Migration conference just the beginning for Columbia Theological Seminary

Seminary wants events to be part of progressive Christianity ‘finding its voice’

by Rich Copley | Presbyterian News Service

Columbia Seminary Assistant Professor of New Testament Raj Nadella and Silas Allard, Harold J. Berman Fellow in Law and Religion and Managing Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, were co-hosts of the Migration and Border Crossings Conference. (Photo by Rich Copley)

DECATUR, Georgia — Columbia Theological Seminary President Leanne Van Dyk and Assistant Professor of New Testament Raj Nadella were still a few hours away from the end of the Migration and Border Crossings Conference, but it was not too soon to start thinking ahead.

“This is not an ad hoc or one-off conference,” Nadella said of the multi-disciplinary event. “Every two years, our hope is to pick a topic that is very relevant and bring leading scholars in the field, partner with global and national organizations and host a big conference that will facilitate conversations about these issues.

“We want to become a leader in theological education that is setting the tone in thinking about these big issues.”

The Migration and Border Crossings conference was held in and around the suburban Atlanta campus Feb. 7-9, bringing together scholars and faith leaders from a variety of disciplines and religious backgrounds to discuss theological, political and ethical issues pertaining to immigration in the United States and around the world.

In addition, participants heard a lively keynote address from former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, saw a modern dance performance on immigration, and visited the neighboring town Clarkston, known as the most diverse square mile in the United States due to a large immigrant population.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate opens conference by turning the immigrant story around

Dancing about immigration

The event and the goal of becoming a leading theological thought center started with Nadella but enjoys enthusiastic support from the top of the seminary’s leadership.

“Two years ago, we had another important conference as well on biblical interpretation from a post-colonial perspective,” Van Dyk said. “This was the first time we were able to signal and live into some of our deep core commitments. This is the second one. We don’t know what the third topic will be, but we know this is part of our mission to bring people together and lift these issues up for the church and politics and artists and society at large.”

Nadella and Van Dyk are conscious the conference was lifting a Christian perspective many mainstream Americans are not used to hearing. Through workshops that explored immigration issues at a practical level to plenary sessions that challenged the morality of the United States’ current immigration policies, attendees heard a pro-immigration perspective that saw U.S. policies as rooted in institutional racism and at odds with Scripture.

“The church, in the United States, has power,” Nadella said. “For the longest time, progressive Christianity has ceded that public square to fundamentalists with absolutely detrimental results.”

“Disastrous results,” Van Dyk quickly concurred.

“I don’t think we can afford to do that anymore,” Nadella said.

Whether people attend church or not, Americans are exposed to Scripture, Nadella said, pointing to an example of former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions using Scripture last June to justify the Trump administration’s family separation policy.

“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” Sessions said, as quoted in the USA Today.

“The 2-3 verses from Romans 13 that he used to condemn refugees fleeing violence in their countries and to support anti-immigrant policies of the U.S. were never meant to support imperial oppression of vulnerable people,” Nadella said in an email. “On the contrary, Paul in his letters often critiques the Roman empire and its policies of oppression of people at the margins.

“The Bible, as a whole, is full of stories about refugees and immigrants. Gospel texts depict Jesus as a refugee and God as a stranger and equates hospitality to strangers with embrace of the divine (Matthew 25).”

Migration conference closes with call for ‘spring cleaning of the spirit’

Columbia Theological Seminary President Leanne Van Dyk addresses the audience before the closing keynote at the Migration and Border Crossings conference. (Photo by Rich Copley)

Van Dyk observed, “There has been some interesting analysis lately that progressive Christianity is finding its voice again and speaking up and saying, ‘No, this is not the vision of the faith. This is not the imagination that we want to foster in this society. We have something to say.’”

And, as important a topic as immigration is, it is not the only topic Columbia would like to give a platform. The vision the seminary leaders have is to present an event like Migration and Border Crossings every two years. Nadella knew there was interest as soon as the opening keynote by Herrera was finished and people began to come up to him suggesting future keynote speakers and various topics.

Suggestions included climate change and race relations in the U.S., but nothing is close to decided. For the moment, Van Dyk and Nadella wanted to savor what they and their colleagues and students had accomplished, pulling off the seminary’s biggest conference to date, with more than 200 participants.

“It’s been a real stretch,” Van Dyk said. “We don’t have the infrastructure in the seminary to pull off an event like this. But yet, we did it with volunteers and a team and Dr. Nadella just continually prodding for excellence. He kept wanting to make the hospitality better, the communication better, the website information better.

“So he has set the bar high, and next time around, we need to build better infrastructure so we can meet that bar that he’s set.”