth Yount
xv
xvi CONTENTS
6 Decolonizing Theology and Migration in a Canadian

Context: (Re)imagining Hospitality 91
Thomas E. Reynolds
Part II Theo-Political Perspectives 111
7 Forced Migrations as a Theo-Political Challenge Facing

Global Violence113
Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez
8 Anthropology and Theology: Notes on Gender,

Migration and Mystics129
Valentina Napolitano
9 Religion, Migration and Educational Practice: Empirical,

Postcolonial and Theological Perspectives145
Kathrin Winkler
10 Deciphering the Genome of “Crisis” in the Syrian

“Refugee Crisis”: Towards a Hermeneutic Tripod167
Najib George Awad
11 The Refugee as “Limit-Concept” in the Modern

Nation-State185
Craig A. Phillips
Part III Ecclesiological Perspectives 201
12 Churches and National Boundaries: Differences Between

Borders and Limits According to Pope Francis203
Luc Forestier
13 Pope Francis’ Four Words to Meet the Challenge of

Migrations: Welcoming, Protecting, Promoting and
Integrating223
Roberto Catalano
CONTENTS xvii
14 Ecclesia Semper Migranda: Towards a Vision of a Migrant

Church for Migrants241
Tihomir Lazić
Part IV Contextual and Historical Perspectives 263
15 Mapping a Contextual Theology of African Migration265

Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu
16 African Migrant Christians Changing the Landscape of

Christianity in the West: Reading the Signs of the Times289
Simon Mary Asese Aihiokhai
17 Stories of Transformation: African Immigrants to the

USA and the Dark Night of John of the Cross309
Theodora J. M. (Dorris) van Gaal
18 When There Is Nowhere to Rest Our Heads: Is

In(ter)culturation Optional?331
Simon C. Kim
19 Grace and Dis-Grace: The Australian Catholic Church’s

70-Year Engagement with Governmental Migration
Policy (1948–2018)347
Patricia Madigan
20 Pedagogy of Migration: The Roman Catholic Archdiocese

of Toronto’s Response to Immigration (1934–1963)369
Darren J. Dias
21 Ukrainian Churches and Migration in Canada:

Re-Imagining History and the Present393
Jaroslav Z. Skira
Subject Index417
Contributors
Simon Mary Asese Aihiokhai University of Portland, Portland, OR, USA

Michael S. Attridge University of St. Michael’s College in the University
of Toronto, Toronto School of Theology, Toronto, ON, Canada
Najib George Awad Hartford Seminary, Hartford, CT, USA
Martin Bellerose Dominican University College, Montreal, QC, Canada
Christopher Craig Brittain Trinity College in the University of Toronto,
Toronto School of Theology, Toronto, ON, Canada
Roberto Catalano Centre for Interreligious Dialogue, Focolare
Movement, Rocca di Papa, Rome, Italy
Darren J. Dias University of St. Michael’s College in the University of
Toronto, Toronto School of Theology, Toronto, ON, Canada
Luc Forestier Theologicum, Catholic University of Paris, Paris, France
Stan Chu Ilo DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA
Dale T. Irvin New School of Biblical Theology, Orlando, FL, USA
Julius-Kei Kato King’s University College at Western University,
London, ON, Canada
Simon C. Kim University of Holy Cross, New Orleans, LA, USA
Tihomir Lazić Newbold College, Binfield, UK
xix
xx CONTRIBUTORS
Patricia Madigan Dominican Centre for Interfaith Ministry, Education

and Research, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez Iberoamericana University, Mexico City,
Mexico
Valentina Napolitano University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Idara Otu National Missionary Seminary, Abuja, FCT, Nigeria
Craig A. Phillips Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, VA, USA
Thomas E. Reynolds Emmanuel College, Victoria University in the
University of Toronto, Toronto School of Theology, Toronto, ON, Canada
Jaroslav Z. Skira Regis College in the University of Toronto, Toronto
School of Theology, Toronto, ON, Canada
Theodora J. M. (Dorris) van Gaal Radboud University, Nijmegen, The
Netherlands
Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA
Notre Dame of Maryland University, Baltimore, MD, USA
Kathrin Winkler Lutheran University of Nuremberg, Nuremberg,
Germany
Mary Beth Yount Neumann University, Aston, PA, USA
PART I
Perspectives on Hospitality
CHAPTER 1
The Church, Migration and Global

(In)Difference: They End in the City
Dale T. Irvin
Two observations inform this chapter from the outset.1 The first is that we
cannot understand migration as a global phenomenon without taking into
account the role that cities play in the migration process. The second is
that we do not understand cities if we do not take into account their
sacred nature. Not surprisingly, given his massive scholarship and keen
analytical work, Lewis Mumford offered both insights nearly seven decades
ago in his monumental book, The City in History: Its Origins, Its
Transformations and Its Prospects.2 In the opening pages of the book
Mumford made the simple observation: “Human life swings between two
1
I want to thank the many participants in the Toronto conference “The Church and
Migration: Global (In)Difference?” (June 2018) of the Ecclesiological Investigations
Network who raised questions or offered further comments on this chapter when it was
presented in the form of a plenary paper. This chapter has benefitted greatly from their sug-
gestions and insights.
2
Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations and Its Prospects
(San Diego: Harcourt, 1961).
D. T. Irvin (*)
New School of Biblical Theology, Orlando, FL, USA
© The Author(s) 2021 3

D. J. Dias et al. (eds.), The Church, Migration, and Global
(In)Difference, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious
Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54226-9_1
4 D. T. IRVIN
poles: movement and settlement.”3 Settlement, he went on to argue, has

found preeminent expression in human history in the form of cities. At the
end of the book Mumford wrote, “The city first took form as the home of
a god: a place where eternal values were represented and divine possibili-
ties revealed. Though the symbols have changed the realities behind them
remain.”4 Both of these observations need to be unpacked.
1 Migration and Cities

As movement and settlement, migration and cities are deeply intertwined
historical experiences. Cities are by their very nature connected with
migration. This has been so from their inception some 10,000 years ago.
Cities are not stable human communities. They are dynamic realities
which serve as both passageways and destination points for migration.5
The populations of cities throughout history do not increase or decrease
on the basis of biological factors, such as reproduction or disease alone.
Far more important to the life of cities is migration in all of its various
manifestations.
The most basic form of migration by which cities have grown over the
centuries has been rural to urban. It is important to note here that socio-
logically, in terms of both material economy and cultural identity, the rural
has always been very much a function of the urban. Large cities, and the
empires they eventually came to rule or dominate, could not sustain them-
selves without sufficient agricultural goods that were and still are the main
product of the rural economy.6 As a number of urban theorists are now
recognizing, human agricultural production actually followed the origins
of the city; it did not precede it. Edward J. Soja, for instance, drawing
upon archaeological studies of the first cities in the Levant and especially
Jericho and Çatal Hüyük, argues that large-scale agriculture was
necessitated by the agglomeration and synekism (or synoecism, from
synoikismos in Greek, the coming together of several settlements under
3
Ibid., 5.
4
Ibid., 575.
5
See Dale T. Irvin, “Migration and Cities: Theological Reflections,” in Contemporary
Issues of Migration and Theology, eds. Elaine Padilla and Peter C. Phan (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013), 73–93.
6
The manner in which cities and empires depend upon a sustainable agricultural base is a
key argument in Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (New
York: Anchor, 2014).
1 THE CHURCH, MIGRATION AND GLOBAL (IN)DIFFERENCE: THEY END… 5
single form of governance) that occurred with the first urban formations.7
Reversing decades of urban theory regarding the relationship of cities to
agriculture, Soja argues that cities came first. The rural is, in fact, a func-
tion of the urban. Rural society continues still to be organized and admin-
istered to meet the needs of the city.
Cities came first and led to the agricultural revolution of farming,
domesticated livestock and herding. But the rural never functioned only as
the range for sheep and cattle or the breadbasket for the city. It also pro-
vided the raw materials of human labour that were needed for cities to
grow. As human technological knowledge increased and accumulated, and
food production became more efficient, the number of rural residents
required to work the land decreased. Throughout the centuries the sur-
plus labour from rural areas have migrated to cities; it still does today.
Rural to urban migration has been the most important factor in the growth
of a number of cities around the globe, such as Shanghai or Mumbai, over
the past several decades. The population of greater Mumbai has grown
from 11 million in 1991 to over 22 million today. That averages out to an
increase of approximately 66,000 people a year or 1800 people a day
migrating to live in this one city in India. Most of them come from nearby
rural areas.
The rural to urban migration has been the most important source of
urban growth through the centuries, but it is not the only form of migra-
tion that has impacted cities. Cities have also always been both passage-
ways and destination points for those traveling from a distance, across
boundaries of culture and geography, and quite often already urban dwell-
ers from another region of the world. These are the merchants who
through the centuries have been migrating great distances in order to buy
and sell. Merchants are fundamentally urban figures, persons who are
deeply immersed in an urban experience. The markets that function to
generate their wealth are likewise urban phenomena. Merchants and trad-
ers might venture far from cities into wilderness areas to obtain goods for
sale, traversing long expanses of open countryside, wilderness, or seas, but
their destination points are urban markets, the bigger the better, which
contain the points of contact in which their mercantile activity takes place.
Before the modern era, throughout the world merchants often created
immigrant communities in cities where they conducted trade. These
7
Edward J. Soja, Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (Malden, MA:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2000), 19–51; on “synekism,” 13.
6 D. T. IRVIN
communities of people from other cultures and regions were vital cultural
transition stations fostering material and intellectual commerce in urban
contexts. Commercial activity remains a major factor fostering migration
in our global economy.
Kings and their supporting armies are also ancient urban figures and
phenomena. Kings ruled over cities in the ancient world as divine figures,
as either priests or gods. The sacrificial rituals of violence that they per-
formed inside the city correlated with the sacrificial rituals of violence
practiced outside their cities, namely, going to war. Both arenas were the-
atres for ritual performance, the one (sacrifice) inside the city in a theatre
that was controlled while the other (warfare) outside the city in a theatre
that could not always be controlled.8 Cities in this regard were places of
deep ambiguity, places where beauty was amplified but also places that
fostered and even promoted violence and death.9 The ancient connections
made by violence between cities and migration continue today.
Armies have always been a particular category of migrants whose move-
ments have led to both increases as well as significant decreases in urban
populations over the centuries. Sometimes soldiers come to stay, but more
often they are a destructive force. In our contemporary world, warfare
continues to be a major cause of migration. Soldiers might for the most be
considered temporary migrants today, but their impact on cities is often
significant. The US military garrison located in the downtown Yongsan
district might have a negligible overall impact on the life of the city of
Seoul, South Korea, today, but the exact opposite is true for the
International Zone (or Green Zone) in Baghdad.10 An even greater result
of military activities and warfare is the large numbers of refugees who are
seeking to escape war zones, or the numbers of displaced civilians and
combatants in places like Syria or Libya. The Brookings Institute in
Washington, DC, with research provided by the Copenhagen Business
8
See David Carrasco, City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in
Civilization (Boston: Beacon, 1999), 148–149. Carrasco in turns cites Jonathan Z. Smith,
“The Bare Facts of Ritual,” History of Religions 20/1–2 (1980): 112–127 for the “con-
trolled/uncontrolled” parallel (259, n.16).
9
Mumford argues against “the assumptions of either a biologically inherited belligerence
or an ‘original sin’ as the sufficient operative cause in producing the complex historic institu-
tion of war.” Instead he suggests that war and domination “were engrained in the original
structure of the ancient city” (43–44).
10
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in The Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (New
York: Vintage, 2007).
School, has explored this issue in depth through a series of consultations

