New Testament Migrant Strategies

Just because one can argue that the New Testament writings constitute a kind of literary diaspora space, this does not mean that their migrant strategies for life as Christians in migration were identical. Psychologist John Berry’s work proves helpful for unpacking these strategies. Berry outlines four migrants’ strategies for interacting in their places of migration. He calls these four categories marginalization, separation, assimilation, and integration (Berry, 619).

Three of these strategies are readily observable in the New Testament writings. However, the strategy of assimilation is absent. Assimilation requires that migrants reject their home culture in favor of the host culture in which they find themselves. In twenty-first-century terms, this is the immigrant who intentionally loses her accent, forgets her native language, and claims only the nationality and culture of the nation in which she finds herself. Such assimilation does not exist in the New Testament canon; for, if it did, the writings would be pagan, extolling the virtues of the goddess Roma or the God Zeus/Jupiter. Indeed, an assimilationist of this time would have been found marching with the silversmiths of Ephesus crying out, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians” (Acts 19:28).

In retaining their monotheistic theologies, both Jews and Christians set themselves apart from the majority-pagan polytheism of the ancient world in ways that were seen as misanthropic by their neighbors, regardless of how much else they mimicked the cultural norms of their host country. There seem to have been some Christians who did aspire to assimilate. To do so, they claimed a higher knowledge that allowed them to participate in pagan religiosity in all of its forms (including eating meat sacrificed to pagan gods) while at the same time claiming the faith of the early Christian church (see 1 Corinthians 7; Revelation 2). Such practices were condemned by those whose writings are preserved in the New Testament as misguided at best and satanic at worst. In fact, no New Testament writing counsels migrant assimilation; none offers a theology of assimilation. In the face of migration, each of the New Testament writings, regardless of how much they appear to mimic the greater society, preserves some separation from that society.

Liminal, or as Berry calls them, “marginalized” migrants take as their response to migration the rejection of both their home culture and their host culture. To determine that a migrant writing counsels such a stance for its audience, one must show both its rejection of the home culture, which in the case of early Christianity is Judaism and/or temple culture, and its rejection of the host culture in which it finds itself, which in many New Testament writings is simply called “the world.” The Gospel according to John contains both of these kinds of counsel for its audience. Consider first this quotation:

Then Jesus said to the Jews/Judeans who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.…

… Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did, but now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are indeed doing what your father does.” They said to him, “We are not illegitimate children; we have one father, God himself.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here.… You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.” (John 8:31–33a, 39b–42b, 44a)

In this quotation, part of Jesus’ longer diatribe against the “Jews” or the “Judeans,” the author of John’s Gospel, through Jesus, is disavowing any cultural consonance with those who would seem to be his own people, his home culture. There is no plea, here, that those who self-identify as Jews/Judeans are of the same family tree as the community to which John is writing. Raymond Brown posits that John’s community has been forcibly removed from the synagogue worship out of which it sprang because of its assertion of the messianic nature of Jesus. This seems to suggest that the audience of John’s Gospel has separated itself from its home culture.

However, in turning from its home culture, John’s audience has not uncritically embraced its host culture. To the contrary. As part of the symposium dialogue in the fifteenth chapter, the Gospel of John records the following teaching of Jesus:

If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. (John 15:18–19)

Here, John’s Gospel is depicting Jesus, and through Jesus, his community, as rejected by its host culture, “the world.”

In all fairness, a careful reader of John realizes this at the very outset of the Gospel. In the first chapter, John describes the incarnate Word (logos) and the community of those who accepted him this way:

He [the Word/logos] was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:10–13)

Perhaps no verse better illustrates John’s liminality, the stance of a community leader—and thus of a community—rejected both by the world (host culture) and by his own people (home culture). The audience shaped by John’s Gospel reflects such a liminality, neither being part of the world nor part of the home culture, a stance that requires the community of faith to strike out into unknown territory, creating an ostensibly brand-new culture apart from either of these cultural anchors.

The Gospel according to John is joined by the Johannine Epistles (1, 2, and 3 John) and possibly the Gospel according to Mark in this liminal stance. However, most New Testament writings do not use this migrant strategy to interact with their home and host cultures. The Epistle of James is illustrative of a more popular strategy: separation. Consider the following:

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (James 1:27, emphasis added)

and

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. [Adulterous women]! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. (James 4:1–4, emphasis added)

Like the Gospel of John, the Epistle of James stands firm in its dismissal of the world. As in the Gospel of John, so here also the host culture is rejected. However, unlike John, James also says this:

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another, speaks evil against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. (James 4:11)

Law, in this case, must be understood as Torah, the law of James’s own people and community. James thus is not advocating a liminal migrant strategy. Instead, James is advocating a strategy of separation.

