Christian Hospitality & Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear

I learned a lot in reading Matthew Kaemingk’s new book, “Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear.” Kaemingk makes the case that that evangelical Christians shouldn’t only tolerate Muslim people in America, they should defend their right to religious freedom, to cultural distinctiveness, and to Muslim institutions. 

I have the privilege of being on a panel with Matthew Kaemingk at the Evangelical Convening on Immigration in Washington DC to be held in November, 2018. Luke J. Glanville and I engage with his work very positively in our forthcoming book: Kinship with Refugees: A Biblical and Political Theology. 

The front cover is slightly misleading, leading me to think that the book is about the present crisis of global displacement (68.5 million people and growing), and, specifically, the pressing need to provide a home for Muslim people who are fleeing violence. While Kaemingk’s book makes room for extending a welcome to Muslim refugees, the book is a broader argument for Christian pluralism: Christians ought to advocate for the voice of all minority belief systems in the public square, including Muslim voices. 

While Kaemingk’s audience is American evangelicals, Kaemingk spends most of his time in the society and theology of the Netherlands. The present rise of the nationalist right with its anti-Islamic platform and its relationship to secular liberalism is brought into conversation with a movement from 100 years earlier in that country, Kuyperian Calvinism. Abraham Kuyper led a theological and political movement called Christian pluralism in the late 1800s that brought about significant constitutional change. 

Kaemingk brings a critical lens to the dominant belief-structure in Western nations, of secular liberalism. Back in the 1980s, secular liberalism in Europe defended multi-culturalism and diversity. However, through the 1990s Europe became a pressure cooker of simmering fear, confusion and hate, which exploded in the rise of the nationalist-right. More broadly, Western Liberals (among whom I awkwardly and gingerly belong) cherish a diversity of ethnicity and culture, yet there is often not space for a diversity of thought and of beliefs. Is there space for Islam’s traditional view of family and sexuality in Western cities? When any belief structure—such as secular liberalism—becomes dominant in a culture, it tends toward uniformity, also insisting that its own worldview is exclusively taught and multiplied, Kaemingk argues. Kaemingk also scrutinizes Christian fundamentalism, that would seek to impose a Christian worldview on society at large. It is Christ, not the church, who is the Lord of society. And Christ has gifted society with a variety of cultures, along with their diverse wisdom, traditions, institutions. 

Christian pluralism teaches that Christ, as creator and Lord, has given the various cultures their rituals, traditions, and institutions as gifts. Because Christ as Lord has given the various cultures within a society their distinctive qualities, neither the church nor a secular government has the right to take them away. Christ is Lord, not the church. For this reason, the church ought to advocate strongly for the voices of minority communities, such as the Islamic community, to be represented in the public square, shaping the discussion and challenging the majority voice. 

The final third of the book invites Christians to engage in rituals of worship and of action that engender a deep and practical love for our Muslim neighbour. Kaemingk tells stories of Christian communities that have been transformed by engaging in mutual relationship with their Muslim friends. 

As with any book, there were moments of disagreement for me as I read. For example, while Kaemingk is inviting us to spread our table for Muslim immigrants, he also states a number of times not only that borders are necessary but also that it is necessary for them to be closed from time to time. For, without borders, a nation has is no stability and identity from which to welcome. While Kaemingk has a point here, more nuance would be helpful. He could have pointed out that while we tend to assume that national borders are a permeant state of nature, in fact many borders as they stand today are a post-WWII phenomenon. They are a very recent historical construction that were, by-and-large, masterminded by powerful Western states in the mid-20thcentury. Perhaps this should make us wary of assuming that we have a right to close our borders entirely. Also, if the massive displacement of some Islamic populations today is the result of foolish walls that Western nations have waged well away from their own shoreline, what does this say about our closed doors? And, if the instability in some Islamic nations is caused by outrageous trade rules of Western nations, what does that say about our borders? I have no doubt that Kaemingk would agree with these questions - one book can’t do everything. 

Another question I was left with as I close the book is that while Kaemingk hints that there are dangers and pitfalls inherent in an Islamic worldview, he never expands on this. In a book that advocates so strongly for Muslim faith and institutions within a Christian frame, it would have been helpful to face squarely some of these dangers. This is especially so, as Kaemingk argues that the failure to acknowledge these pitfalls was an error of liberal secularism in the Netherlands during the 1980s.

Nonetheless, I heartily recommend “Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear,” and I am looking forward to meeting the author in a month’s time. . .