In his recent The Economy of Salvation, Italian economist Luigino Bruni observes that Hagar’s experience forces us “to read salvation history not only from the perspective of Sarah and Isaac, but also from that of Hagar and Ishmael.” While the Bible affirms laws and institutions, “they are re-dimensioned, blurred and sometimes even rejected by preference given to non-firstborns (Abel, Jacob, Joseph, David. . . ), to slave women who talk to God or a patriarch who is obeying his wife.” In particular, the spaces of the sojourner are the “spaces that the ‘needle’ of history passes through, creating the texture of life.”
Alastair Roberts’s Conversation starter shows we must take Bruni’s analysis a step further. The Hagar-Ishmael narrative isn’t a qualifying subplot to the story of Sarah and Isaac, nor is Joseph the first of Abraham’s seed to enter into Hagar’s experience. Rather, Hagar’s story alerts us to the fact that the main protagonists, Abraham and Sarah, are themselves sojourners, however much they momentarily act the part of settled oppressors. Isaac and Jacob are sojourners too (Genesis 26:3; 32:4), not to mention Joseph and Moses and Israel until they escape Egypt for the promised land. Even when they’re well-settled, Yahweh views them as “aliens and sojourners” in His land (Leviticus 25:23), called to love strangers because they were strangers (Exodus 22:21; Leviticus 19:34).
As Alastair says, “until Abraham and his descendants have recognized what was done to Hagar and have entered her experience, they can never move on.” Joseph is “the new Ishmael brought back into the family” to restore the family. Israel’s patriarchal pedagogy of sojourning and hospitality makes Israel Israel, a people whose history as strangers calls them to welcome strangers.
Throughout Scripture, hospitality to the stranger isn’t merely a personal moral duty. Nations and cities – like Sodom – are, Alastair says, “judged according to their hospitality. . . . Cruel and inhospitable nations will be severely judged by the God who hears the cries of the oppressed.”
After pouring biblical “foundations” for dealing with immigration and immigrants, however, Alastair builds the walls and furnishes the house mainly with extra-biblical materials. Halfway through, he turns from biblical theology to meta-ethics, as he sketches parameters for determining our individual, churchly, and national obligations to strangers. He lays out a series of overlapping distinctions – between the good of hospitality and its proper exercise, between abstract humanitarianism and Christian charity, between our posture toward the immigrant and our posture toward immigration.
These are important distinctions, and he’s right that there’s a difference between affirming the good of charity and determining how best to express charity. But one might suspect that the Bible has something to say to both sides of these questions. Alastair’s essay suggests the Bible provides a general narrative frame for our moral and political reasoning, leaving us to sort through the details more or less on our own. But we can’t know whether or not the Bible clarifies our specific moral obligations or offers insight into immigration policyunless we look.
One could extend Alastair’s biblical discussion by examining how Genesis’s history of sojourning and hospitality is institutionalized in the demands of Torah. It would be worth pondering the import of the repeated claim that ceremonial statutes apply to both alien and native (Exodus 12:19; Leviticus 16:29), or the grouping of “needy and alien” in the gleaning laws and elsewhere (Leviticus 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:14), or the fact that aliens and slaves share Sabbath with native-born (Exodus 20:8-11). We might fill out Yahweh’s demand to “love [the stranger] as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34) by asking what forms love takes elsewhere in Torah. (See Jim Rogers’ response for an example of biblical reasoning about the specific issue of national boundaries.)
As Alastair’s essay continues, he loses track of the trajectory he sets out so beautifully in the opening pages. Genesis teaches us to recognize ourselves in the stranger, to stand, as Alastair’s says, “in Hagar’s shoes,” but Alastair writes most of his essay from the viewpoint of the settled rather than the sojourner. How does the picture change if we look at today’s world through the eyes of Hagar and Ishmael? What policies might we formulate if we, like Israel, recognized the lands we occupy are ours only in trust? (I am reiterating one of themes of Rob Heimburger’s response.)
Alastair’s use of “we” is the telltale sign that he’s not staying entirely in the story. “Should we,” he asks, “restrict immigration of ethnic groups that have not historically integrated or assimilated to our societies as well as others?” That “we” is “we English” or “we Americans” or “we Germans.” It’s not “we Christians,” much less “we Christians who occupy both sides of a national border.”