Luke Timothy Johnson has demonstrated that James is very possibly a letter written from the earliest Christians in Jerusalem, through the brother of Jesus, to the earliest diasporic communities of Jews/Judeans who have accepted Jesus as the Christ and son of God. From Jerusalem, James writes to migrant Christ-communities still worshiping in synagogues (James 2). He counsels the earliest believers to adopt a migrant strategy of separation: not to adopt gentile ways in their time of migration. Rather, they are to continue their adherence to the law, to be wary of accepting worldly ways, and to keep themselves unstained from the world.

The Epistle of James is not alone in this counsel. The Gospel of Matthew provides a similar strategy to its readers, almost until the Great Commission at the end; and even that commission is less about befriending the world and more about recruiting it to the “home culture” (Matthew 28). Likewise, the enigmatic book Hebrews, with its focus on Christian endurance, seems to counsel separation from the things of the world in favor of the “race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12). Jude, the often overlooked polemic toward the end of the canon, embraces this sort of strategy; and it is central to the theology of the Revelation to John with its admonition to “come out of” Babylon (Revelation 18). In each of these cases, the migrant strategy of separation calls the community of faith back to its roots and away from the world.

Liminality and separation define strategies in some of the more pivotal New Testament writings. However, the predominant migrant strategy within the literary diaspora space called the New Testament is accommodation. Consider, for example, these quotations from the writings of Paul of Tarsus:

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. (Gal. 3:27–29)

and

To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. (1 Cor. 9:20–22)

These writings indicate a shift in strategy. Paul’s overt inclusion of persons both from within and outside his own migrant culture, and his willingness to accommodate gentile inclusion in his ministry, suggests that he does not advocate a total avoidance of the gentile world. However, Paul simultaneously claims that his mixed community of Jews/Judeans and gentiles, a community comprising migrant Jesus-believers, somehow inherits the benefits reserved specifically for the Jews/Judeans: the covenant blessings of Abraham (Galatians 3). Paul thus not only invites “the world” in but also continues to embrace some of his home culture, a culture steeped in the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic law.

This Pauline migrant strategy I have termed accommodation, following sociologist Margaret Gibson, rather than using Berry’s term integration (Berry, 618; Gibson, 20). According to Gibson, accommodation is marked by “the deliberate preservation of the homeland culture, albeit in an adapted form more suitable to life in the host country” (Gibson, 20–21). To argue that Paul is engaged in accommodation and not integration is to argue that he has deliberately preserved the Jewish narrative while adapting it so that faith communities may include gentiles. The result is an uneasy tension of a migrant strategy that both accepts and critiques home and host cultures. This uneasy tension is most clearly evident in Romans 12 and 13. In chapter 12, Paul famously counsels, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2). However, in Romans 13, this same Paul calls for a certain amount of conformity to the world as a way to fully comply with the requirements of the Mosaic law. Here, I quote Paul at length:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. (Rom. 13:1–10)

Despite the counsel in Rom. 12:1–2, one must read Romans 13 as advice to conform to the world—at least in part—even as you also attempt to conform to the law. Here Paul, deliberately holding to the law, counsels the Romans to adapt a form of his adherence better suited to accommodate the host culture in which they find themselves and the home culture to which they must cling.

Paul is not alone in his use of the migrant strategy of accommodation. Along with the thirteen writings written either by him or by imitators of him, this strategy is adopted by the writer of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, and by the authors of the Petrine letters. This constitutes the majority of the New Testament writings, both by number of writings and by size of corpus.

These three migrant strategies—liminality, separation, and accommodation—reflect three competing New Testament canonical responses to the historical reality of migration and the literary trope of displacement encoded in this canon. It would be a mistake to read this description as though it were intended to denote some kind of progression from “unrealistic” to “realistic”; nor a decline from “purity” to “admixture.” Liminality, separation, and accommodation are survival strategies in the face of displacement and dispersion adopted by these different migrant writings. Each adds to the Pentecost-like cacophony (Acts 2) of the diaspora space called the New Testament.