titled “Cities and Refugees: The European Response.” One of the out-
comes of the project has been to focus attention on the fact that cities are
at the “vanguard” of the current refugee crisis in Europe, challenging city
governments and local networks alike “in resettlement and long-term eco-
nomic and social integration.”11
Not all refugees make it into existing cities. Many end up in refugee
camps. But such camps do not severe the connection between refugee
migrants and the urban. Quite the contrary is true in fact. Researchers
from the Institute of Contemporary Urbanism at the Eidgenössische
Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zürich, studying refugee camps that
have been in existence in Algeria for thirty-five years, have demonstrated
that aspects of urban life soon emerge within such camps, with a full urban
vocabulary and eventually a full urban order.12 Kilian Kleinschmidt, who
worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for
twenty-five years before starting his own international consulting firm,
asserts outright that “we need to look at refugee camps as urban spaces.”13
Refugee camps “are the cities of tomorrow” says Kleinschmidt.14
Kleinschmidt’s observations point towards the complex nature of
urbanization. Through history cities have assumed a variety of forms.
Most urban theorists agree with Henri Lefebvre’s broad historical outlines
of the political city, or capital, and its surrounding supporting cities in the
ancient world, which then gave way to commercial cities in the early mod-
ern period driven by the expanding energies of capitalism and colonialism.
Commercial cities in turn were succeeded by industrial cities, post-
industrial and then global cities.15 Such typology barely begins to do jus-
tice to the fuller complexity of the “dense, internally variegated webs” of
11
https://www.brookings.edu/series/cities-and-refugees-the-european-response,
accessed 27 May 2018.
12
Manuel Herz, ed., From Camp to City: Refugee Camps of the Western Sahara (Zurich:
Lars Müller, 2012).
13
In an interview with Ann Solana, “We Need to Look at Refugee Camps as Urban
Spaces,” Smart.City_Lab (27 February 2019), https://www.smartcitylab.com/blog/inclu-
sive-sharing/we-need-to-look-at-refugee-camps-as-urban-spaces-2, accessed 10 Dec. 2019.
14
Talia Radford, “Refugee Camps Are the ‘Cities of Tomorrow’, Says Humanitarian-aid
Expert,” De Zeen (23 Nov. 2015), https://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/23/refugee-
camps-cities-of-tomorrow-killian-kleinschmidt-interview-humanitarian-aid-expert, accessed
26 May 2018.
15
Henri Lefebvre, La Révolution urbaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1970); idem, The Urban
Revolution, trans. by Robert Bononno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2003).
8 D. T. IRVIN
urban realities and urbanization of course.16 Edward Soja, for instance,

offers six different discourses or analytical frameworks for understanding
the complexities of contemporary urban spaces and experiences, provoca-
tively titled “Flexcity,” “Cosmopolis,” “Exopolis,” “Metropolarities,”
“Carceral Archipelagos” and “Simcities.”17
When we turn from the theoretical discussions to cities in general, we
are met with an astounding contemporary reality. Some 250 million peo-
ple representing around 3% of the world’s current population are migrants
who now reside outside the borders of their land of natal affiliation. But in
2016 more than half of the world’s population (54.5%) lived in major
metropolitan regions. By 2050 this number is expected to rise to 70%.
According to the Population Division of the Department of Economic
and Social Affairs of the United Nations, there are now over 1000 cities
on the face of the earth with a population of 500,000 or more.18 There are
now thirty-one megacities (or greater metropolitan regions often span-
ning several discrete cities) with populations of 10 million located in five
continents (Asia, Africa, Europe, South America and North America). Six
of these megacities are located in China. The largest megacity—more than
38 million people—is Greater Tokyo (or the National Capital Region) in
Japan, which includes the cities of Tokyo, Chiba, Kawasaki, Sagamihara,
Saitama and Yokohama. In North America, two metropolitan regions are
on the United Nations’ list of top megacities, with 23 million inhabitants
in the greater New York metropolitan region (encompassing New York
and the cities of northern New Jersey as far as Newark) and more than 12
million in the conurban complex encompassing Los Angeles, Long Beach
and Santa Ana.19 Both in terms of percentage and numbers, the reality of
contemporary global urbanization commands our attention alongside the
contemporary global phenomenon of migration. If we are being
16
Defining urbanization, Allen J. Scott and Michael Storper, “The Nature of Cities: The
Scope and Limits of Urban Theory,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
38/4 (2014) 10 writes: “the urbanization process resides in the twofold status of cities as
clusters of productive activity and human life that then unfold into dense, internally varie-
gated webs of interacting land uses, locations and allied institutional/political arrangements.”
17
Soja, Postmetropolis, Part II, 145–348.
18
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, The
World’s Cities in 2016 – Data Booklet (Geneva: United Nations, 2016), ii.
19
Ibid., iv.
compelled by current events to reflect upon migration, we must also be

reflecting on cities and urbanization.20
2 Cities and the Sacred

The close relationship between migration and cities is the first observation
to be made here. The second concerns the close relationship between cit-
ies and the sacred. Again, Mumford provides some initial guidance. His
observation quoted at the opening of this chapter, that the “city first took
form as the home of a god,” has been echoed by a number of urban theo-
rists who have made the connection between cities and gods or, on a more
substantial level, between cities and the sacred.21 Cities from their incep-
tion in human history have been characterized by their monuments and
buildings meant to magnify both power and desire by transposing them
into transcendent or eternal forms. Eric E. Lampard has focused the argu-
ment more specifically on temples being at the heart of the origins of the
city.22 Paul Wheatley argued more broadly from the Asian context for
20
A note regarding terminology of “urban” and “city” is in order. The Latin word urbs,
from which the English word “urban” derives, referred to a spatial entity while the Latin
word civitas, from which the English words “city,” “citizen,” “civil” and “civic” derive,
referred to what went on among residents. The distinction was similar to that of astu and
polis in Greek. In contemporary English the term “urban” tends to be used as an adjective
while “city” tends to refer to the substantive spatial entity. Spanish makes a similar distinction
between “urbano” and “ciudad.” Nineteenth-century sociologists introduced the term
“urbanization” to name the social process of agglomeration and the accompanying process
of differentiation that resulted in the formation of villages, towns, cities and eventually
megalopolises.
21
Mumford, The City in History, 575. Earlier in the book (33) he wrote, “To interpret
what happened in the city, one must deal equally with technics, politics, and religion, above
all with the religious side of the transformation. If at the beginning all these aspects of life
were inseparably mingled, it was religion that took precedence and claimed primacy, proba-
bly because unconscious imagery and subjective projections dominated every aspect of real-
ity, allowing nature to become visible only in so far as it could be worked into the tissue of
desire and dream. Surviving monuments and records show that this general magnification of
power was accompanied by equally exorbitant images, issuing from the unconscious, trans-
posed into the ‘eternal’ forms of art.”
22
Eric E. Lampard, “Historical Aspects of Urbanization,” in The Study of Urbanization,
eds. Philip M. Houser and Leo F. Schnore (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1965), 535
wrote: “The hub of the emerging [urban] order was evidently the ‘temple city.’ At some
point, denizens of the temple came to mediate men’s secular relations with the physical and
social environment as well as their transcendental involvements in the cosmos. But whereas
the association of nature and cosmos long antedated the first city-states, the validation of a
10 D. T. IRVIN
understanding cities not just as providing homes for gods, but for carrying
out ceremonial duties of a cosmic nature.23 Davíd Carrasco found those
cosmic rituals to be preeminently human sacrifice in the cities of the Aztecs
in Meso-America.24 Others have demonstrated the connections between
the aspirations of religious life and the processes of urbanization that con-
tinue through our era.25 Fifty years ago Harvey Cox famously tried to link
secularization with urbanization.26 Two decades later he provided his own
corrective in the form of a book on the resurgence of religion in the post-
modern urban context.27
In Postmetropolis, Soja recognizes the close relationship between the
emergence of cities and the fundamental human tendency towards religi-
osity. He argues that cities were invented by human beings out of the
desire or need to build monuments and temples to honour gods. They
were, and continue to be, expressions of a human propensity to amass,
social-territorial order by sacral authority would have marked a significant step towards a
more exclusive definition of the population and its boundaries and hence towards closure of
the system. The identification of ethos and order would have heightened the degree of work-
ing cohesion among the population and would have contributed to a necessary sense of
‘community’ or psychological differentiation from others. That the realization and appro-
priation of the ‘surplus’ were functions that accrued to the priestcraft discloses the extent to
which the temple was, already in protoliterate times, the cynosure of deferential feeling and
itself the source of true condescension. That the ramification of social controls was centred
in the temple may also account for the rapid growth and diversification of the ceremonial
node, although the exact moment and precise occasion for this unfolding have not yet been
determined.”
23
Paul Wheatley, The Pivot of the Four Quarters: A Preliminary Enquiry into the Origins
and Character of the Ancient Chinese City (Chicago: Aldine, 1971), 302.
24
Carrasco, City of Sacrifice.
25
I take the term “aspiration” to describe religion in the city from Peter van der Veer, ed.,
Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First
Century (Berkeley: University of California, 2015). For further work on religion and the
contemporary city, see Irene Becci, Marian Burchardt and José Casanova, eds., Topographies
of Faith: Religion in Urban Spaces (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Richard Cimino, Nadia A. Mian and
Weishan Huang, eds., Ecologies of Faith in New York City: The Evolution of Religious
Institutions (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2013); Jacob Olupona, City of 201 Gods: Ilé-
Ifè in Time, Space and the Imagination (Berkeley: University of California, 2011).
26
Harvey Cox, The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective
(New York: Macmillan, 1965).
27
Harvey Cox, Religion in the Secular City: Toward a Postmodern Theology (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1984). See also Pieter Dronkers, “The Lingering Smell of Incense:
Exploring Post-secular Public Space,” in The Sacred in the City, eds. Liliana Gómez and
Walter Van Heerck (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), 52–69.
organize and administer social, intellectual and material resources at a

scale that transcends the possibilities of any one tribe, settlement or village
alone. The purpose was to acknowledge, or honour, forces and powers
that were beyond any one tribe, settlement or village alone. Drawing upon
archaeological studies of the first cities in the Levant and especially Jericho
and Çatal Hüyük, Soja argues that large-scale agriculture was necessitated
by the agglomeration and synekism (the coming together of several settle-
ments under single form of governance)28 that occurred with the first
urban formations. This in turn meant there were more human beings liv-
ing in close proximity than previous methods of food production could
sustain. Cities in fact spurred the development of agriculture among our
ancestors, Soja argues. As he is often quoted, “cities came first.”29
One of Soja’s key insights is to challenge the typical rural to urban
ordering of human origins. The other is to challenge any notion of the
urban being opposed to the natural world. Cities are geographical entities
located on particular topographies and engaging the existing landscapes of
rivers, mountains, deserts, seacoasts and so on. The urbanization process
is one of social production that Soja calls a “second nature.”30 The agglom-
eration and synekism that gave rise to cities in ancient times as well as
today seek to amplify and extend this second nature to cosmic propor-
tions. Soja writes:
From the very start, then urban space was designed and produced as a self-
conscious expression of a local and territorial culture, a materialized “sym-
bolic zone,” to use Iain Chamber’s term, in which the real and imagined
commingled to comprehend, define, and ceremonialize a much-enlarged
scale of social relations and community, the beginning of urbanism as a way
of life, to use that famous phrase of the Chicago School of urban studies
founded 10,000 years later.31
Another way of saying this is that Ludwig Feuerbach was wrong. Human
beings do not just project their “consciousness of the infinite” upon the
sun, the moon and the stars.32 We pour it into buildings, streets and
28
Soja, Postmetropolis,13.
29
Ibid., 19–51.
30
Ibid., 42.
31
Ibid., 34, emphasis original.
32
Ludwig Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (Mineola: Dover, 2008;
orig. pub. 1881), 6.
12 D. T. IRVIN
onuments in the cities that we construct.33 In specifically Christian theo-

