Abstract
The migratory phenomena of our times are multiplying opportunities for interreligious and intercultural dialogue. What does it mean to be a church1 among different people who are struggling to find their place in one space? This chapter focuses on the various church models that have developed in the migrant context and on how they deal with or “see beyond” religious and social differences. Models are attempts to explain and explore actual experiences through conceptual maps or typologies. Four models of the church will be discussed—namely, the monocul-tural host church, the monocultural migrant church, the multiculturalist church and the intercultural church. These church models are not exclusive of each other, for in doing ministry with migrants, practices overlap, nor are they intended to be exhaustive; instead they are meant to invite further reflections from those who work with migrants. This chapter highlights the intercultural church as an emerging ecclesial vision or orientation toward which the other models can direct themselves.2
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Notes
For example, in response to the memorial regarding national parishes in 1886, the American archbishops state: “If the Church of God wishes to make true progress among us [in America], it cannot depend ‘exclusively’ upon European emigration, but must fix deeply its roots else where than this alone. Therefore, the Church will be neither Irish, nor will it be German, but American, and even more, Roman; since there is neither Jew, nor Greek,… but all are one in Christ Jesus.” “New York 17–12–1886 Corrigan a Simeoni,” in S.O.C.G. 1887, vol. 1026, f. 948v (orig. Latin), cited by Stephen M. Di Giovanni, H.E.P., “Historical and Canonical Aspects of the Pastoral Care of Immigrants in Late 19th cen. America,” in NCCB Committee on Priestly Formation and NCCB Committee on Migration and National Conference of Catholic Bishops, People on the Move: A Compendium of Church Documents in the Pastoral Concern for Migrants and Refugees (Washington, DC: Office of Publishing and Promotion Services, 1988), 36.
See Richmond Paul Bowen Williams, “Towards a Strategic Transcultural Model of Leadership that Enhances Koinonia in Urban Southern Africa: Synthesizing Multiple Model of Leadership that Transcends the SocioPolitical barrier within the Cities of Southern Africa” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of South Africa, 2006).
Doris Peshcke, “The Role of Religion for the Integration of Migrants and Institutional Responses in Europe: Some Reflections,” The Ecumenical Review 61, no. 4 (December 2009): 367–80.
Sharon Kim, “Shifting Boundaries within Second-Generation Korean American Churches,” Sociology of Religion 71 (2010): 198–122.
Birthe Munck-Fairwood, “Welcome Here? Responses to Migration from Churches in Denmark,” in Together or Apart?: Report from the Nordic Consultation on Migration and Changing Ecclesial Landscapes (Nordic Ecumenical Working Group on Migration in cooperation with Ecumenism in the Nordic Region [Ekumeniki Norden], December 2008), 2418–25.
Didier Bertrand, “Religious Practices of Vietnamese in Cambodia and Inter-Ethnic Relations,” Asian Migrant 10, no. 3 (1997): 91.
James S. Jeffers, The Graeco-Roman World of the New Testament Era: Exploring the Background of Early Christianity (Leicester: Inter Varsity Press, 1999), 85–86.
See Daniel Cho, “Is Multiculturalism Bad for the Church—Part 2: A Reflection on Church and Ethnicity,” Presbyterian Record, July 15, 2011, accessed February 2012, http://www.presbyterianrecord.ca/2011/07/15/is-multiculturalism-bad-for-the-church-part-2.
Frans Wijsen, “‘The Future of the Church Is In Our Hands’: Christian Migrants in the Netherlands,” in Postcolonial Europe in the Crucible of Cultures: Reckoning with God in a World of Conflicts, ed. Jacques Haers, Norbert Hintersteiner, and Georges De Schrijver (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 101. See also, “Multiculturalism in the Netherlands and the Murder of Theo Van Gogh,” Contemporary Review 286, no. 1669 (February 2005): 73.
See Susan Moller-Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1999); and Brazal and de Guzman, Intercul-tural Church, 78–79. See also the critique of multiculturalism in the “Living Together As Equals in Dignity” (white paper on intercultural dialogue issued by the Council of Europe Ministers of Foreign Affairs at their 118th Ministerial Session, Strasbourg, May 7, 2008), http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/intercultural/source/white%20paper_final_revised_en.pdf (accessed July 2012), 18–19.
