What the Bible Says About the Stranger

"Religion continues to be a powerful persuader in our societies. This is increasingly recognised in our post-modern world. One of the tasks of believers is to look to their foundational texts and see how the urgent human and ethical questions of the day are reflected in them. In the case of the Christian churches, our classic text is the Bible, which, significantly for our theme, is itself multi-cultural, both Jewish and Christian, in origin. The very collection itself is “trans-national”, in a manner of speaking.

What does the Bible have to say about the way foreigners and refugees are treated?

What does the Bible have to say about cross-cultural and cross-community issues?

Given that the Bible is both a reflection of human experience (static fact) and a resource for profound change (dynamic ideal), we find in the Bible both the fact of discrimination and ethical ideals which challenge and eventually undermine any abuse of other human beings on the grounds of race, religion, gender and so forth. Thus we may find for today material in the Bible which helps us to recognise discrimination and arms us in the struggle against it...

For our Irish context, where discrimination on the basis of religion has not been unknown, it seems important to add that, while here we are dealing primarily with racism, immigration and asylum seeking and therefore, in the first instance, with foreigners who come to our shores, cross-community issues are not at all to be excluded. It is often the case that the near neighbour is a greater stranger than the (safely) distant foreigner."

does the Bible have to say about the way foreigners and refugees are treated? What does the Bible have to say about cross-cultural and cross-community issues? Given that the Bible is both a reflection of human experience (static fact) and a resource for profound change (dynamic ideal), we find in the Bible both the fact of discriminationideals which challenge and eventually undermine any abuse of other human."

Quoted on page 3 from the Prefeace of What the Bible says about the stranger by Kieran J O’Mahony OSA. The Irish Inter-Church Meeting, AICCMR (All-Ireland Churches' Consultative Meeting on Racism) Belfast, 2nd edition, 2009.

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