m
logical terms, the imago dei that humanity bears is also in effect an
imago urbis.
Liliana Gómez and Walter Van Herck pick up on this theme in their
edited volume of essays titled The Sacred in the City. They intentionally
opt for the language of “sacred” over “religion.” The category of “reli-
gion,” they argue, has institutional connotations that identify it with spe-
cific structures but do allow one to see the broader picture. The sacred,
they argue, “as a category is more connected to an embodied attachment
to symbols, buildings, monuments and other cultural manifestations… .
The city has a constitutive effect on our relation with the sacred and inter-
acts with the human search for meaning in life and with the sacred in all its
many guises.”34
Gómez and Van Herck are right. The sacred in the city always comes in
many guises because the city, by the very logic of synekism that undergirds
it, is a place of diversity. “[I]t is in the city that different religions and
quests for meaning confront one another, ignore one another, communi-
cate with one another and compete with each other.”35 As cities have
become more complex through human history, the sacred has become
more complex. Mumford recognized this in his own way when he wrote,
“The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into
culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction
into social creativity.”36 The chief function of the city, in other words, is to
transform the material into the spiritual. Mumford concluded:
The final mission of the city is to further [humanity’s] conscious participa-

tion in the cosmic and historic process. Through its own complex and
enduring structure, the city vastly augment’s [humanity’s] ability to inter-
pret these processes and take an active, formative part in them, so that every
phase of the drama it stages shall have, to the highest degree possible, the
illumination of consciousness, the stamp of purpose, the colour of love.
That magnification of all the dimensions of life, through emotional com-
munion, rational communication, technological mastery, and above all,
33
See Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization (New
York: W.W. Norton, 1994).
34
Gómez and Van Heerck, “Framing the Sacred in the City,” 3.
35
Ibid., 4.
36
Mumford, The City in History, 571.
ramatic representation, has been the supreme office of the city in history.
d
And it remains the chief reason for the city’s continued existence.37
Richard Sennett echoes this broader observation regarding cities:
A city isn’t just a place to live, to shop, to go out and have kids play. It’s a
place that implicates how one derives one’s ethics, how one develops a sense
of justice, how one learns to talk with and learn from people who are unlike
oneself, which is how a human being becomes human.38
Cities are spaces of freedom. As Saskia Sassen argues, they are places where
those lacking social power are nevertheless able to create a history and
culture of their own, making their apparent powerlessness more complex.
Sassen continues:
A city is a complex but incomplete system… . In this mix of complexity and

incompleteness lies the possibility for those without power to assert “we are
here” and “this is also our city.” Or, as the legendary statement by the fight-
ing poor in Latin American cities puts it, “Estamos presentes”: we are present,
we are not asking for money, we are just letting you know that this is also
our city.39
This is not to argue that cities are uniformly or universally good or

pleasant. One has only to look at the poverty and inequalities that breed
within then.40 They are not only places of pure joy and freedom, but also
places of great suffering and oppression. Because they are living realities,
cities are deeply ambiguous.41 They amplify the imago dei in all of its
37
Ibid., 576.
38
Richard Sennett, “The Civitas of Seeing,” Places 5/4 (1989): 84.
39
Saskia Sassen, “Who Owns Our Cities – And Why This Urban Takeover Should Concern
Us All,” The Guardian (24 Nov. 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/
nov/24/who-owns-our-cities-and-why-this-urban-takeover-should-concern-us-all, accessed
21 Dec. 2017.
40
See Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (New York and London: Verso, 2006).
41
Here I draw upon Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3: Life in the Spirit and the
Kingdom of God (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1963), 32, who writes: “Every life process
has the ambiguity that the positive and negative elements are mixed in such a way that a defi-
nite separation of the negative from the positive is impossible: life at every moment is
ambiguous.”
14 D. T. IRVIN
ambiguities.42 They are places of great terror as well as great beauty. By

their very logic they intensify the negative tendencies of human experience
towards inequalities in wealth and power alongside the positive tendencies
towards equality and compassion. They promote hierarchy and patriarchy,
but they have a determinedly democratizing effect and are spaces for gen-
der differences to emerge. They foster violence and freedom, side by side.
Cities are places that generate and accelerate the creation of new forms, of
creativity itself. But they can also be places of destruction. They reach
beyond to expand all dimensions of human experience in cosmic direc-
tions both heavenly and otherwise.43
3 The City and Christian Theology

According to the Scots Confession of 1560, the church began with Adam
and Eve.44 So too do both urban theology and the theology of migration.
The garden that is described in Genesis 1 is an ancient urban form. Gardens
were built within or just outside and adjacent to the walls of cities in
Mesopotamia and other regions of the ancient world, for food production
as well as for pleasure. The ancient Persian term for such a place was pairi-
daeza, which came into Greek, Latin and other Western languages directly
as “paradise.” Genesis 3:8 tells us that after eating the fruit of the forbid-
den tree, the human couple heard the sound of God walking in the garden
at the time of the evening breeze. One did not walk in a garden in the
evening to till the soil or otherwise engage in agricultural work. One
walked in the garden at the evening breeze to enjoy the pleasure of its
42
Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper and Row, 1957; repub. New York:
Perennial Classics, 2001), 16–17 writes: “The mysterious character of the holy produces an
ambiguity in man’s ways of experiencing it. The holy can appear as destructive and creative.
... One can call this ambiguity divine-demonic, whereby the divine is characterized by the
victory of the creative over the destructive power of the holy, and the demonic is character-
ized by the victory of the destructive over the creative possibility of the holy.”
43
See Edward D. Banfield, Unheavenly City: The Nature and the Future of Our Urban
Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1979); and idem, The Unheavenly City Revisited
(Prospect Heights: Waveland, 1990).
44
“The Scots Confession,” Chapter V, “The Continuance, Increase and Preservation of
the Kirk,” in The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Part I, Book of Confessions
(Louisville: Office of the General Assembly, 2014), 12 states, “We most surely believe that
God preserved, instructed, multiplied, honoured, adorned and called from death to life his
Kirk in all ages since Adam until the coming of Christ Jesus in the flesh.”
beauty. Strolling through the park is an ancient urban practice. It is what

God was doing after a hard day of work.
The story goes on to narrate Adam and Eve being forced to migrate
from their natal garden called Eden because of their disobedience to God.
Their first-born son, Cain, after killing his younger brother, Abel, was sent
further down the path of migration. Genesis 4:16 says Cain departed from
the presence of the Lord and dwelt or stayed (“sat down” is one meaning
of the Hebrew word yashab) in the land of Nod. “Nod” in Hebrew means
“Wandering.” But then the next verse (4:17) tells us that Cain and his wife
(Genesis does not give us her name) had a son, whom they named Enoch.
“He” (the text does not make clear if it is Cain or Enoch) built a city that
he named Enoch. The wandering of Cain and his wife came to an end in
the city of Enoch.45
This pattern continues throughout the biblical text. Abraham was an
urban figure from the city of Ur who was called by God to migrate to
Canaan. He was a merchant who headed up a household of several hun-
dred persons in his service or employment. Genesis 13:2 tells us that he
“was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold” (NRSV). He lived out-
side the immediate city of Hebron in order to have sufficient land on
which to raise his livestock, but like any rancher, the animals were prod-
ucts that he eventually sold to those who lived in nearby cities. He inter-
acted with the leadership of these cities—kings—as an equal, to the point
of joining one of their coalitions, going to war, proving himself to be a
capable strategist and being blessed by king Melchizedek of the city of
Salem in Genesis 14. Abraham’s negotiation with his three visitors over
the fate of Sodom in Genesis 18:22–33 was that of a merchant winnowing
down a price to be paid for some goods or services.
Moses came of age in urban Egypt, in the household of Pharaoh. After
he killed an Egyptian, he fled and became a refugee in Midian. He eventu-
ally returned to Egypt to lead his people in the Exodus. These Israelites,
according to the story, spent forty years living as migrants wandering in
the wilderness, but the wilderness through which they wandered—in what
45
The Hebrew word that is used over 1000 times in the First Testament that is translated
as “city” is ’iyr. It is derived from a root meaning “awake” and literally means a place where
there is a watch that stays awake through the night. The term highlights the fortified nature
of the city, with walls, gates, watch towers and guards. But it also carries the sense of a place
where someone is always awake. One thinks of the line in Frank Sinatra’s song recorded in
1980, “New York, New York”: “I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps” (lyrics Fred
Ebb, copyright United Artists, 1977).
16 D. T. IRVIN
are known today as the Sinai Peninsula, the Negev desert and western
Jordan—was politically on the edge of Egypt’s imperial realm and the
Canaanite cities that Egypt dominated.46 The land in which they eventu-
ally settled was defined by its urban configurations.
One cannot understand Jesus and his ministry without reference to the
city. The lingering historical debate about whether or not Jesus was a
“peasant,” or an agricultural worker of lower social class, misses the point
that such agricultural workers in the first century, as much as in the twenty-
first century, were functions of urban reality.47 The majority of the food
and other materials that rural workers produced, and still produce, was
and is primarily appropriated for sustaining urban populations.
Jesus was not an agricultural worker or day-labourer (the latter being
those who lived in the towns and cities and went out to work in fields by
day). From the depictions of him in the pages of the New Testament it
appears that he was an artisan in class location, which means he was an
urban figure. The biblical account says he grew up in a village that was part
of a larger conurbation configuration in Galilee. Nazareth was a suburb of
the expanding multi-ethnic city of Sepphoris. Both were only 30 km from
Tiberias, which Herod Antipas made his capital. As he began his itinerant
ministry, Jesus made another small city in Galilee, Capernaum, the centre
of his activities. His followers call him “rabbi,” or teacher, a term associ-
ated with educational institutions and practices that took place in urban
contexts. His itinerancy or wandering through the Galilean region, into
the Decapolis (region of Ten Cities), and as far north as the city of Tyre (if
Mark 7 is to be trusted), was a strategy that kept any one village, town or
city in the region from being able to claim him as its own and benefit eco-
nomically from the attraction of his miraculous healings.48 All along his
46
See Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated
Israel, 1250–1050 B.C.E. (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1979), 389–409.
47
I am thinking here of Douglas E. Oakman, Jesus and the Peasants (Eugene: Cascade,
2008) and the earlier volume by John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a
Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: HarperOne, 1993). Over against such works I
find the edited volume by Amy-Jill Levine, Dale Allison and John Dominic Crossan, The
Historical Jesus in Context (Princeton: Princeton University, 2006) to provide a much more
complex reading of the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth and his multiple urban
connections.
48
John Dominc Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 265–302 argues that Jesus’ itinerancy was a
strategy to keep any particular village or group of followers from becoming financially
enriched by his healing ministry. I find this argument compelling, although obviously I do
attention was always on Jerusalem, the city of pilgrims and prophets, and
to the temple that was at the centre of its urban economy.
Cities figure prominently in the spread of the Christian message in the
letters of the New Testament.49 One encounters major urban centres such
as Damascus, Antioch, Corinth and Rome. Extra-biblical sources point to
the importance of cities, such as Edessa, as well in early urban centres in
which Christian communities took shape and from which the movement
spread further along trade routes. Early Christian community formations
were private or voluntary associations of people from various backgrounds
who gathered in homes located in urban apartment buildings (the insula
of the Greco-Roman world).50
The Christian Bible even ends in a city, a New Jerusalem, where there
will be no temple, and by implication no church, for the sacred will infuse
the entire city. Here the wandering finds its homecoming. Migration con-
tinues in the New Jerusalem, but it takes shape as liturgy, pilgrimage and
procession. According to Revelation 21:25–26, “Its gates will never be
shut by day – and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the
glory and the honour of the nations.” The New Jerusalem is envisioned as
being a destination point for immigrants—for migration. It will have open
gates (urban entry points or border crossings), however. Those who con-
tinue to migrate to this city will be people of other nationalities or ethnic-
ities—ethnos in Greek—who will be bringing with them the riches of their
diverse ethnicities that will add to the overall glory of this extraordinary
urban experience.
These originating biblical reflections continued to echo through the
ages in Christian history and theology. One thinks of the Alexandrians and
Antiochenes in the early centuries; of Augustine’s The City of God Against
the Pagans (“pagan” referred to someone who lived in the countryside).
not agree with calling Jesus a “peasant” and I find Crossan’s methodology of looking at
contemporary twentieth-century North African herders as a model for understanding first-
century Palestinian culture to be deeply flawed.
49
See Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul
(New Haven: Yale University, 1983; 2nd ed. 2003); John H. Elliott, A Home for the Homeless:
A Social-Scientific Criticism of 1 Peter, Its Situation and Strategy (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1997; reprint Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2005); and Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity:
How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the
Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997).
50
See Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian
Writings (New York: Oxford University, 1997), esp. 241–350.
18 D. T. IRVIN
The impact of John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople and other

