WE CAN all dream dreams, whether that’s Martin Luther King’s vision of a time when all God’s children shall be free, or what Suella Braverman called her “obsessive” dream to deport refugees and asylum-seekers to Rwanda. Those lining up at our borders are also seeking to live out their dream of a life elsewhere, for the betterment of their families, and often to escape persecution, torture, and death.
Barnabé Msabah is a refugee, a displaced person from the Democratic Republic of Congo, once an unaccompanied child, crossing many borders to get to South Africa, and now teaching theology and community development in Nairobi. In his book, shortlisted for the Michael Ramsey Prize, he interweaves his story with advocating a theology of holistic mission (“missio Christi”) and its practical application in what he calls Transformational Community Development.
He writes out of his African experience, and most directly for an African audience — one might say, congregation, given his homiletic style. He traces in scripture the stories of people on the move, the experiences of aspiration, powerlessness, and constant waiting known to every refugee, and somehow beneath them “the migrant Christ who traverses the human/divine frontier so as to break the boundaries that separate us from ourselves, and from God”. He finds in the life and teaching of Jesus the call to solidarity, unity, and mutuality, to break through the “foreignness” that we attribute to outsiders, and to see the other person as God sees them.
He is not afraid to criticise Africa, the part played by elites and South Africa’s xenophobia concerning refugees, but he does see common ground between the Christian gospel and ubuntu, the African belief in interconnectedness and interdependence, leading to hospitality and what he calls “Beatitudinal Care” or “God’s design for communal living”. I liked: we need to Africanise Christianity rather than Christianise Africa.
It is from this theology that he calls on the local church (“missio ecclesia”) to engage in Community Development, following the “See, Evaluate, Act” model. He implies that churches have put all their energy into spiritual development when they should also have been responding to those in need, including refugees and others who are excluded or pushed to the periphery. The Church should be a community of shalom where everyone is welcome. Above all, the gospel is about bringing hope.
He rightly calls on every church to be a welcoming place for refugees and others. It has been my privilege to confirm a large group of asylum-seekers from Iran who found such a home in a south-London parish.
His own context is also limiting, however. There is little about the larger challenges facing public policy on migration. In our General Election next year, the benefits that migrants, including refugees, can bring will be easily pushed out by the scare stories. It is expected that by 2050 the forced migration caused by environmental disasters will reach 200 million. And, in our more secularised Europe, the author’s direct appeal to Christian teaching will not sway many voters or the Home Office. Who, during the post-Christmas lull, will stop to remember the two refugees and their baby who escaped the massacre of the innocents by fleeing to Egypt?
The Rt Revd Michael Doe is a former General Secretary of USPG, now serving as an honorary assistant bishop in the diocese of Southwark.
The Wayfarer: Perspectives on forced migration and transformational community development
Barnabé Anzuruni Msabah
Langham Publishing £14.99
(978-1-83973-225-6)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49