United Church of Canada, What is the Intercultural Church? (Toronto: United Church of Canada, 2009), accessed February 2012, http://www.united-church.ca/files/intercultural/what-is.pdf. On major features of “interculturality” as identified by the International Network on Cultural Policy, see Annual Ministerial Meetings, “Intercultural-ity Moving Towards a Dialogue Among Nation,” International Network on Cultural Policy, accessed May 2005, http://www.f-duban.fr/Sitaduban/Master1/Plurinling_USA/ plurilinguisme_files/multiculturalism-in28326_1.html; see also OC International Ministries, “Leading your Church through Intercultural Transformation,” accessed July 2012, http://usmin.onechallenge.org/intercultural-helps/interculturaltransformation.
Peter Phan, “The Experience of Migration as a Source of Intercultural Theology in the United States,” in Christianity with an Asian Face: Asian American Theology in the Making (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003), 8–9.
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University, 1977; reprint ed. 1998), 83.
John B. Thompson, “Introduction to Bourdieu’s Language and Symbolic Power,” in Pierre Bourdieu, ed. Derek Robbins, vol. 3 (London: Sage, 2000), 184.
David Schwarz, Culture and Power (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1997), 101.
Gary Bouma, “Religion and Migrant Settlement,” Asian Migrant 18, no. 2 (April–June 1995): 41.
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 101.
Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
Pierre Bourdieu and L. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 136, cited by Daniel Franklin Pilario, Back to the Rough Grounds of Praxis: Exploring Theological Method with Pierre Bourdieu (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 237–38.
Néstor Medina, “Discerning the Spirit in Culture: Toward Pentecostal Interculturality,” Canadian Journal of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity 2 (2011): 137–38.
Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, Filosofar Para NuestroTiempo, 13, cited by María Pilar Aquino, “Feminist Intercultural Theology: Toward a Shared Future of Justice,” in Feminist Intercultural Theology: Latina Explorations for a Just World, ed. María Pilar Aquino and Maria José Rosado-Nunes (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007), 16.
Franz Xaver Scheuerer, Interculturality: A Challenge for the Mission of the Church (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 2001), 128.
Werner Kahl, “Encounters with Migrant Churches: Models for Growing Together,” Ecumenical Review 61, no. 4 (December 2009): 400–412.
Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People, Erga Migrantes Caritas Christi: The Love of Christ towards Migrants, accessed August 2006, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/migrants/documents/ rc_pc_migrants_doc_20040514_erga -migrantes -caritas -christi _en.html (hereafter referred to as EMCC).
Amira Ahmed, “‘I Need Work!’ The Multiple Roles of the Church, Ranking and Religious Piety among Domestic Workers in Egypt,” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 11, nos. 3–4 (September–December 2010): 362–77.
Orlando O. Espín, “Migration and Human Condition: Theological Considerations on Religious Identities and Unexpected Inter-religious Dialogues,” in Migration and Interculturality: Theological and Philosophical Challenges, ed. Raúl Fornet-Betancourt (Aachen: Missionswis-senschaftlichen Institut Missio, 2004), 183.
Orlando O. Espín, The Faith of the People: Theological Reflection on Popular Catholicism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1977), 113–14.
Sharon Kim, “Shifting Boundaries within Second-Generation Korean American Churches,” Sociology of Religion 71 (2010): 117.
Guillermo Gomez Peña, a performance artist residing in Mexico City and New York, replaces the “bankrupt notion of the melting pot” with the image of the menudo chowder. Guillermo Gomez-Peña, “The New World (B)order,” Third Text 21, no. 9 (Winter 1992–93), 74,
cited by Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 312. Employing Bourdieu’s framework, we can claim that the “chunks” that remain persist, not because they form the essential unchangeable core of the culture’s identity but because these are products of negotiations in a certain field of power relations.
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© 2016 Agnes M. Brazal and Emmanuel S. de Guzman
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Brazal, A.M., de Guzman, E.S. (2016). Seeing Beyond the Religious and Social Divide. In: Mannion, G. (eds) Where We Dwell in Common. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137503152_7
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