formidable figures from that great city of Byzantium continues to shape
Christian identity globally.51 For many centuries churches and their the-
ologies in Asia were bound up with the activities of merchants in South
India, Central Asia and China.52 They organized their lives around mar-
ketplaces located in cities, connecting Christianity in Asia in a unique con-
figuration that continues today. What is now northern Europe, on the
other hand, had few cities through the first eight centuries of the common
era. The Christianization of the Germanic peoples in northern Europe was
a major factor in the eventual development of cities in Europe after
1000 C.E.53
That growth was largely fuelled at first by the rural to urban migration.
It was a migration largely driven by material economic factors.
Developments in agriculture allowed surplus labour to move to the cities,
where these former rural residents entered guilds, learned skills and joined
the ranks of artisans and merchants. A new middle class emerged, called
Bürger in German and bourgeoisie in French—both terms derived from
burg, originally a fort but then a city. The growth of guilds transformed
these cities as councils emerged from among their ranks to challenge kings,
dukes and princes for governance and ownership of land. Commerce took
off, and with it the development of manufacturing, banking, education,
the arts and other key urban functions. Another form of migration that
was spiritual in nature also expanded significantly through this same period
in Western European history, and it too had an impact on cities. Pilgrimage
shifted from local shrines and practices of wandering (peregrinatio) to
major cities, like Rome with specific destination points identified
within them.54
51
I draw here upon the outstanding work of John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Early
Centuries, Vol. 1 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989); Byzantium: The Apogee, Vol. 2 (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992); and Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, Vol. 3 (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1995). Byzantium was not a territorial empire; it was a city.
52
The most accessible narrative history of Christianity in Asia remains Samuel Hugh
Moffett, History of Christianity in Asia, Vol. 1: Beginnings to 1500 (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1998
ed.) and A History of Christianity in Asia, Vol. 2: 1500–1900 (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2005).
53
See Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity
(Berkeley: University of California, 1999); and James C. Russell, The Germanization of Early
Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation (New York:
Oxford University, 1996).
54
See Dale T. Irvin, “Theology, Migration, and the Homecoming,” in Theology of
Migration in the Abrahamic Religions, eds. Elaine Padilla and Peter Phan (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 7–25.
The last five hundred years have seen the exponential expansion of cities
around the globe, culminating in the near-total urbanization of our planet.
The expanding modern, colonial, industrial, post-industrial, post-modern,
post-colonial, neo-liberal and, now, global cities have not erased earlier
patterns and practices. Today’s skyscrapers tower over the built environ-
ments of Antioch, Chang’an, Baghdad, Timbuktu or Tenochtitlan, but
the basic functions of urban life carried out in homes and on the streets; in
marketplaces, libraries, community or civic centres and halls of govern-
ment; and, of course, in the parks remain constant. The fundamental
grammar of the city remains the same.
4 Cities and (In)Difference

The argument of this chapter so far has been built upon two primary
observations that have served as guiding axioms: first, that migration and
cities are closely connected and, second, that cities are places where the
sacred takes material form. A brief, sweeping survey of the Christian bibli-
cal tradition and a quick look at the global Christian experience through
history pointed towards the manner in which these two affirmations have
continuously been intertwined in world Christianity. A fuller discussion of
cities in the long history of world Christianity is beyond the scope of this
chapter. Suffice it to say that cities and migration are both central themes
in Christian history and Christian faith.
But what does all this mean in light of the massive indifference that
migrants are facing throughout the world today, especially (but not only)
in cities of the northern hemisphere? Here is the final point to be made
regarding migration, cities and the sacred. Cities are not just destination
points for migrants (including cities of refugees as noted above). By their
very logic they offer ways for migrants to find a home (dwelling), espe-
cially migrants from different ethnicities or national identities. One of the
most important keys to overcoming the current global indifference to
migrants is found deep within the grammar of the city. Richard Sennett
names this succinctly:
The city brings together people who are different, it intensifies the complex-
ity of social life, it presents people to each other as strangers. All these aspects
20 D. T. IRVIN
of urban experience – difference, complexity, strangeness – afford resistance

to domination.55
Along similar lines Allen J. Scott and Michael Storper argue that “the
urbanization process resides in the twofold status of cities as clusters of
productive activity and human life that then unfold into dense, internally
variegated webs of interacting land uses, locations and allied institutional/
political arrangements.”56 It is the “internally variegated” concept here
that catches my attention. A key element to the process of urbanization,
and a key concept in any theoretical exploration of cities, is the process of
differentiation. Cities diversify from within. They encourage diversifica-
tion in terms of skills, classes and orderings of power. They are by their
very logic places where difference emerges. Because they foster difference,
they foster indifference as well.
Cities incorporate difference from their center and not just along their
edges. They intentionally embrace not just difference, but contradictions.
Like letters on a page, they arise as semiotic structures where the play of
differences among objects and empty spaces gives rise to meaning.57 This
means they also foster differences in power that translate into inequalities.
Difference, complexity and strangeness do indeed “afford resistance to
domination” as Sennett notes, but they can also foster indifference and
isolation. Some form of intervention is called for if difference is not to
become indifference.
Here a turn to the work of Georg Simmel can provide helpful insight.
Kurt Iveson points to Simmel’s insightful essay “The Stranger” (1908) to
understand better the dynamics of difference that arise and are sustained
within cities.58 The stranger, argues Simmel, is a figure who combines
wandering and fixation.59 Where the wanderer is one “who comes today
55
Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization (New
York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1994), 25–26.
56
Allen J. Scott and Michael Storper, “The Nature of Cities: The Scope and Limits of
Urban Theory,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38/4 (2014): 10.
57
Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, 77.
58
Kurt Iveson, “Strangers in the Cosmopolis,” in Cosmopolitan Urbanism, eds. Julian
Holloway Binnie, Steve Millington and Craig Young (New York: Routledge, 2006), 70–85.
59
Georg Simmel, “The Stranger,” in Georg Simmel: On Individuality and Social Forms, ed.
Donald Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1971), 143–150.
and goes tomorrow,” the stranger is “the person who comes today and
stays tomorrow.”60 Simmel continues:
The unity of nearness and remoteness involved in every human relation is

