Embracing Asylum Seekers and Refugees: Jeremiah 29 as Foundation for a Christian Theology of Migration and Integration

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Jer. 29 offers three principles for a constructive theological approach to migration and integration in which both hosts and migrants have obligations to embrace others across enduring lines of difference. This view supports and extends earlier work by Luke Bretherton. In sum, it contends that Jer. 29 and its reception in Christian thought outlines an obligation for Christians to advocate for and actively support strategies that enable migrants to live in integrated social contexts where positive engagement across enduring lines of difference can replace a climate likely to produce neo-national movements and exclusionary migration policies with one that has the potential to foster cohesion, wellbeing, and mutual flourishing.