Engaging in the Work of Repair: Responsibility Ethics as a Guiding Model for Christian Responses to Migration

Abstract

As the world faces climate change, war, and other violence, migration has become an ever present reality. Conflicts over how to respond abound, yet too rarely have we sufficiently considered the history of how we got here and how that history might shape a just response. Building on the work of theologians who have focused on a more relational understanding of migration ethics, this paper offers a responsibility ethics framework, paired with reparative justice, as a way forward. This framework is offered especially to Churches and other Christian groups as a tool for considering how to respond to migrants in their midst. Through this framework, Churches are encouraged to follow the lead of migrants, to take on a posture of learning in order to more fully understand the history and present reality of migration, and to aim for radical solidarity through which more just relationships might be built. The U.S. Sanctuary Movement of the 1970s and 80s is offered as an example for how Churches might go about putting this framework into practice in their own contexts.