organized, in the phenomenon of the stranger, in a way which may be most
briefly formulated by saying that in the relationship to him, distance means
that he, who is close by, is far and strangeness means that he, who also is far,
is actually near.61
For Simmel then, the stranger is one who is simultaneously close and far.
The stranger brings into a group something from outside the life of the
group. The stranger can also emerge as one who is rendered an outsider
by the logic of a group seeking to construct a “neighbourhood.” Iveson
points to the manner in which “enclave consciousness” arises within the
city, becoming manifested in phenomena like gated communities.62
In Simmel’s terms, cities are places where strangers are neighbours and
neighbours are strangers. But what mechanisms do they offer for moving
from stranger to neighbour rather than from neighbour to stranger? Here
another essay by Simmel, “Bridge and Door,” provides helpful insights.63
Simmel turned to these images found in the city as material forms offering
a more basic conceptualization of the world at a fundamental level of
either separating or connecting.64 He argued that separating and connect-
ing are two sides of the same human act or two sides of a process by which
human beings uncover meaning and construct identity.65 Doors, said
Simmel, mark spaces of separation and establish an “us” and “them.”
60
Simmel, “The Stranger,” 143.
61
Ibid., 143.
62
Iveson, “Strangers in the Cosmopolis,” 73. Iveson in turn acknowledges Kian Tajbakhsh,
The Promise of the City: Space, Identity and Politics in Contemporary Social Thought (Berkley:
University of California, 2001), 182 as his source for this discussion.
63
“Brücke und Tür,” Der Tag: Moderne illustrierte Zeitung 683 (15 September 1909):
1–3. The English version used here is “Bridge and Door,” in Simmel on Culture, trans. Mark
Ritter, eds. David Frisby and Mike Featherstone (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997), 170–174.
For my use of this essay by Simmel for interpreting the documents of Vatican II, see Dale
T. Irvin, “Bridges and Doors: An Ecumenical Reading of Vatican II,” in Catholicism Opening
to the World and Other Confessions, eds. Vladimir Latinovic, Gerard Mannion and Jason Welle
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), chp. 13.
64
See Victoria Lee Erickson, “On the Town with Georg Simmel: A Socio-Religious
Understanding of Urban Interaction,” Cross Currents 51/1 (Spring 2001): 21–44.
65
Simmel, “Bridge and Door,” 172.
22 D. T. IRVIN
Bridges on the other hand connect, joining “us” and “us.” Furthermore,
they do not just connect like streets and alleys; they connect in an elegant
manner. Streets can be built from only one direction, but for a bridge to
be built there must be intentionality and commitment from two direc-
tions, on both sides of the riverbank as it were. Simmel noted that doors
display a clear distinction between entering and exiting, but “it makes no
difference in meaning in which direction one crosses a bridge.”66
Both door and bridge offer a form of transcendence, argued Simmel.
The door opens from a closed space to an open space. It is the border of
the physical and metaphysical, the finite and the infinite. It is the place
where the limited opens up to the unlimited. Bridges on the other hand
make the inner relatedness of all things manifest. They submit to the given
world while overcoming it. Transcendence is found in the connecting they
accomplish, which does not erase the original distance or difference that
existed between them. Bridges continue to demonstrate the distance or
difference between social worlds by overcoming it. In short, indifference
ends more clearly on the bridge than it does at the door.
Pontifex in ancient Rome was a high priest. The college these high
priests formed was responsible for ultimate oversight of all sacred rites
performed in the city, both public and private. In his history of ancient
Rome, Gary Forsythe writes:
The title pontifex literally means “bridge builder” [from pons, “bridge” and
fex, “maker”]. Modern scholars are generally in agreement that this priest-
hood took its name from the pontiff’s original responsibility for construct-
ing and maintaining the Pons Sublicius, Rome’s oldest bridge over the
Tiber River.67
By the third century of the common era the Christian community in Rome
was using the term to name the office of leadership in their community.
These Christians were self-consciously taking over the traditional Roman
civic religious terms and categories to identify their own religious convic-
tions. They took their faith to be a public event or public service (lei-
tourgia in Greek, “liturgy”), offering it as an alternative basis for public
policy and civic life. Eventually they became the majority and took control
66
Ibid., 172.
67
Gary Forsythe, A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War
(Berkeley: University of California, 2006), 138.
of the city. Although the title of “pontiff” has tended in Roman Catholic
life to be reserved for the pope, it technically applies to all bishops. I would
extend this to the entire life of the community of faith. If we were to be
informed by the genealogy of the term, religious leaders and religious
people would be bridge builders in the city today, overcoming indifference
towards migrants in their midst.
The word ekklēsia in ancient Athens named the popular assembly of
males who were citizens of the city. It met monthly to consider legislation,
select leadership and exercise overall governance of the city. The word
literally means “called out,” referring to the act of citizens being called out
of their homes to convene in public assembly for public discussions. The
Septuagint used the term to translate the Hebrew word qahal, which
referred to the whole “assembly” or “congregation” of Israel. The Second
Testament used the term to name the assembly of faithful followers of
Christ. While there were other terms such as kyriakon (“of the Lord,” the
term from which “church” derived), ekklēsia was the most prominent.
Using this term points beyond a homogenous community of belief to the
entirety of the city itself. It is pluralistic in nature and identity and embraces
the diversity of faith traditions in the city. Christians are called by their very
identity to work to create more space in the city where other faith tradi-
tions may flourish alongside their own.
Being ekklēsia means looking beyond our own boundaries to the ends
of the earth, reminding us that urbanization and globalization are closely
intertwined, without re-invoking the colonial past in which Christians
sought to exterminate other faith traditions in the name of evangelism and
mission.68 We are not only bound together as strangers and neighbours in
anthropology and sociology in the city. We are bound together in theol-
ogy and by our theology. If we can speak today of Deus Migrator, “God
the migrant,”69 we must also speak of Deus urbis, “God the urbanite.” The
imago dei is also imago urbis. It is the task of Christians—their liturgy—to
manifest this image and to be building bridges for all in the city, not just
for their own kind, to cross. My conclusion is extra urbem nulla salus—
“outside the city there is no salvation.”
68
See Irvin, “Migration and Cities”; and idem, “The Church, the Urban and the Global:
Mission in an Age of Global Cities,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 33/4
(October 2009): 177–82.
69
Peter C. Phan, “Deus Migrator – God the Migrant: Migration of Theology and Theology
of Migration,” Theological Studies 77/4 (2016): 845–868.
CHAPTER 2
Boaz’s Hospitality Towards Ruth: Inspiring

Our Hospitality Towards Latin American
Temporary Farm Workers
Martin Bellerose
Doing contextual theology means gathering experiences of praxis and

understanding them in the light of the Scriptures, of extracting themes
from a specific text that can nourish reflection on ministerial praxis. This
allows one to examine such experiences critically, with the aim of confirm-
ing or changing praxis in building up the kingdom of God. In this chapter,
I will deal with the experience of hospitality with Latin American tempo-
rary farm workers in southern Quebec, reflecting on a Christian attitude
of hospitality towards these workers. The goal of this exercise is to offer
some pathways for pastoral workers, church volunteers, and farm owners
who seek to act in a Christian way with the people who work on their
farms. I will do this by reflecting on the Book of Ruth in the Hebrew
Scriptures to examine characteristics of Boaz’s hospitality towards Ruth
the Moabite, who had come to Judah and worked in a field owned by
M. Bellerose (*)
Dominican University College, Montreal, QC, Canada
© The Author(s) 2021 25

D. J. Dias et al. (eds.), The Church, Migration, and Global
(In)Difference, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious
Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54226-9_2
26 M. BELLEROSE
Boaz. I will first look specifically at Ruth 2:3–17 and develop what one
could call a “Boazian perspective of hospitality.” The goal of this exercise
is to inspire present-day Christian pastoral practices with Latin American
temporary farm workers. Relating such scriptural passages to praxis
requires a knowledge of the context of Quebec, where such expressions of
hospitality might be introduced into the praxis of those who work with
such migrant workers.
Before beginning, I wish to specify that my methodological approach
in this chapter is the result of a work in conjunto.1 Doing theology, and
specifically contextual theology, means thinking in a group in conversation
with people from different backgrounds. These may be people who are
hired by dioceses or a specific Christian denomination to do pastoral work
with the workers, church volunteers, professional theologians as well as
people who do not belong to any Christian denomination but advocate, in
one way or another, for temporary farm workers. A group that carries out
such a contextual work is Table de Réflexion Interdiocésaine de Pastorale
avec les Travailleurs Migrants Agricoles (TRIDPTMA),2 which meets
twice a year to analyse its praxis and social context to conduct a hermeneu-
tical reading of the context in the light of the Scriptures. Although the
texts produced by such groups are usually written by professional
theologians, especially when they claim to have scientific scope, the entire
reflection is done by members of the research group engaged in pastoral
praxis to southern Quebec’s migrant workers. Southern Quebec includes
rural regions around the city of Montreal, such as Montérégie (the south-
ern half) Laval, the Lower Laurentians and Lanaudière (the northern
half). Most of the members of TRIDPTMA are from these areas and
where they apply their pastoral gifts.
1
Carmen Nanko-Fernández says this about pastoral and theology “in conjunto” in the
context of a Hispanic theology in the United States: “As a U.S. Hispanic theologian and
pastoral minister, my praxis – which includes my teaching and scholarship – is influenced by
the necessary interrelationship between teología en conjunto and pastoral en conjunto. The
premise is that theology and pastoral activity are communal endeavors that require mutual
engagement and accountability.” She adds, “From the perspective of en conjunto, pastoral
theology emerges as the primordial contextual theology whose analysis cannot be divorced
from daily lived experience. Or from conscientious involvement in pastoral practice.” In
Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández, “¡Cuidado! The Church Who Cares and Pastoral Hostility,”
New Theology Review 19/1 (February 2006): 31, 32.
2
Table de réflexion interdiocésaine de Pastorale avec les Travailleurs Migrants Agricoles.
2 BOAZ’S HOSPITALITY TOWARDS RUTH: INSPIRING OUR HOSPITALITY… 27
1 The Current Context of Southern Quebec

Migrant Farm Workers
The task of offering hospitality to temporary farm workers must clearly be
very different from hospitality to other kinds of migrants. For temporary
workers, integration into the broader “receiving society” (i.e., Quebec) is
not an issue. Migrant workers do not want to be integrated since they did
not migrate to settle somewhere. They are in Canada to work. Some peo-
ple simplistically say that migrants are in Canada solely for money. This is
a tricky statement because it is based on a misunderstanding of the eco-
nomic gap between the Global North and the Global South. The eco-
nomic gap exists between social classes, not between nationalities. This
myth promotes the belief among some people from the Global North that
they are privileged to have been born in a country where people live well.
Therefore, when Canadians receive people from southern countries, they
receive people with needs. Many farm owners think, and often say, “These
workers are so poor in their country of origin, it doesn’t matter what con-
ditions or wages we offer them. In any case, it is better than what they can
expect in their own country.” On the other hand, what drives the activist
and the church volunteer to advocate on behalf of the workers is a kind of
preferential option for the poor. Too often, this option is charged with a
condescending attitude. Migrants are seen as lacking something (money,
rights, knowledge, education, etc.) and in need of “help” from somebody
else. At the same time, the myth of the North/South economic gap con-
tributes to the stigmatizing of the working classes of southern countries.
It makes people from these same classes from the North feel lucky and
privileged, even though the reality is much more nuanced.
The TRIDPTMA roundtable has gathered valuable information from
people’s pastoral praxis not found in official statistics or papers, coming
directly from people’s field experience. The hermeneutical analysis the
group does is connected to real life, not only with what has been read in a
book. When they theologize, the group effectively wants to be in touch
with the milieu and the people where God is consistently incarnating him-
self, where the actual Church is—the body of Christ incarnated
among them.
From the outside, what is seen as a win-win opportunity—for workers to
work for a “northern salary” and for employers’ access to a workforce for
work that is seen as undesirable among Canadian citizens or residents—is
quite different when one is in touch with temporary farm workers. The goal
28 M. BELLEROSE
is not to blame farm owners for every evil that exists on earth, but rather to
see and feel what the workers actually experience. At the roundtable, we
learned that in 2017 four temporary farm workers died at their workplace
(for reasons unknown to us). What we do know is that people need sup-
port; if these deaths were caused by injustice, it is the role of Christians to
do something about it. In their relationships with temporary farm workers,
pastoral workers and church volunteers need to find out about things that
affect such workers. For example, too often, the farm owners retain work-
ers’ documents, such as their passports and health cards. When the workers
do not have access to their health card, they cannot go to see a doctor or go
to the hospital on their own, without their boss’ consent. The farm owners
are afraid to declare any work accidents, either because this will raise the
cost of their insurance or because they are too busy to accompany a worker
to the hospital, unless it is an unavoidable emergency.
Temporary farm workers pay for certain social services, so they have the
same legal rights as other workers. Yet they usually do not know they have
these rights (such as parental leave). Farm owners typically do not want
them to know about these rights, as they are in Canada for just a few
months. Too often, because of the bosses’ attitudes, access to health ser-
vices is restricted and work accidents go unreported. The workers know
that the best thing for them to do is to keep a low profile, not to criticize
the company and to be careful when advocating for workers’ rights (or
avoid this lobbying altogether). It is too easy for bosses to send workers
away, so if workers do not want to be sent away, they know they must keep
quiet. Their closed contract ties them to the farm. If a farmer fires a worker,
they cannot work somewhere else in Canada; they must return home.
Of course, good bosses and good farm owners who treat their workers
like members of the family do exist—we have heard many testimonies
about this. Some people would like these kinds of employers to be praised
for their good work. A Christian might call that type of praise vanity.
When Christians advocate on behalf of the least of their brothers and sis-
ters, they are doing what Christ expects them to do. Church volunteers
are called not only to do good works of charity, but also to be prophetic.
Just as God called Jeremiah, God is now calling them: “For to all to whom
I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.
Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you” (Jeremiah 1:7–8).3
3
All scripture quotes are from the English Standard Version of the Bible (Wheaton:
Crossway, 2001).
2 BOAZ’S HOSPITALITY TOWARDS RUTH: INSPIRING OUR HOSPITALITY… 29
Sometimes what temporary workers ask church volunteers to do for

