In die Skriflig / In Luce Verbi
ISSN: (Online) 2305-0853, (Print) 1018-6441
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Original Research
Church, narrative, community and
identity in times of migration
Author:
John S. Klaasen1
Affiliation:
1
Department of Religion
and Theology, Arts and
Humanities Faculty,
University of the Western
Cape, Bellville, South Africa
Corresponding author:
John Klaasen,
jsklaasen@uwc.ac.za
Dates:
Received: 24 July 2020
Accepted: 30 Sept. 2020
Published: 25 Nov. 2020
How to cite this article:
Klaasen, J.S., 2020, ‘Church,
narrative, community and
identity in times of
migration’, In die Skriflig
54(1), a2662. https://doi.
org/10.4102/ids.v54i1.2662
Copyright:
© 2020. The Authors.
Licensee: AOSIS. This work
is licensed under the
Creative Commons
Attribution License.
Migration is perceived by many communities as a threat to national unity, social cohesion,
nationality or common identity. This article is an attempt to address the following question:
How does or should the church as a narrative community respond to migrants? Within the
South African context, xenophobic attacks and protests directed to migrant workers are two of
the visible phenomena which seem to suggest that migrants are an important social
phenomenon for peaceful co-existence. I will investigate the church as a narrative community
and its role towards migrants. The identity of the church is situated within a narrative and the
care towards migrants is influenced by this narrated community.
Keywords: narrative; church; identity; immigration; migration; the other; xenophobia;
narrative; church community; eucharist.
Introduction
How does or should the church as a narrative community respond to migrants? Migration is
perceived by those in power as one of the most threatening social factors to the global community.
The threat of losing national identity, disturbing monocultural societies, the uncertainties of the
unknown and migration involves the loss of identity, meaning, familiarity and economic
sustainability. This four-pronged loss is a perceived threat to world peace and the future of the
generations to come:
… the presence on South African soil of so many immigrants from all over the world and the implications
of their presence in the job market, as well as the problem of the country’s scarce resources, raise
controversial comments and debates. One notion, or unsubstantiated belief held by many South Africans,
is that immigrants from north of the country’s borders are taking South Africans jobs. (Kalitanyi & Visser
2010:376)
The xenophobic violence that took place in South Africa in 2008 is a manifestation of the perceived
losses of a segment of the population. There has been many more recent reports of xenophobic
attacks and threats in the newspapers and other official reports. Whilst many of these reports
have focussed on the physical violence against immigrants, few have reported on the sufferings
that displacement brings to the strangers and the landless:
Displacement is about disorientation and the existential pain of transition. In the migrant and refugee
crisis people have been forced out of their ‘natural habitat’ and have become strangers in a strange land
in which the social and political codes are difficult to read. (Louw 2019:218)
It is not only the migrants that experience a sense of loss, but also the host nation. ‘Immigration
has inevitably a destabilizing impact on the constellation of traditional views on what a nation
and citizenship is about’ (Louw 2016:3). Xenophobic attacks and the destabilisation of communities
should be critically engaged with, so that the complexity of migration is problematised.
I will investigate the church as a narrative community and its role towards migrants. Narrative is
the movement of capacity building and agency making to critically engage distorted meanings of
identity and meaning making. The church community is a narrative community where migrants
challenge the construction of their own identity and that of the church community.
Narrative and identity
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There has been a growing interest in narrative in disciplines such as psychology, development
studies, religion, theology, history and sociology. Whilst this contribution seeks to add to the
corpus of literature about the use of narrative in theology, I will draw on the use of narrative in
psychology. In the field of theology, the biographical outline of narrative is comprehensively
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recorded in publications such as L. Gregory Jones’, ‘Art
Narrative Theology’, (1993); Bernd Wacker’s Narratieve
theologie? (1977); George Stroup’s The promise of narrative
(1981); and Theology and narrative: A critical introduction (1982).
Smit (1990) maintains that:
Party narratiewe teoloë sal sê dat ’n mens die vraag wie ’n mens
is, of wie ’n groep mense is, dit wil sê vraag na die identiteit van
mense of van groepe van mense, veel beter kan beantwoord deur
stories oor die mens of mense [te] vertel, as deur filosofiese,
logiese definisies te probeer gee [Some narrative theologians claim
that the question who you are or who a group is, can be answered much
better by telling stories about people than giving philosophical, logical
definitions] (p. 110 [author’s own translation])
In his works such as Vision and Virtue (1981), and other
publications such as The Peaceable Kingdom: Primer in Christian
ethics (1983), the influential Christian ethicist, Hauerwas,
illustrates the correlation between identity and narrative.
Identity, for Hauerwas, is about agency and character that is
formed by narrative in a community. Identity is not so much
about one universal phenomenon such as reason, but about
what we accurately learn from the community:
Appeals of agency as a characteristic of the self cannot in
principle guarantee our ‘freedom’. All determination, since our
very ability to know what we have done and to claim our
behaviour as our own is dependent on the descriptions we learn.