Taking his stance with this national “we,” Alastair overlooks the positive effects of immigration. His worry over the “corrosive effects of multiculturalism” is too monolithic. Sub-Saharan African immigrants to the U.S., the U.K., and elsewhere are not culturally Western, but many confess the traditional religious faith of the West, more fervently than many residents of what used to be Christendom. Most of the new Pentecostal churches in London are African congregations, the African Redeemer Church of God has planted hundreds of churches in England over the past decade, and immigrants from Mexico and Central America have refreshed Catholic parishes in the U.S. “We Christians” needn’t be overwhelmed by these new arrivals because they’re already part of “us.”
Set religion to the side: Industrious immigrants can revive local economies and neighborhoods. In one chapter of Dignity, his painful study of “back row America,” Chris Arnade juxtaposes vicious complaints from white residents about Somali immigrants in Lewiston, Maine, with descriptions of the town’s “once-vacant downtown . . . now filled with stores run by and for the Somali community.” The Somalis have altered the racial and cultural complexion of Lewiston, but they have also altered downtown – for the better. One reason for welcoming the stranger is that they can have a net positive effect on “us.”
In Alastair’s telling, “we” are under threat from others. He cites “a great many studies” indicating “that large scale migration and diversity decrease values characteristic of healthy neighbourhoods, such as social trust.” But, as Alastair acknowledges, the underlying problem is that Western nations no longer enjoy a “thick common society” into which they can welcome newcomers. As Jim Rogers says in his contribution, Germany and other European nations “would be much better positioned to offer non-tumultuous hospitality to Syrian refugees were Germany’s ‘culture’ religiously thicker.” We can’t blame immigrants and refugees, or even the brokers of multiculturalism, for the fragility of our own neighborhoods. “We” have done that to ourselves.
We are in a time of unprecedented population shifts. Never before have so many people been on the move all at once. When we stay in the story, we can discern the Lord’s hand also in this. God erases nations by obliterating boundaries and sending invaders in. Should we be surprised God is breaking apart nations that defend abortion, the ultimate act of inhospitality?
Conserving “our” traditions is a good, but not the highest good. The highest good is the justice of God’s kingdom, concretely manifested, as Alastair says, in the “new international solidarity” of the church. Nearly two millennia ago, the church evangelized barbarians, who converted and laid the foundation for a new Christian civilization. That world has crumbled, and the modern West seems to be crumbling too. When we stay in the story, we can face this collapse with confident hope rather than defensive fear. Staying in the story, we know God shakes the world so that only the unshakeable things remain.
Peter Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute.
In his recent The Economy of Salvation, Italian economist Luigino Bruni observes that Hagar’s experience forces us “to read salvation history not only from the perspective of Sarah and Isaac, but also from that of Hagar and Ishmael.” While the Bible affirms laws and institutions, “they are re-dimensioned, blurred and sometimes even rejected by preference given to non-firstborns (Abel, Jacob, Joseph, David. . . ), to slave women who talk to God or a patriarch who is obeying his wife.” In particular, the spaces of the sojourner are the “spaces that the ‘needle’ of history passes through, creating the texture of life.”
Alastair Roberts’s Conversation starter shows we must take Bruni’s analysis a step further. The Hagar-Ishmael narrative isn’t a qualifying subplot to the story of Sarah and Isaac, nor is Joseph the first of Abraham’s seed to enter into Hagar’s experience. Rather, Hagar’s story alerts us to the fact that the main protagonists, Abraham and Sarah, are themselves sojourners, however much they momentarily act the part of settled oppressors. Isaac and Jacob are sojourners too (Genesis 26:3; 32:4), not to mention Joseph and Moses and Israel until they escape Egypt for the promised land. Even when they’re well-settled, Yahweh views them as “aliens and sojourners” in His land (Leviticus 25:23), called to love strangers because they were strangers (Exodus 22:21; Leviticus 19:34).
As Alastair says, “until Abraham and his descendants have recognized what was done to Hagar and have entered her experience, they can never move on.” Joseph is “the new Ishmael brought back into the family” to restore the family. Israel’s patriarchal pedagogy of sojourning and hospitality makes Israel Israel, a people whose history as strangers calls them to welcome strangers.
Throughout Scripture, hospitality to the stranger isn’t merely a personal moral duty. Nations and cities – like Sodom – are, Alastair says, “judged according to their hospitality. . . . Cruel and inhospitable nations will be severely judged by the God who hears the cries of the oppressed.”
After pouring biblical “foundations” for dealing with immigration and immigrants, however, Alastair builds the walls and furnishes the house mainly with extra-biblical materials. Halfway through, he turns from biblical theology to meta-ethics, as he sketches parameters for determining our individual, churchly, and national obligations to strangers. He lays out a series of overlapping distinctions – between the good of hospitality and its proper exercise, between abstract humanitarianism and Christian charity, between our posture toward the immigrant and our posture toward immigration.