them does not sound as romantic as it sounds in the Book of Jeremiah.
Often, they need a lift to the hospital; a translation for a message they
received on their cellphone; or they need to negotiate with a cellphone
service provider. They may need a hand getting to the flea market to pick
up a good deal on a gift to bring back home for their family. Christians
involve themselves for others; there is no noble cause and no kind of help
that lacks value. Church volunteers cannot forget that they do not serve
their own cause, and for this reason praise and gratitude must not be a
goal. Just like their faith teaches them, their role is sometimes just to be
with the temporary workers. In such cases, the Old Testament scriptural
figure of Boaz can be a helpful model.
2 Faith-Based Hospitality from the Book of Ruth
2.1 Hospitality as a Fundamental Part

of the Jewish-Christian Tradition
Hospitality in the Jewish-Christian tradition is not a secondary task or
duty. For these two faiths (as well as for the third Abrahamic religious
tradition of Islam) hospitality is fundamental. There are two main reasons
for this. The first is the context of the development of the Jewish faith in
the Old Testament in the exile in Babylon. The second reason is that these
religious traditions are rooted in a faith around the character of Abraham,
who in Babylonian exile experienced the pinnacle of hospitality in his
greatest encounter with God in the theophany at Mamre (Gen. 18). This
narrative is the archetype of Judaeo-Christian hospitality.4 In order to situ-
ate Christian hospitality in a broader context from its grassroots, I will
briefly illustrate its main principles as expressed in the theophany at Mamre.
The first two characteristics of hospitality are the “going towards” and
reciprocity, which are intrinsically linked. Gen. 18:2 says that Abraham
“lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in
front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them
and bowed himself to the earth.” Although it may sound strange that he
ran towards the three men standing in front of him, this verse shows an
4
We could say Jewish-Christian hospitality, but because we are doing Christian theology
here, we mention only Christian hospitality from this paragraph onward. The narrative is
found in Gen. 18:1–15.
30 M. BELLEROSE
insistence on the importance of going towards one’s guests. The “right”

hospitality is the one that reaches out to one’s guests, rather than waiting
patiently for them. Running towards his guests, Abraham puts himself in
a position of vulnerability. He is risking being rejected by his guests, of
whom he is asking for a kind of hospitality. In this way, he makes his guests
feel not inferior to him, but equal. They are not the poor asking for char-
ity, and Abraham is not the “one who has” (i.e., the provider). He has just
created reciprocity: both parties offer and both receive. There is no
unequal relationship. To be hospitable, one must first experience poverty
and marginalization; one must have taken the risk of being rejected from
hospitality in a foreign country.5
Another characteristic of Abraham’s hospitality worth noting here is
the collective scope of the hospitality. We are used to understand hospital-
ity as a one-on-one relationship, such as being open to offering someone
a coffee or a meal. However, when hospitality means receiving a group of
refugees, it is perceived differently. Genesis 18:2 talks about three men,
highlighting the fact that the hospitality will be provided to a group. The
text shatters the traditional way of understanding hospitality. At the same
time, at the very beginning of the narrative, we read, “And the Lord
appeared to him [Abraham] by the oaks of Mamre” (Gen. 18:1). It is
impressive how the author of the text switches from the singular to the
plural when talking about the guest(s). In fact, this is one of the most
studied issues by the Church fathers concerning the theophany at Mamre.6
In addition, we see Abraham practicing common hospitality, at noon
hour, by bringing water to wash their feet and telling them to rest under
the tree (Gen. 18:4). Obviously, he offers them food. Bread first and then
the best food available in the household. It is important to mention that
he mobilized his household to prepare the meal. He asked Sarah, his wife,
and a young man to help him. Here in the text, a community provides
hospitality to another community. Thus, hospitality is not just an individ-
ual work, but also a collective one. In the last verses of the narrative on the
theophany at Mamre, there is a promise. This aspect is essential to our
understanding. It links the praxis of hospitality to a telos and gives it an
eschatological scope.
5
Pierre-François de Béthune, La hospitalidad sagrada entre las religiones (Barcelona:
Herder, 2009), 146.
6
On this topic, see Claudio Monge, Dieu hôte (Bucharest: Zeta, 2008), 438ff.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II.
I. Shooting the Cataract.—Limbang River Frontispiece
II. The Trunan issuing from the Batu Barit To face
Mountain page 3
III. Hauling past the Rapids „ 70
IV. Murut Bridge.—Tabari’s Village „ 123
V. Government House, Sarawak „ 280
VI. Lundu Church „ 370
MAP.
I. Map of the Limbang and Baram Rivers To face
page 1
LIFE IN THE
FORESTS OF THE FAR EAST.
CHAPTER I.
EXPEDITIONS TO EXPLORE THE INTERIOR TO THE SOUTH
AND SOUTH-EAST OF THE CAPITAL.
Preliminary Expeditions—The Limbang River—Stories connected with

it—The Madalam—River flowing under a Pile of Rocks—Caverns
—Batu Rikan—The River issuing from under the Mountain of
Molu—Ascend the Precipices—No Water—Long Roots—No Soil
—Second Expedition—A Flood—Dangerous Position—Wakeful
Night—Beautiful Flowers—Palms and Rhododendrons—Old
Kayan Encampment—Detached Rocks—Ascent of Molu—Two
new Species of Nepenthes—Difficult Climbing—New
Rhododendrons—Stopped by a Precipice—Sharp-edged Rocks
—Descent—Limestone Rock—Cave—Heavy Rain—Swollen
River—Quick Return—Prepare for a distant Expedition—Alarm of
the Brunean Government—Warnings—Preparations—Boats—My
Headman Musa—A Travelled Dayak—Stories of Molu—Weapons
—Merchandise.
In December, 1856, I made a short excursion up the Limbang
River, and the wonders there told of its far interior strongly excited
my curiosity. The natives were full of stories of the river forcing its
way for miles under huge masses of rock, which formed a natural
tunnel, called by the Malays “Batu berkejang,” or stone-roofed; of a
cataract formed by the whole river falling over a ledge of rocks for a
depth of nine fathoms; of the smooth water beyond this which
stretched for a seven days’ journey, flowing gently through a vast
table-land; of the tame goats without masters which thronged this
region—but I could find no one who had seen any of these wonders
—in fact, few Malays had passed Suñgei Damit, a river about three
days’ journey from the capital.
In the following September I went with a small party up the right-
hand branch of the river, the Madalam, to endeavour to reach the
lofty mountain of Molu, and found that one of the stories told by the
natives had some foundation. We followed the Madalam till we
reached the Trunan on the eighth day, up which we pushed, thinking
it led to the base of the highest peak of Molu. We soon came upon
limestone rock, and after a few miles were suddenly stopped by the
river, I may say, disappearing. We found a rocky eminence before
us, its sharp angles concealed by ferns and climbing plants falling in
festoons around, and a luxuriant vegetation of trees, whose bark was
coated with mosses, orchids, and other epiphytal plants. There was
an arched cavern into which we pushed our boats; at first we failed
to find the inlet through which the stream entered, but at last, looking
down into the clear water, we saw two huge holes below—the
passages from whence the river came. We went round to the
southern side of the rock, and there we found the river coming
purling along to this lofty wood-crowned mass of limestone, and then
entering a spacious hall it was lost, descending, as it were, to the
passages before mentioned. There were various chambers with
water floors, to the surface of which fine fish occasionally arose. This
place is called Batu Rikan.
T. Picken, lith. Published by Smith, Elder &
Day & Son, Lithrs. to the Queen.
Co. 65, Cornhill, London.
THE TRUNAN ISSUING FROM BATU BARIT MOUNTAIN.
We stayed here a night, during which it rained heavily, making the

