I read the book Beyond Welcome: Centering Immigrants in Our Christian Response to Immigration, by Karen González (published 2022).
I really enjoyed this book. It's about how we have to move beyond a viewpoint where "we" are helping "them," as if immigrants are helpless and can't do anything and don't have anything to teach us. Instead, we need to learn from them, value their perspective, read bible passages through the lens of immigration rather than centering a white American point of view, have immigrants in leadership in our churches and our outreach organizations, etc.
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About the author
González was born in Guatemala and immigrated to the US as a child. There are many places in the book where she talks about her own experiences, her identity as a Latina woman and as an immigrant in the US, her feelings about what it means to be an immigrant, and how those feelings have changed throughout her life. (For example, her ideas about what it means to be a "good" immigrant, and her ideas about assimilation, and how those views have changed.)
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Assimilation vs integration, in the bible stories of Joseph and Moses
The book discusses many bible passages through the lens of immigration. I think this is great; this is something I want to pay more attention to when I read the bible. I think, in my experience, it's easy to feel like all the bible characters were over there in the desert in the Middle East, as if it's just all one culture. We don't realize the ways that bible characters might have felt out of place when they moved to a different country, the ways they tried to fit in, difficulties with foreign languages, etc. There is a LOT of migration in the bible. There are a lot of interactions between characters from different nations- much of it is conflict and war, but also we have characters like Ruth. She was a Moabite woman who came and lived among the Israelites, and Boaz (an Israelite man) made sure she was allowed to gather food from his field without anybody bothering her, and eventually they got married, and this is a great romantic story that everyone loves, even though God commanded the Israelites not to "intermarry" with other nations.
I think, for white American Christians who have never had the experience of being a minority, feeling out of place in an unfamiliar culture, struggling to understand the language that everyone else is speaking, they often don't even notice when bible characters are in situations like that. Immigrants notice that kind of thing. We need to learn from immigrants when we read the bible.
Here's an example from the book: In Genesis 37 and 39-50, we read the story of Joseph. His brothers sold him as a slave, and he was taken to Egypt. In Egypt, he eventually worked his way up to being second-in-command to Pharaoh, because he had the ability to interpret dreams, and predicted that there would be 7 years of famine, and so Pharaoh wanted him to be in charge of storing food to get ready for this famine. A lot of things happen, I'm just giving a short version here, eventually his hometown is also affected by the famine, so his brothers come to Egypt to buy food, there is some drama, and eventually he reunites with his family.
In Genesis 47, we're in the middle of the famine, and the Egyptian people are desperate because they've already spent all their money to buy food. So they tell Joseph to take their livestock in exchange for food, and he does that. Then, later, they need food again, so they tell him to take their land, and take them as slaves, in exchange for food, and he does that.
(To me this reads not like a true story, but like somebody asked "why is it that Pharaoh owns all the land in Egypt, except for the priests' land?" and then somebody made up this origin story.)
What Joseph did was, uh, kind of messed up. Authoritarian dictator behavior. He exploits the Egyptian people, during the famine, forcing them to give up everything and even sell themselves into slavery. Even though it was their food in the first place, that the government had collected during the 7 years of plenty, that he was then selling back to them.
"Beyond Welcome" asks, why would Joseph do this? Could it be because, even though he had lived in Egypt for a long time, and had basically assimilated, he still felt that he needed to prove his loyalty to Pharaoh, or else people would think he wasn't Egyptian "enough"? As immigrants, there is pressure to fit in, to go along with unjust systems that exist in the country you have immigrated to. You don't want to stand out. You don't want people to see that you're different. So you don't take a stand and challenge things that are clearly wrong.
Then the book contrasts this with the story of Moses (starting in Exodus 2). Moses was an Israelite, born during the time when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. As a baby, he was saved by the daughter of Pharaoh, who then raised him as an Egyptian. But when he grew up, he saw that his people were suffering, and (okay I'm simplifying the story a little bit) he took action and went to Pharaoh and said "let my people go" and brought them out of slavery.
Moses was not Egyptian, but he grew up in the world of the Egyptians, and totally understood how to navigate that world. But he also maintained his identity as an Israelite, and made the choice to help the Israelites, taking a stand against the oppression of Egypt. This is called "integrating" rather than "assimilating"- learning about the culture of the place where you live, gaining the skills to live in that society, but still valuing your identity, from your place of origin. Don't sacrifice your identity and values just for the sake of "fitting in."
Immigrants can bring this kind of "outsider perspective" - they can see the problems more clearly, because they haven't lived their whole lives with the idea that all of it is "just the way it is."
Both Joseph and Moses lived a significant part of their lives in a culture where they were outsiders. Joseph "assimilated" and participated in the the Egyptian government's oppression of its people. Moses "integrated" and gained skills to navigate Egyptian culture, but also challenged the aspects of Egyptian culture which were wrong.
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This book had a lot of very insightful things to say. I plan to post some more quotes from the book in future blog posts.
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