Karen González: Centering Immigrants in Our Christian Response to Immigration

Dec 13, 2022

Karen González, a Guatemalan-born writer and immigrant advocate, reflects on faith, belonging, and migration. She discusses reading scripture through migrants' eyes and the harm of assimilation. Conversation covers decolonizing faith, reciprocal hospitality, redistributing power, and normalizing migration. Practical examples show how churches can center immigrants rather than preserve host dominance.

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INSIGHT

Welcome Is A Starting Point Not The Finish

Karen González wrote Beyond Welcome for people who already care and need to move from welcome to kinship and advocacy.
She argues welcome often becomes an endpoint instead of a step toward solidarity and systemic change.

INSIGHT

Assimilation Harms; Integration Preserves

Assimilation is often learned indirectly as a way to gain acceptance by erasing parts of identity.
Karen says integration allows retaining language and culture while learning to navigate the new society.

ANECDOTE

Learning Indigenous Language Changed Her View

Karen studied a Mayan language and found Guatemalans often distance themselves from indigenous culture.
Her bicultural perspective helped her bring ideas about liberation and identity back to Guatemala.

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Many American Christians have good intentions, working hard to welcome immigrants with hospitality and solidarity. But how can we do that in a way that empowers our immigrant neighbors rather than pushing them to the fringes of white-dominant culture and keeping them as outsiders? We talk with Karen González about these questions, which are the themes of her new book Beyond Welcome: Centering Immigrants in Our Christian Response to Immigration.

A Guatemalan immigrant, González draws from the Bible and her own experiences to examine why the traditional approach to immigration ministries and activism is at best incomplete and at worst harmful. By advocating for putting immigrants in the center of the conversation, González helps readers grow in discipleship and recognize themselves in their immigrant neighbors. Accessible to any Christian who is called to serve immigrants, this book equips readers to take action to dismantle white supremacy and xenophobia in the church. They will emerge with new insight into our shared humanity and need for belonging and liberation.

Karen González is a speaker, writer, storyteller, and immigrant advocate, who herself immigrated from Guatemala as a child. Karen is a former public school teacher and attended Fuller Theological Seminary, where she studied theology and missiology. For the last 13 years, she has been a non-profit professional, working for organizations that serve refugees and other immigrants. She wrote a book about her own immigration story and some of the immigrants found in the Bible: The God Who Sees: Immigrants:The Bible, and the Journey to Belong. Her second book is Beyond Welcome: Centering Immigrants in our Christian Response to Immigration. She also has bylines in Sojourners, Christianity Today, The Christian Century, and others. She is also the co-host of the Latina-focused podcast Cafe with Comadres. You can reach her via her website Karen-Gonzalez.com or on social media at @_karenjgonzalez.

You can connect with Karen on her website, Twitter, or Instagram.

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