stream that yesterday but washed our ancles, swell so that it was
impossible to cross it. We therefore kept along the right bank, till we
reached the spot where the whole river issued from the face of the
precipice; it was a fine sight, this body of water running impetuously
from this natural tunnel. On either side lofty trees arose, and above
the precipice the green verdure spread in masses.
Our Bisayan guide, the Orang Kaya Panglima Prang, of the
village of Blimbing, told us that during fine weather, we could
penetrate a long distance under the mountain, though few had ever
ventured to do so, on account of the very sudden way in which the
water rises. Finding we could not cross the stream near the
mountain, we skirted the precipice, which the Bisayas told us it was
impossible to climb; but I determined on making the attempt, not
crediting the truth of one of their objections that we should find no
water on the mountain after the heavy rain which fell the previous
night.
I led the way up the rock by a most difficult ascent, and after
climbing these perpendicular precipices by means of the roots of
trees, at length reached easier ground, but found the whole
mountain a mass of honeycombed limestone rock, with trees
scattered over the uneven surface, whose roots penetrated to an
immense distance below. I endeavoured, by descending into the
deep fissures, to find some water, and in doing so, traced a root
above two hundred feet; it then entered a narrow crevice, too small
to admit me; the root was still larger than my arm.
As there is no real soil on the mountain, this fine vegetation must
derive its support from the air, the moisture in the thick moss, and
the rotting leaves which sometimes lay in tangled damp masses,
almost decayed into a black mould. We climbed about a thousand
feet, but found no streams or pools, and were therefore compelled to
descend. On our return to the Capital, we had the misfortune to lose
my boat on a snag, and had a three days’ walk in the jungle through
difficult sandstone mountains, and then we constructed a raft and
floated down the river, till we met the Orang Kaya Panglima Prang,
whom I had sent for relieving boats.
In February, 1858, Mr. Low and I again attempted the ascent of
Molu, taking the Orang Kaya Panglima Prang as our guide, though
neither he nor any one else knew more of the mountain than they
had gathered during my former journey.
On the sixth day we reached the entrance of the Madalam without
difficulty, and brought up for the night on a bank of gravel and
pebbles, where there were traces of coal among the hard gray
sandstone nodules, and broken quartz. All the country we had
hitherto seen belongs to the Labuan coal measures, and the dip is
steep, about 45°, and is to the east of north.
In the evening, heavy rain came on, when the river began to rise
rapidly, and rush by us with a strong current. The men had pitched
their tents on the pebbly bank, while we stayed in the boats; we had
had a heavy day’s work, and our followers were so fatigued that they
fell asleep immediately. The rain continued pouring down. About two
hours after sunset I heard a shout, and found the water was
overflowing the tents, and rushing down the opposite side of the river
like a mill sluice, carrying along with it huge trunks of trees. With
extreme difficulty we awoke the men, and it was a work of greater
difficulty to keep them from getting into the boats before they were
properly secured. I jumped out, and soon discovered the reason; the
water coming from the lofty heights of Molu was icy cold; my teeth
chattered so that I could scarcely give an order, and the river rose so
fast, that very soon it was impossible to remain on the bank.
We none of us slept that night, our boats swayed to and fro in the
angry waters which now rushed impetuously over the point, and
knowing that we had but a small rope holding us, we feared every
moment to see it part and find our boats dashed over a neighbouring
fall. In the morning we observed by rough measurement that the
water had risen twenty-four feet. As the river continued too rapid to
be contended against, we employed next day in manufacturing
strong rattan ropes. It took us five days more to reach our camping-
ground at the foot of the mountain, a journey which in ordinary times
might have been done in two.
We passed during our advance up the Madalam many curious
and beautiful plants; among others, a very elegant little palm, with
finely-divided pinnated leaves, and a stem about a foot high; it grew
in tufts on the banks, within the influence of the rise of the waters.
Mr. Low found also a beautiful climber with white flowers, in
bunches, on the axils of the leaves, with a very fragrant scent; and
also a curious rhododendron, with terminal single pale yellow flowers
an inch and a half across on pendent branching stems, epiphytal in
moss on many of the trees overhanging the water; but what I
admired most was a rhododendron with large bunches of straw-
coloured blossoms. It grew on the trees, and the flower, as it
gracefully bent over us, looked both showy and beautiful. Here, too,
Mr. Low discovered three new species of the areca palm, and was
enabled to secure the seeds of two: one of them had a curious
mottled foliage, another had a dark green stem, with white sheaths
to the leaves, which were most delicately fashioned, the leaflets
being linear, and not more than an eighth of an inch broad. I may
further notice that at the mouth of the Limbang River grows in the
marshes a beautiful fan-palm, which at a distance might, from its
size, be mistaken for a fine cocoa-nut tree.
We reached the Batu Rikan in safety, and passed round it,
through a small rivulet, improved into a sort of canal by the Kayans,
above which we brought up at an old Kayan encampment on the left.
We had here a good view of the range, which is a mass of limestone,
and the ascent to the summit is at an angle of 70°; impossible to
ascend over any other kind of rock than limestone, the water-worn
surfaces of which usually present so many prominent points as to
render these precipices practicable. The mountain appears to be
covered with vegetation to the precipitous summit, and even on the
almost bare rocks shrubs could be seen clinging to the crevices.
Round the base of the mountain are detached masses of
limestone, much water-worn, with caverns and natural tunnels, with
the ground around covered by the tracks of pigs and deer. At the
base of the mountain the soil is a yellow loam, with many water-worn
sandstone pebbles on its surface.
I do not intend dwelling on this expedition, as I only kept an
account of the geographical features of the country, though Mr. Low
has kindly placed his interesting journal at my disposal to refresh my
memory. I will, however, briefly indicate the character of the
mountain.
We left our encampment and struck through the jungle to a spot
that a previous examination made me consider the easiest way to
pass the precipices. The rocks looked like broken masses which had
fallen from above, presenting sharp points and edges dangerous to
our unshod men. It was climbing, not walking, our hands being as
much used as our feet. We ascended about 800 feet, when we found
ourselves on a sharp edge with a valley beyond, and then
descended about forty feet by means of roots, and after a painful
advance made preparations to pass the night there, as our men
were lagging. We could, however, nowhere find a smooth place
broad enough to set up our tents; so threw poles across the rocks
and heaped boughs and leaves on them, and on sticks above
spread our piled cotton tents.
We advanced next day over rather easier ground, and found more
vegetable mould between the rocks; the trees were large, and
among them I had seen on the previous day troops of reddish
monkeys, equal in size to the small kind of orang-utan. We could find
no water except such as could be obtained from squeezing the
moss, or from the pitchers of two new kinds of nepenthes. It was on
the third day that Mr. Low came upon them, after passing a deep
gorge, and up a steep and fatiguing ascent over craggy cliffs,
everything being covered with long wet moss. There were two kinds;
the specimens, unfortunately, were lost by the men:—the first was
shaped something like a claret jug, with a quadrilateral stem, and
was of a pale green, except on the inside of the pitcher, which was
purplish—the pitchers themselves were about ten inches long, and
did not show the lower part in perfection except when full-grown. The
next kind was growing half buried beneath the moss, and creeping
closely along the stems of trees; its pitchers had a very peculiar
mouth, with an edge like a frill. Its stem was rough with brown hairs,
the leaves broad and short, and it was distinguished from all others
we had yet seen, by the leaves, which are close above one another,
giving off always to the right and left, and not on all sides of the stem
as in the other species; they lie also very close; its stem was at most
three feet long; the pitcher was about nine inches in length, not
including the lid.
Mr. Low, the Orang Kaya, and myself, led our party, but the ascent
was getting worse every yard. We worked our way over the most
dangerous places, where a false step would have broken our necks
or limbs, or have cut us to pieces on the sharp rocks; as we
advanced, precipices and broad deep fissures became more
frequent, one of the latter we crossed on a small tree four inches in
diameter, which the Orang Kaya felled for the purpose. It bent
beneath us, and was so uncertain a footing, that I was thankful to
have passed it, as the deep chasm below was filled with jagged
rocks. The Malay description of it is true—“sharp axes below, and
pointed needles above, such is the mountain of Molu.”
It is curious that although we were only 3,500 feet above the level
of the sea, this region resembled what is found on Kina Balu at from
5,000 to 8,000 feet, where shrubs with beautiful flowers abound.
Mr. Low discovered two very interesting little rhododendrons here.
They were epiphytal, of a character different from any he had seen
elsewhere; they had short brown lanceolate leaves, almost an inch
long, in whorls of four or five, on branching brownish stems. Their
flowers were terminal and solitary, and about an inch and a half long;
one was whitish, the other a pinkish purple, and both were
remarkably pretty.
I was leading the way, when I saw a precipice before me which
appeared to be impassable; it ran across the spur we were
ascending, and extended to the ravines on either side. At last we
noticed a narrow fissure, and by supporting myself on the sharp
points of rocks, and steadying myself by a small root, I reached to
within six feet of the top. To get up the rest of the way was not very
difficult, but to get down again appeared unpleasant, and beyond
rose a succession of precipices. As the side of the mountain was at
an angle of 70°, it was easy to see a long way ahead of us. As I
stood balancing myself, it struck me as an impossibility to take
loaded men up such places, so I hailed Mr. Low, who was already
commencing the ascent of the precipice, to stop till I came down to
consult. Two of my most active men, Musa and another, volunteered
to go ahead and explore, and we waited for them at the foot of the
precipice, and took observations.
It is almost impossible to conceive the difficulty of ascending this
mountain. While we were waiting here, a comparatively smooth spot,
we could find no place broad enough for the stand of the barometer,
but were obliged to construct a framework of sticks. No ledge was
more than six inches broad, and Mr. Low made me nervous by
walking out on some not an inch wide whilst in search of flowers or
shells. In fact, at one place my shoe was cut through, and three of
our men had already been sent back with severe wounds, whilst
several of those left were much injured.
Musa at last joined us with the intelligence that about one hundred
yards beyond there was a precipice, which he and his companion
had found it impossible to pass; so, very unwillingly, we turned our
faces homeward.
Descending was more dangerous than ascending, and Mr. Low
got two severe falls, as his eyes were not always on the next spot to
place his foot, but wandering about in search of plants. I escaped
better, as my thoughts were engrossed by the difficulties and
dangers of the path. It is curious that when these sharp rocks were
struck they gave out a clear ringing, almost metallic, sound; there is
no appearance of stratification: the rocks are of a fine-grained
limestone, and some, when broken, presented a pinkish, others a
whitish or grayish blue colour.
We noticed during our ascent a cave in the limestone rock about
forty feet high, and the roots of the trees growing on the rock above
came down perpendicularly and passed into the fissures in the
stones that formed the floor. Their upper parts were encrusted with
carbonate of lime in the form of stalactites. Water was continually
dripping from the roof of the cave, and in one place had collected in
a little basin, the only time we saw any pure water on the mountain.
The following day we reached our tents and enjoyed a good
dinner, after four days on biscuits and plain boiled rice. In the
evening there came on a thunderstorm, and the rain fell in a manner
I have never before known even in Borneo; it appeared to be coming
down in tubsfull instead of drops.
We attempted next day to go and examine the Batu Rikan, but the
rush of waters prevented our approaching it; in fact, the roar of the
river, as it dashed into the caves and whirled its spray into the air,
made us take precautions not to be swept into the boiling cauldron.
Our return was easy, as the river had risen enough to cover all the
rapids, so that their presence was only marked by the increased
velocity of the water; but when we joined the Limbang it became
more sluggish, and after Sungei Damit its speed had lessened from
five knots to one knot per hour.
These preliminary expeditions accomplished, having heard that I
could procure Murut guides, I determined to explore the main stream
of the Limbang, which evidently penetrated a long distance into the
interior. The ostensible object of the expedition was to reach those
Muruts who formerly lived upon the Adang, one of the tributaries of
the Limbang, but had now been driven away beyond the mountains
by repeated attacks of the Kayans. This was very vague information,
but it was the best I could procure.
The Bornean Government, on hearing of my intention to start, was
filled with uneasiness, and earnestly requested me to forego my
intention. The Sultan and Pañgeran Tumanggong were especially
anxious, as they feared some accident would happen; they talked of
the head-hunting Kayans, the wandering Pakatans with their
poisoned arrows, the interior filled with strange aborigines who had
never seen a white man or even a Malay, and the dangers of the
river that imperilled our boats, and the wanderings in the jungle that
threatened starvation. The last two were especially dwelt upon, as
they reminded me of my former misadventure in returning from Molu.
They little thought that their descriptions of the interior (from
hearsay) only added to my desire to be away exploring. I knew that
all the threatened dangers really existed, but I determined to take
every precaution, and trust the rest to that fortune which had ever
befriended me in my former journeys.
It being uncertain how long I might be away, it was necessary to
take a large supply of food and ammunition. We prepared two boats,
and both were heavily laden; the first was a garei, a long canoe with
raised sides and regular timbers, forty-five feet by five, flat-bottomed,
not drawing above eighteen inches, with all her crew and stores on
board. She was commanded by a man I have often had occasion to
mention, Musa, a native of the Philippines, not above five feet one
inch in height, but sturdily and strongly built. The crew consisted of
ten men, half of whom were tried followers. An accompanying
tender, containing six men, was only suited for smooth water, being
totally unfitted for the rapids we should find in the interior, but it was
our intention to change it when we reached the Murut villages.
In this boat was Japer, the most remarkable man of the whole
party. I met him at the village of Blimbing during my first attempt to
ascend Molu, and he was full of stories. I learned that he belonged
originally to the wandering Pakatans, but had been converted to
Islamism. He appeared to have been quite a traveller, having visited
Penang, Malaka, Batavia, and Sarawak. He was familiar with the
English conquest of Java, and talked fluently of Lord Minto. I had
been so accustomed to look upon the great French war as a thing of
the past, that I could scarcely bring myself to believe that this man
could have seen Lord Minto at Malaka or Penang in 1811, but
considering he was at least sixty-three when I first saw him in 1857,
there was really nothing surprising in it.
He also abounded with accounts of Molu; having been at its base
several times, though he had never attempted to ascend it. But he
told us stories of the dwarfs who inhabited the caves, of big eggs
which ten men could not lift; but what particularly fixed the attention
of his native audience was the account of a sight witnessed by a
Tutong man. He said that one day he was seeking edible nests in
holes round the base of the mountain, when, being tired, he fell
asleep in a cleft in the side of a large cavern. He was awoke by lights
flashing in his eyes, and peering from his hiding-place, saw a long
procession of supernatural beings pass slowly by him, each carrying
a torch, and there was one to whom they all paid respect. He was
too frightened to remember the particulars, but he thinks they were
dressed in flowing robes.
Some of my men were in hopes these fearful stories would have
deterred me from my design to explore the mountain; but on my
offering a reward to any one who would take me to the cave where
these wonderful sights were seen, they saw ghosts did not daunt
white men.
I took with me, also, my Chinese boy, Ahtan, to cook and wait
upon me; he had behaved so well during our Kina Balu expeditions
that I liked him to follow me.
As we might meet enemies we prepared a good stock of arms
and ammunition. I took two double-barrels, one rifle, and one smooth
bore—for general service in Borneo the latter is the best weapon of
all—a single-barrelled rifle, an Adams’s revolving carbine, and a
revolving pistol; for the men four long carbines, and a dozen flint
muskets; the last we found much too heavy for carrying through the
forests, and too cumbersome for boats.
Not knowing what kind of people we might meet, I embarked
merchandise of many kinds—hatchets, cloths (yellow, black, red,
and white), looking-glasses, agate and common beads; in fact, four
times as much as was necessary. My instruments, tents, and
baggage, were both weighty and occupied much room, so that when
the crew entered the boat, with five-and-twenty days’ provisions on
board, its gunwales were not many inches above the water.
CHAPTER II.
MY LIMBANG JOURNAL.
Start—Discovery of Bones and ancient Ornaments—At the Site of the

