Jennifer B. Saunders

Amid a growing outcry from the American public at the current administration’s policy of family separation at the border, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the policy by referencing a passage from the New Testament. Speaking to law enforcement, Sessions said that in Romans 13 Paul says to obey the government’s laws “because God has ordained the government for his purposes” and the law is intended to protect “the weak and the lawful”. Many have noted that this verse had been used in the past to justify loyalism to the Crown during the American Revolutionary War and slavery as the abolitionist movement grew. While there is precedent for using Romans 13:1-7 to label unauthorized border-crossing as sinful, the public Christian response including that of Pope Francis and Sessions’ own United Methodist Church has overwhelmingly been to refute his interpretation of Christianity. Other religious communities have weighed in against the practice of separating children from their parents at the border including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Hindu American Foundation.

Those of us who study the intersections of religion and migration were, of course, not surprised that religion would enter the debate. As Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Susanna Snyder, and I explore in our edited book, Intersections of Religion and Migration: Issues at the Global Crossroads, there are multiple ways that religion and migration cross paths. While there are indeed many religious thinkers and communities offering ethical and theological perspectives about how to “welcome the stranger” to influence policy, inspire humanitarian aid, and receive immigrants in host societies, we need to remember that migrants and refugees themselves bring their own religions and religious identities with them. The tendency of American discourse to focus on American (and sometimes European) issues notwithstanding, these intersections are global as migrants and refugees move from and settle in nearly every corner of the planet. As we note in our introduction to the volume, South-South migration recently accounted for about 60% of international migrants, with a much higher percentage of refugees still living in the global South (33) than outside of it.

Regardless of where they end up, migrants bring their religious practices, artifacts, and beliefs with them as they travel. The Honduran asylum-seeker, the Syrian family fleeing war, and the Pakistani economic migrant do not leave their religious lives and identities at home. Instead, religion, as Holly Straut Eppsteiner and Jacqueline Hagan explain in their chapter in our book, often supports migrants and refugees as they prepare, undertake, and complete their journeys across borders. Once settled–even if only temporarily as in the case of the migrants who occupied the immigrant camp in Calais, France until it was dismantled in October 2016–migrants and refugees often establish religious practices and communities, negotiating the different contexts in which they find themselves (see Kim Knott’s chapter). These contexts can cause profound changes in religious practices and identities, as Zayn Kassam illustrates with regard to Muslim immigrants to the United States. The religious identities of migrants can also play a role in their welcome or lack thereof. On June 26, the United States Supreme Court decided to uphold President Trump’s executive order restricting travel from a number of Muslim-majority countries. Religious identity, therefore, can play a large role in the perceived value of potential immigrants.

In addition to migrants’ actual religions, race and religion are often ascribed to immigrants by host populations with little understanding of who people really are (see Joshi’s chapter). While these assumptions can weigh on immigrants and their descendants in ways that delegitimize their experiences and identities, they can also have deadly consequences as they did for Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian shot by London police who believed he was a Muslim suicide bomber. Hugo Córdova Quero reminds us that religions contribute to shaping gender-role expectations and norms of sexuality for migrants and host societies alike. In addition to being a factor in the immigration experience, debates about it, and responses to it, immigration and transnationalism affect religion in the ways that communities practice and organize themselves (see Knott and Cherry).

While religion often motivates those people who are interested in affecting policy changes as well as those who provide humanitarian aid to migrants, it is important to remember that migrants may be best served when their own religious experiences, motivations, identities, and beliefs are considered along with more “practical” matters of housing and integration into society (see Wilson and Mavelli on policy and Ager and Ager on humanitarian responses to migration). Religion can also shape the way that we understand the experience of migrants. For example, Ellen Posman explores the concepts of exile and diaspora in light of Jewish scripture and history, and how those concepts inform migrants and their host societies alike. Daniel G. Groody reminds us that behind the headlines and statistics, migrants are human beings with their own stories and relationships that are changed during the process of migration. He suggests that Christian theology can counter the dehumanization that attends migrant integration. Benjamin Schewel brings a broader view to the same issues, highlighting the conflict between self-determination and human rights among democratic thinkers to frame the conflicts between open and closed borders (246). A solution for this problem, he argues, is a “religious-ethical” view that suggests “that the ultimate interests of all individuals and communities are best served by sacrificially working to construct a just, peaceful, and prosperous world community in which the kinds of migration dilemmas we currently experience will no longer exist” (252).

Ultimately, human migration, its intersections with religion and the responses we have to it address basic questions about who we are and how we see ourselves and others. Do we define and categorize people by the place they were born, languages they speak, how they look, their religious identities or do we transcend these differences and see all humans as valuable and worthy of dignity? Do we prioritize security and see those seeking relief from war and poverty as potential threats or do we prioritize the rights of all humans no matter where they were born?

Jennifer B. Saunders is an independent researcher studying transnational Hinduism.