Beauty for ashes and the oil of gladness: the border-crossing God, Asylum Seekers, and the Church’s exile into hope

Book chapter


Khovacs, I. and Khovacs, J. 2019. Beauty for ashes and the oil of gladness: the border-crossing God, Asylum Seekers, and the Church’s exile into hope. in: Religious Responses to Refugees and Asylum Seekers Jessica Kingsley.
AuthorsKhovacs, I. and Khovacs, J.
Abstract

This exercise in practical theology, a ‘theology from below’, explores the ministerial implication in our notion that the story of Jesus denotes the Son of God’s ‘migratory’ journey among creaturely humanity. Concretely, this means that we aim to locate the welcoming ethos in ministry with refugees and asylum seekers in the biblical theme of God’s faithful companionship with those in displacement and exile.

We begin by overlaying representative experiences of asylum seekers like Amid against the Old Testament ethic which presupposes the ‘resident alien’ to be morally included in God’s promise to redeem all of humanity as God’s own. The experiences we relate are those of migrants in London taking part in the Welcome Boxes project at St Peter’s Church Eaton Square. We find it striking that the stories they tell relate nearly without exception a sense that God is with the refugee and asylum seeker. Taking this ‘implicit’ theology as our starting point will enable our exploration of biblical imagery of migration, exile, and the faithfulness of the border-crossing God. This then leads us to a concluding reflection on our sense that the church’s pastoral and missional identity is faced with political implications cascading from its welcome of refugee claimants and asylum seekers living in our midst.

Year2019
Book titleReligious Responses to Refugees and Asylum Seekers
PublisherJessica Kingsley
Output statusIn press
Publication process dates
Deposited17 May 2019
Accepted20 Feb 2019
JournalReligious Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Permalink -

https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/88zq7/beauty-for-ashes-and-the-oil-of-gladness-the-border-crossing-god-asylum-seekers-and-the-church-s-exile-into-hope

  • 138
    total views
  • 0
    total downloads
  • 2
    views this month
  • 0
    downloads this month

Export as

Related outputs

The intractable sense of an ending: Gethsemane’s Prayer on the Tragic Stage
Khovacs, I. 2014. The intractable sense of an ending: Gethsemane’s Prayer on the Tragic Stage. in: Vander Lugt, W. and Hart, T. (ed.) Theatrical Theology: Explorations in Performing the Faith Eugene, OR Wipf & Stock.
Through glass darkly: seeing film in theological perspective
Khovacs, I. 2010. Through glass darkly: seeing film in theological perspective.
Theology, asthetics and culture: conversations with the work of David Brown
Khovacs, I. 2010. Theology, asthetics and culture: conversations with the work of David Brown.
Theodrama: portrait of an analogy in search of a praxis, an actor in search of a stage
Khovacs, I. 2010. Theodrama: portrait of an analogy in search of a praxis, an actor in search of a stage.
A cautionary note on the use of theatre in theology
Khovacs, I. 2007. A cautionary note on the use of theatre in theology. in: Hart, T. and Guthrie, S. (ed.) Faithful Performances: Enacting Christian Tradition Aldershot, UK Ashgate. pp. 33-50