Old City—At the Stone Fort—At Sarawak—The Trusan, or
connecting Passage—Apathy of the Government and People—
Sago—Method of preparing it for the Market—The Limbang River
—The Inhabitants—Winding Stream—The Orang Kaya Upit of
Kruei—Sampirs—Gadong Hill—Scenery—Molu—The Raman
Palm—Delays—Cholera—Orang Kaya Napur—Panglima Prang
—The Weather—State of the River—Origin of the Ponds—Native
Geographical Information—The Upper Country—Cataract—
Enchanted Mountain—Native Travelling—Dreams and Omen
Birds—Religion of Pakatans—Cause of Head-hunting—The Wild
Boar—Trouble in procuring Guides—Pengkalan Tarap—
Desolation of the Country—Causes of it—Selling Children—
Kayan Barbarity—Chinese at Batang Parak—Site of Burnt
Villages—Posts of Houses—Two kinds of Sago Palm—Their
Growth—Kayan Encampment—Cultivation—The River—Rocks—
Salt Springs—Native Explanation—Anecdote—Time to halt—
Birds—Rare, except in certain Districts—Monkeys—Alligators—
The Man-eater—A Challenge accepted—Disappearance of the
Siol Alligator—Combat with two in a Cave—Method of Capturing
them in Siam—Laying Eggs in the Jungle—Ducks and Drakes—
Malay Cookery—Very tasty—Bachang—How to make a Curry—
Anecdotes of Bornean Rule—Attack on the Limpasong Village—
Insurrection of the Aborigines—Forced Trade—Qualities
necessary in a Malay Ruler—The great Mountain of Tilong—
Discomfort of possessing a large Diamond—Diamonds found in
Borneo.
August 25th, 1858.—We started, and as we pulled through the
town in the early morn crowds came to their doors to have a look at
what they no doubt considered as a doomed party.
Our route, after leaving the houses, was up the Brunei river, till we
reached a Trusan, or passage,[1] connecting it with the Limbang. We
soon left the pretty scenery near the capital, and exchanged for it low
banks, with mangrove swamp, occasionally varied by undulating dry
land. After a two hours’ pull, we passed the graves of some rajahs on
the left-hand bank; near them, it is reported, a great many bones are
found scattered about; the natives say it was the site of a battle-field;
gold ornaments are also occasionally discovered, but slightly
covered with soil; it is very probable that a village once stood here.
These discoveries of ancient ornaments are events of not
unfrequent occurrence. Some seven years ago a man was prawn-
fishing with a casting-net, about two miles below the consulate, when
he found some gold buttons entangled among the prawns; he
instantly marked the place, and dived, and found several articles; the
news spread like wildfire, and hundreds flocked to the spot; the mud
was dug over in the neighbourhood to the depth of several feet, and
the river raked with great care; it is reported that a large amount was
found. I afterwards examined the spot; it proved to be the site of the
ancient city of Burnei, of which Pigafetta speaks; it is now called
Kota Batu, or the stone fort, on account of the foundations of some
buildings that have been uncovered there. I must confess to great
disappointment when I visited them; these ancient remains consisted
of nothing but loose stones thrown into a long ditch about eighteen
feet wide.
Great quantities of gold ornaments have likewise been discovered
at the Santubong entrance of the Sarawak river; this was likewise
the site of an old town. I tried on my last visit to find some to examine
the workmanship, but most had been melted up, and the specimens
purchased by Sir James Brooke were lost during the Chinese
insurrection of 1857.
Half an hour afterwards we reached the Trusan, and entered it on
our way to the Limbang; it took us two hours and a half to get
through; the banks are low, at first mangrove, then slight openings
showing small padi fields, then sago with lofty fruit-trees in the
background. Nothing better exemplifies the character of this people
and government than the Trusan we were passing through; in a
straight line the distance cannot be three miles, yet nothing is done
even to clear it of the obstruction of fallen trees, overhanging
branches, and sharp turnings; occasionally it is not above six feet
wide; hundreds pass through it every day; and though they have
often to wait hours till the tide has risen sufficiently to float them over
the obstructions, they will not combine to clear it: fifty men in a week
could render it passable for large boats at half-tide, but there is no
government for useful purposes, and no combination among the
people.
We were very glad to get clear of this Trusan, and enter into an
open space, a sort of long narrow lake connected with the main river
by diminutive passages, enclosing the island of Pandam, a dense
mass of sagotrees. Here there is some sign of life, many houses are
scattered on the banks whose inhabitants are busy preparing the
pith of the palm for transmission to the capital. We saw them to-day
going through every stage, some were felling the tree, others
clearing it of all its leaves and branches and dragging it to the
water’s edge; rafts of prepared palms were floating down alone, but
with certain marks to distinguish the owners. We landed at one spot
and inquired the reason of this unusual bustle; the price had risen,
and every one was anxious to take advantage of the market.
We had around us about a dozen men working; the trees, some of
them fifty feet in length by two and a half in diameter, were first cut in
sections of about a fathom, then split in two; the pith was scooped
out, or rather chopped out with a scoop, as it was very hard and
required great exertion to get it out; the women and children carried
it to the river’s banks to a prepared framework, and threw the rough
sago on a platform of split bamboos: here a man stood who, after
wetting the stuff with pails’ full of water, trod out the flour into a
receptacle below. It seemed a very wasteful process. The coarse
sago is put into leaf cases and sold to the Chinese, who turn it into
the flour and pearl of commerce.
Leaving the island of Pandam we joined the main stream, which
was here about a hundred yards wide; the banks as we advanced
presented the same features, low, with occasional hills to be seen,
cultivation very rough and careless; the sago and rice the most
valuable; the gardens were but poorly looked after, the chief
attention being given to the banana. Occasionally there are very
extensive groves of fruit-trees, but even these are choked with
brushwood. Tame buffaloes are very numerous on the lower part of

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The Church, Migration, and Global

More information about this series at

Michael S. Attridge Gerard Mannion

ISSN 2634-6591 ISSN 2634-6605 (electronic)

2019: “Stolen Churches” or “Bridges to Orthodoxy”? Impulses for

2015: Vatican II – Remembering the Future – Ecumenical, Interfaith and

The Ecclesiological Investigations network was in no small way fueled

Toronto, ON, Canada Darren J. Dias

The book is inter-disciplinary in nature bringing theological, scrip-

Finally, we wish to recognize and thank our collaborators on our con-

Part I Perspectives on Hospitality 1

1 The Church, Migration and Global (In)Difference: They

2 Boaz’s Hospitality Towards Ruth: Inspiring Our

3 Luke-Acts as Scripture Speaking from and to Migration 43

4 The Church, Migration and the Primacy of Motion:

5 Hospitality and Disruption: The Church as Sanctuary 79

6 Decolonizing Theology and Migration in a Canadian

Part II Theo-Political Perspectives 111

7 Forced Migrations as a Theo-Political Challenge Facing

8 Anthropology and Theology: Notes on Gender,

9 Religion, Migration and Educational Practice: Empirical,

10 Deciphering the Genome of “Crisis” in the Syrian

11 The Refugee as “Limit-Concept” in the Modern

Part III Ecclesiological Perspectives 201

12 Churches and National Boundaries: Differences Between

13 Pope Francis’ Four Words to Meet the Challenge of

14 Ecclesia Semper Migranda: Towards a Vision of a Migrant

Part IV Contextual and Historical Perspectives 263

15 Mapping a Contextual Theology of African Migration265

16 African Migrant Christians Changing the Landscape of

17 Stories of Transformation: African Immigrants to the

18 When There Is Nowhere to Rest Our Heads: Is

19 Grace and Dis-Grace: The Australian Catholic Church’s

20 Pedagogy of Migration: The Roman Catholic Archdiocese

21 Ukrainian Churches and Migration in Canada:

Simon Mary Asese Aihiokhai University of Portland, Portland, OR, USA

Patricia Madigan Dominican Centre for Interfaith Ministry, Education

The Church, Migration and Global

© The Author(s) 2021 3

poles: movement and settlement.”3 Settlement, he went on to argue, has

1 Migration and Cities

School, has explored this issue in depth through a series of consultations

urban realities and urbanization of course.16 Edward Soja, for instance,

compelled by current events to reflect upon migration, we must also be

2 Cities and the Sacred

organize and administer social, intellectual and material resources at a

­ onuments in the cities that we construct.33 In specifically Christian theo-

The final mission of the city is to further [humanity’s] conscious participa-

Richard Sennett echoes this broader observation regarding cities:

A city is a complex but incomplete system… . In this mix of complexity and

This is not to argue that cities are uniformly or universally good or

ambiguities.42 They are places of great terror as well as great beauty. By

3 The City and Christian Theology

beauty. Strolling through the park is an ancient urban practice. It is what

The impact of John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople and other

4 Cities and (In)Difference

of urban experience – difference, complexity, strangeness – afford resistance

The unity of nearness and remoteness involved in every human relation is

Boaz’s Hospitality Towards Ruth: Inspiring

Doing contextual theology means gathering experiences of praxis and

© The Author(s) 2021 25

1 The Current Context of Southern Quebec

Sometimes what temporary workers ask church volunteers to do for

Toronto, ON, Canada Darren J. Dias

Part I Perspectives on Hospitality 1

1 The Church, Migration and Global (In)Difference: They

2 Boaz’s Hospitality Towards Ruth: Inspiring Our

3 Luke-Acts as Scripture Speaking from and to Migration 43

4 The Church, Migration and the Primacy of Motion:

5 Hospitality and Disruption: The Church as Sanctuary 79

6 Decolonizing Theology and Migration in a Canadian

Part II Theo-Political Perspectives 111

7 Forced Migrations as a Theo-Political Challenge Facing

8 Anthropology and Theology: Notes on Gender,

9 Religion, Migration and Educational Practice: Empirical,

10 Deciphering the Genome of “Crisis” in the Syrian

11 The Refugee as “Limit-Concept” in the Modern

Part III Ecclesiological Perspectives 201

12 Churches and National Boundaries: Differences Between

13 Pope Francis’ Four Words to Meet the Challenge of

14 Ecclesia Semper Migranda: Towards a Vision of a Migrant

Part IV Contextual and Historical Perspectives 263

15 Mapping a Contextual Theology of African Migration265

16 African Migrant Christians Changing the Landscape of

17 Stories of Transformation: African Immigrants to the

18 When There Is Nowhere to Rest Our Heads: Is

19 Grace and Dis-Grace: The Australian Catholic Church’s

20 Pedagogy of Migration: The Roman Catholic Archdiocese

21 Ukrainian Churches and Migration in Canada:

onuments in the cities that we construct.33 In specifically Christian theo-