New Release: I Was A Stranger and You Took Me In
Pentecostal Responses to the Refugee Crisis
My colleague Lois Olena has edited a volume on Pentecostal responses to the global refugee crisis, and she generously invited me to contribute. You can get your copy at your favorite online bookstore.
While many theologians who attempt to offer some insight into how Christians should think about immigration rightly default to Jesus, I decided to look to his grandma. Ruth was a Moabite, which was not something to brag about given that the nation’s origin story was one of drunken incest. She came to the land of the people of God, and though she was poor, widowed, of unflattering heritage, and threatened with sexual violence, she found a home. And she found God.
My article is entitled, “Doing Liturgy With Ruth: Immigration and the Threat of Anti-Eucharist.” It’s a revision and expansion of a presentation I made at the 2019 Society for Pentecostal Studies and subsequently published in The Journal for Pentecostal Theology.
There’s a lot of wonderful reflection in this volume, so go get your copy. And don’t forget to read the forward by Congolese scholar Médine Keener, who the famous Craig Keener is married to ☺️.
If you order your copy through the Wipf and Stock website, you can get an exclusive 20% discount with the code SEP25 up until the 15th of this month.
Otherwise, here’s the link on Amazon.
Finally, below I’m linking a piece I wrote on my other Substack, Slow Burn Christianity with some further thoughts on how Christians and the American church should think theologically and biblically about immigration.
Please do share 🤲. This is important stuff.
