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“Christ is No Stranger Here”: Disrupting Advent with Central American Migrant Narratives

In Fall 2018, more than 2,000 people from Central America began walking to the southern border of the United States to seek asylum from violence and poverty. Their walk from Honduras became a major political issue in the US’s midterm elections. President Trump often spoke at rallies and wrote on Twitter about the “migrant caravan” as full of “criminals” and a threat to Americans’ safety and economic wellbeing. That semester, graduate students at Princeton Theological Seminary were studying liberation theology and the immigration crisis in a homiletics course titled, “Oscar Romero and the Gospel of Liberation,” taught by Andrew Scales. In addition to engaging the work of Romero, the contemporary work of Salvadoran journalist Oscar Mart ınez introduced us to richly detailed accounts of Central American immigrants’ struggles and hopes. Two students, Emily Wilkes and Klaas Walhout, organized an evening worship service called “La Violencia del Amor [The Violence of Love]: A Service of Justice and Peace.” More than fifty people gathered on campus to lament and pray at the service on December 7, 2018 just as the “migrant caravan” was on its way to the southern border of the U.S. “La Violencia del Amor” reinterpreted the Advent story through Central American migrant experiences. Worshipers participated in a politically provocative liturgy that challenged racist rhetoric about Central Americans with an alternative claim of Christ’s radical solidarity with migrants. In the words of Archbishop Romero, “Christ is no stranger here” among people who flee extreme violence and poverty. The theological insights of Salvadoran martyrs Ignacio Ellacur ıa and Oscar Romero grounded the primary claim of the worship service: Jesus Christ reveals his presence today through the narratives of the members of the migrant caravan. We propose that Advent offers liturgical opportunities to disrupt and resist oppressive political rhetoric with an ecumenically generous theology of Christ’s solidarity with Central American migrants. This article presents three liturgical signs utilized in the December 2018 worship service that reflect this reinterpretation of the Advent story with contemporary narratives. After a brief summary of relevant theological insights from Salvadoran theologians, we will explore these signs: (1) the representation of the Holy Family as disappeared migrants, (2) the reading of a Salvadoran woman’s testimony with excerpts from Romero’s homilies and Advent-related Scripture passages, and (3) sending worshipers to engage with undocumented immigrants at a local detention center. Finally, we propose new directions for considering Advent themes as a compelling opportunity to reinterpret Christian worship as a vulnerable act of resistance to authoritarian immigration policies.