These are important distinctions, and he’s right that there’s a difference between affirming the good of charity and determining how best to express charity. But one might suspect that the Bible has something to say to both sides of these questions. Alastair’s essay suggests the Bible provides a general narrative frame for our moral and political reasoning, leaving us to sort through the details more or less on our own. But we can’t know whether or not the Bible clarifies our specific moral obligations or offers insight into immigration policyunless we look.
One could extend Alastair’s biblical discussion by examining how Genesis’s history of sojourning and hospitality is institutionalized in the demands of Torah. It would be worth pondering the import of the repeated claim that ceremonial statutes apply to both alien and native (Exodus 12:19; Leviticus 16:29), or the grouping of “needy and alien” in the gleaning laws and elsewhere (Leviticus 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:14), or the fact that aliens and slaves share Sabbath with native-born (Exodus 20:8-11). We might fill out Yahweh’s demand to “love [the stranger] as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34) by asking what forms love takes elsewhere in Torah. (See Jim Rogers’ response for an example of biblical reasoning about the specific issue of national boundaries.)
As Alastair’s essay continues, he loses track of the trajectory he sets out so beautifully in the opening pages. Genesis teaches us to recognize ourselves in the stranger, to stand, as Alastair’s says, “in Hagar’s shoes,” but Alastair writes most of his essay from the viewpoint of the settled rather than the sojourner. How does the picture change if we look at today’s world through the eyes of Hagar and Ishmael? What policies might we formulate if we, like Israel, recognized the lands we occupy are ours only in trust? (I am reiterating one of themes of Rob Heimburger’s response.)
Alastair’s use of “we” is the telltale sign that he’s not staying entirely in the story. “Should we,” he asks, “restrict immigration of ethnic groups that have not historically integrated or assimilated to our societies as well as others?” That “we” is “we English” or “we Americans” or “we Germans.” It’s not “we Christians,” much less “we Christians who occupy both sides of a national border.”
Taking his stance with this national “we,” Alastair overlooks the positive effects of immigration. His worry over the “corrosive effects of multiculturalism” is too monolithic. Sub-Saharan African immigrants to the U.S., the U.K., and elsewhere are not culturally Western, but many confess the traditional religious faith of the West, more fervently than many residents of what used to be Christendom. Most of the new Pentecostal churches in London are African congregations, the African Redeemer Church of God has planted hundreds of churches in England over the past decade, and immigrants from Mexico and Central America have refreshed Catholic parishes in the U.S. “We Christians” needn’t be overwhelmed by these new arrivals because they’re already part of “us.”
Set religion to the side: Industrious immigrants can revive local economies and neighborhoods. In one chapter of Dignity, his painful study of “back row America,” Chris Arnade juxtaposes vicious complaints from white residents about Somali immigrants in Lewiston, Maine, with descriptions of the town’s “once-vacant downtown . . . now filled with stores run by and for the Somali community.” The Somalis have altered the racial and cultural complexion of Lewiston, but they have also altered downtown – for the better. One reason for welcoming the stranger is that they can have a net positive effect on “us.”
In Alastair’s telling, “we” are under threat from others. He cites “a great many studies” indicating “that large scale migration and diversity decrease values characteristic of healthy neighbourhoods, such as social trust.” But, as Alastair acknowledges, the underlying problem is that Western nations no longer enjoy a “thick common society” into which they can welcome newcomers. As Jim Rogers says in his contribution, Germany and other European nations “would be much better positioned to offer non-tumultuous hospitality to Syrian refugees were Germany’s ‘culture’ religiously thicker.” We can’t blame immigrants and refugees, or even the brokers of multiculturalism, for the fragility of our own neighborhoods. “We” have done that to ourselves.
We are in a time of unprecedented population shifts. Never before have so many people been on the move all at once. When we stay in the story, we can discern the Lord’s hand also in this. God erases nations by obliterating boundaries and sending invaders in. Should we be surprised God is breaking apart nations that defend abortion, the ultimate act of inhospitality?
Conserving “our” traditions is a good, but not the highest good. The highest good is the justice of God’s kingdom, concretely manifested, as Alastair says, in the “new international solidarity” of the church. Nearly two millennia ago, the church evangelized barbarians, who converted and laid the foundation for a new Christian civilization. That world has crumbled, and the modern West seems to be crumbling too. When we stay in the story, we can face this collapse with confident hope rather than defensive fear. Staying in the story, we know God shakes the world so that only the unshakeable things remain.
Peter Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute.
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