Mission & Migration: December 2019

To talk about migration is to talk about identity, both individual identity and the collective identities of communities of faith. Forced migration characterized and shaped the early Anabaptist movement—a movement created, in part, to ensure religious freedom and the ability to practice faith as separate communities. This pattern of movement, originally meant to support a closed community, has resulted in a migration of theology, growing missions movements, and the spread of Anabaptism across the world. In this issue of Anabaptist Witness, authors explore ways in which migration has shaped identity as well as how identity has shaped migration and ways of being and belief, both in the past and the present. They also offer reflections on, and understandings from different perspectives around the world of, who we are as faith communities of migrants and people on the move.

Articles:

• Editorial by Saulo Padilla and Anna Vogt, Guest Editors
• "Brethren to America: Alexander Mack, Jr. (1712–1802) and the Poetic Imagination of a Pilgrim People" by Jason Barnhart
• "The Three Thousand" by Bryan Rafael Falcón
• "Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination and Venezuela’s New Song" by Peter Wigginton
• "Paul: The Very Worst Missionary" by Robert Thiessen and Anne Thiessen
• "Compasión por el extranjero" by Rebeca González Torres
• "The Immigrant—ֵ רּ (Ger)—in the Old Testament and the Formation of the People of God’s Identity" by Yamil Acevedo
• "Migración en la historia anabautista-menonita, con especial énfasis en Mesoamérica" by Jaime Adrián Prieto Valladares

Additional content is available at AnabaptistWitness.org.