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What Would Radical Hospitality at the Border Look Like?

Jennie Belle, Former Immigration and Farmworkers Director · July 25, 2014 · 1 Comment

This past week I have been focusing on the crisis of the thousands of refugee children at the border who are being held in detention centers. I have blogged about praying for these children and sending them letters, and distributed an e-bulletin about ways your congregation can support them. All of these suggestions are centered around showing hospitality to children who have crossed into the United States without their families. My suggestions have included donating money, clothes, writing letters and holding them up in prayer. But what if we were called to do more? The idea of “radical hospitality” is one that differs drastically from ordinary practices and goes beyond expectations. What would it mean not to just welcome these children into our country, but to receive them with revolutionary generosity.

Practicing radical hospitality is a demanding undertaking. It requires us to question the moral dimension of our spiritual practices — how we receive others and stand in solidarity with them — especially among people who are on the margins of society, or in this case not integrated into our society. One example of a place practicing this type of radical hospitality is Maryland. This week, Governor Martin O’Malley and a group of faith leaders agreed that thousands of immigrant children would be welcome into Maryland and housed in foster homes and other small settings, rather than large centers as the government has proposed. This sort of response from both the faith community and government leaders is a prophetic witness to the transformative power of hospitality.

Radical hospitality has not only social but also political and economic implications. If every state demonstrated hospitality like what is happening in Maryland, we could house all of the children on the border. Instead of limiting our practice of hospitality to outreach and charity, why can’t we exercise our commitment to justice by resisting unjust structures of power and becoming living sanctuaries of God’s love? Consider ways that we could exercise radical hospitality, whether it is individually fostering a child, congregationally welcoming groups of immigrants in need, or collectively as a state following in the example of Maryland. Radical hospitality is imperative because we live in a world in which children need homes and communities of support, and in offering this our faith becomes deeper and our world grows fuller and richer.

Filed Under: Blog, Homepage Featured Tagged With: Children & Youth, Good Government, Immigration, Prophetic Voice, Religion & Society

Jennie Belle, Former Immigration and Farmworkers Director

About Jennie Belle, Former Immigration and Farmworkers Director

Jennie was born and raised in Savannah, GA. She moved to Texas for her undergraduate education at Rice University, during which time she studied in Mexico, Peru and Argentina and participated in service projects in Central America. After graduation she moved to Spain for a year to teach English. Jennie then came to North Carolina for a dual degree MDiv/MSW graduate program at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill where her work focused on advocating for farmworkers and organizing churches for social justice. Recently graduated, Jennie is excited to use these skills in her role at the Council of Churches as she works to help improve conditions for immigrants and farmworkers in the state.

Jennie lives in Durham and attends First Presbyterian Church. In her free time she enjoys dancing, distance running, traveling, walking her dog, and planning her upcoming wedding. Jennie can be reached at: jennie@ncchurches.org.

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Comments

  1. AvatarHans Christian Linnartz says

    July 27, 2014 at 8:58 pm

    Thanks, Jennie, for encouraging a response that is radical – i.e., life-challenging for those who heed the call. While rallies, letter-writing, and lobbying campaigns show movement in the right direction, I worry that we way too often ultimately think that the solution to a problem is to “get the government to do the right thing.” Dirty, personal involvement is more the way of Jesus, as best I understand it.
    My wife and I are weighing how we might be called to respond to this challenge.

    Hans

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