In recent years in America, issues related to refugees have become part of the national consciousness and conversation. All too often, these issues are over-politicized and efforts to find reasonable ways forward become stymied by self-focused partisanship. In the process, congregations lose their sense of clear-eyed calling to care for the vulnerable as Christians wonder whether they must choose between two extremes of open borders or turning away and ignoring those in danger. In the confusion, the dignity of displaced people is easily forgotten and the opportunity for host-nation believers to connect more deeply with their own Christian pilgrim identities through interactions with refugee-pilgrims is lost. This is a tragedy in many ways, but one that can be remedied.

I have often thought that any discussion of the refugee program in America would benefit from impartial outside voices which are not part of the two-party system or even part of America in any way. Emily Choge is such a voice, writing An Ethic of Hospitality: The Pilgrim Motif in Hebrews and the Refugee Problem in Kenya as a clarion call to the Kenyan Church (and by implication, the Global Church) to embrace the refugees in their midst not as objects of pity and suspicion but as brothers, sisters, and teachers…

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