Jesus the Refugee

How should Christians respond, both in theory and practice, to the growing numbers of forcibly displaced people in the world? What theological resources can Christians use to guide their thought and action in the contemporary international refugee crisis? D. Glenn Butner Jr. addresses these questions in his most recent book, Jesus the Refugee: Ancient Injustice and Modern Solidary. A systematic theologian whose first two books are on Trinitarian doctrine is perhaps not whom you might expect to turn next to the topic of forced migration. But this is a welcome sign of the growing awareness that Christian thought must be both deeply rooted in theological categories and thoroughly engaged with—and useful for—issues of contemporary concern.

In this book, Butner offers a cutting-edge contribution to the growing field of Christian refugee ethics. Starting from the biblical account of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph’s experience of forced migration (Matthew 2), he asks what the holy family’s flight to Egypt might have looked like in the contemporary political context. This involves a consciously anachronistic thought-experiment that treats Herod and the Roman empire in parallel with the USA, the European Union, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Butner’s thought-experiment is not merely a matter of intellectual curiosity. Its goal is to raise awareness of the systemic injustices in the current refugee regime by showing how much harder it would have been for the holy family in the present day than it was in the 1^st century. They would have faced the challenge of trying to cross militarized borders, fortified with guards who do not shrink from violence to prevent immigrants from entering. Although they would have qualified as refugees under the official definition of the 1951 Refugee Convention, modern-day lawcourts are unlikely to have recognized them as such due to the lack of documentation and the discrepancies in the historical account of their flight (the same discrepancies that lead biblical scholars to doubt its historicity). In sum, “If the holy family was seeking protection from Herod through the refugee system today, it would be unlikely they would ever receive it, either waiting in a camp or urban area for years on end in hopes of resettlement, facing violence that prevented them from seeking asylum as provided for in the law, or else choosing to live as undocumented rather than navigate the system” (96).

Why is there so much hostility to refugees today? Because “the citizens of many potential host nations see refugees as a threat to national security or to the national economy” (99). But are these fears justified? Butner gives an impressive array of evidence to the contrary. Studies show that immigrants are no more likely (and often less likely) to commit crimes than native citizens (100-5). Refugees are responsible for an insignificant proportion of terrorist activity (109-13). The impact of refugees on the national economy—a third common concern—is a highly complex question without any straightforward answer. Butner does uncover a fascinating statistic: the average household in California, whether of immigrants or citizens, receives more government money in services than it contributes in taxes—this imbalance being partly compensated by other sources of government revenue such as tourism and corporate tax (121). This shows both how easy it is to manipulate statistics to make immigrants look good or bad (according to one’s political agenda), and how hard it is to get satisfying answers to the questions surrounding refugee economics. In sum, the political and ideological rhetoric that portrays immigrants as a dangerous threat to economy and security is an unfair and untrue depiction, a misrepresentation of the facts.

What are the ethical implications of all this? Butner focuses on two: Christian solidarity with refugees, and the obligation of states whose actions caused forced migration to provide restitution. Solidarity takes several forms. It must be incarnational (168-75), meaning provision for the basic material needs of refugees as well as physical proximity to them. It must also be institutional (175-86), entailing a reform of the international refugee regime and of the national policies of developed nations. Butner proposes six concrete policy reforms, including an “immediate increase of refugee ceilings in most European and North American countries” and an expansion of the legal definition of a refugee beyond the narrow scope of the 1951 Convention (183-4). Where the question arises of who to prioritize, the logic of restitution demands that a nation give special privilege to refugees created by its own foreign policy decisions. Finally, solidarity can be conflictual (186-94), challenging misinformation about immigrants, contending against racist prejudices, preaching on the biblical injunctions to care for the immigrant, and taking political action against anti-refugee policies and governments.

There is only one place the book seems lacking, which has to do with the relationship between church and state in determining a nation’s public and foreign policy. It is not straightforwardly obvious that Christians ought to contend for governments to impose Christian values on all its citizens. History has some dark stories to tell about what happens when powerful religious institutions take control of governments and execute their agenda through them. The question of in what ways and to what extent Christians should compel secular governments of a pluralist citizenry to enact Christian immigration values raises some complex and challenging issues of which this book shows little awareness. Notwithstanding this small flaw, overall the book is not only an excellent and timely contribution to scholarship, but is also highly accessible, written in a free, easy-flowing style that avoids academic jargon. This gives it the additional benefit of being useful as a teaching tool, a well-researched and up-to-date “introduction to Christian refugee ethics” for students. It is as such that I intend to use it in the future.

Barnabas Aspray is a teaching fellow at the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford.

Barnabas Aspray

Date Of Review:

July 29, 2023