Immigration Article of the Day: Nonrefoulement: Responding to Asylum-seekers through the Prism of Subversive Stories: A Study of Three Trials of Innocence by Craig Mousin

“Nonrefoulement: Responding to Asylum-seekers through the Prism of Subversive Stories: A Study of Three Trials of Innocence,” a chapter in Furthering Interfaith Biblical Scholarship, A Festschrift in Memory of André LaCocque (Wipf & Stock, 2024), links biblical scholarship to asylum and refugee law to engage the critical issue of how nation-states respond to the contemporary demands of asylum-seekers.  The chapter focuses on Dr. LaCocque’s contention that the biblical narrative calls all who follow it to respond to a daily trial of innocence to do well or to not do well.  The first trial briefly explores the world’s failure to respond to refugees prior to and during World War II.  Subsequently, with the advent of the Refugee Convention of 1951 and the United States Refugee Act of 1980, the adopting nations established the second trial as individual asylum-seekers present their cases to determine eligibility for asylum and resettlement.   The initial promises of the Convention and the Refuge Act undergo a third trial as increased numbers of asylum-seekers flee conditions unanticipated by the drafters of the Convention including the consequences of climate change and exploitive extractive industries that frequently corrupt governments that repress their citizens. Extensive biblical scholarship regarding immigration and refugees focuses on the biblical call to welcome the stranger.  Although this chapter recognizes that imperative, it further explores the subversive stories that can encourage asylum-seekers, those who work with them, and rebut some of the arguments that white Christian nationalists employ to support policies of exclusion and deportation. 

 

KJ