Toward a Political Theology of Refugee Resettlement

Abstract

The author evaluates the current partnership between the church, religious NGOs, and the US State Department on refugee resettlement. In conversation with refugee studies, he teases out positive implications of and limitations in two prominent models of post-Christendom political theology, those of William Cavanaugh and David Fergusson. He then draws on the thought of Johann Baptist Metz and the practice of the Jesuit Refuge Service to suggest ways that a political theology of refugee resettlement might reform current practice and occupy a space between the theologies of Cavanaugh and Fergusson.