There is no contradiction between claims and sociality, since the
extent and power of any agency depends on the adequacy of the
descriptions we learn from our communities … our ability to
‘have character’ does not require the positing of a transcendental
freedom, rather it demands a recognition of the narrative nature
of our existence. The fundamental category for ensuring agency,
therefore, is not freedom but narrative (Hauerwas 1983:43)
According to Hauerwas, to know the self is to place the
narrative of the self in the broader narrative of God. Narrative
shows the self and the rest of the world as creatures dependent
on God. Narrative also places the self as a historical being
with other beings and therefore the self is inextricably linked
with the community. God’s revelation, Jesus Christ and his
relationship with the church mirrors the covenant relationship
of God and the people (Klaasen 2012:109–110). This history is
the narrative of the church.
This history is told in a certain kind of community. Deeply
influenced by John Howard Yoder’s critique of philosophical
ethics, Hauerwas (2007:151) asserts that ‘the church is an
alternative politics’. He (Hauerwas 1983) further claims that
what differentiates Christians:
… is a willingness to belong to a community, which embodies
the stories, the rituals, and others committed to worshipping
God. Such a community, we believe, must challenge our prideful
pretentions as well as provide the skills for the humility
necessary for becoming not just good, but holy (p. 35)
The self is not an atomistic, absolute independent reduced to
a single phenomenon such as reason; instead, the self is
transformed and formed within ‘the presence of others’.
Agent, referring to identity, is a person who has the capability
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Original Research
‘… to be called from myself to another’ (Hauerwas 1983:45).
The self is not created by its own independence, but the
interdependence of the self and the other. In this sense,
freedom is not more independence, but the kind of
relationship of mutual trust that fosters mutual enrichment
and reciprocal development. Interdependence is not
biological in nature like the kind we find between parent and
child, but from a theological perspective, the sacrament of
baptism makes people free and connected as equals
(Hauerwas 2012:300).
Müller, an African theologian and one of the foremost
narrative theologians in our day, embeds identity in
narrative. Identity is beyond the visible, biological and
autonomous individual. As he shifts from the socially
constructed approach to the postfoundationalist approach to
theology, Müller asserts that narrative leaves identity fluid,
changeable and dynamic. The postfoundationalist approach
places the self in a relationship with the other that influences
the self. Müller (2011) claims that:
The postfoundationalist approach forces us to listen firstly to the
stories of people in real life situations. It does not aim to describe
merely a general context, but confronts us with a specific and
concrete situation. (p. 3)
Further, quoting Van Huyssteen (2006:10), Müller (2011:3)
writes that persons, as:‘… embodied persons, and not
abstract beliefs, should be seen as the locus of rationality. We,
as rational agents, are thus always socially and contextually
embedded’.
Using research as an example, Müller (2017:88) asserts that
the story of the researcher overlaps with the researched
matter, and that this perceived state of weakness becomes the
strength of the researcher. Müller opines that a narrative
approach takes a poststructuralist position. To emphasise the
interconnectedness of the self with the knowledge about the
subject, Müller (2017) quotes Richardson and St. Pierre
(2005:962):
… knowing the self and knowing about the subject are
intertwined, partial, historical local knowledges … This position
also draws the researcher into the dynamics of an ever-changing
and fluid identity. Narrative research does not leave one
unchallenged or unchanged. (p. 88)
Like Hauerwas, Müller contends that the self is not static or
unchanged. The self is not restricted to one identifiable
constant like abstract reason. The self is constructed in a
community with a narrative. The self is contextually formed
and has the capability of discerning what the values and
morals of the community are. Both Hauerwas and Müller
regard agency as constitutive of self. The self is not about
abstract and dogmatic beliefs, but consists of both being and
doing. Both Hauerwas and Müller claim that community is
indispensable for identity, although Hauerwas’ community
is less open than Müller’s community. Nevertheless, the self
is interdependent with the other and regards the other (coresearcher and presence of the other) as identity forming and
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meaning making. Both academic scholars shifted from liberal
individualism to communitarianism.
Narrative and community
Narratives and community are interweaved. The community
finds identity through the narratives that are told, shared,
and applied. Whether an individual or group, identity is
formed within the community who finds commonality in the
narratives of the community. Citing Stroup (1984:133),
Meylahn (2003) asserts the claim that a community uses its
narratives to understand its past, experiences, historical
events, visions and dreams:
A community is a group of people who have come to share a
common past, who understand particular events in the past to be
of decisive importance for interpreting the present, who
anticipate the future by means of a shared hope, and who express
their identity by means of a common narrative. (p. 122)
A community is inextricably connected with common
experiences that are embedded in the narrative. As such, the
community comprises the common experiences that are
delineated by symbols, rituals and habits; the community is
also open to growth, enrichment and potentialities. When
community is linked to narrative, the constants of the
community are fluid, flexible and organic (growth).
Community is a space and place where:
The self is never in isolation, but as a social being develops in
interaction. The self is neither above the community nor
suppressed through subordination or coerced into an identity
that is alien to the self. The self becomes in relation to other
selves chooses the good as the self in relationship with other
selves (Klaasen 2012:113)
The individual is not alienated or dominated by the
community, but grows through mutual and reciprocal
enrichment. The self is not absolute independent, but
narrative provides the opportunity to transcend the
boundaries of division and separation. By imagination, I
refer to the suspension of the fixed atomistic individual to
discover new creative images of the self: what can I look like,
be like, act like, or become like? Ricoeur (in Fodor 1997:157)
advances for a break in the engagement so that a secondorder continuity can take place. I contend that identity is in
continuous formation and takes place within a community of
selves who relate to a narrative. Freeman (2014) rightly
maintains that:
Original Research
necessarily linear, but a process of looking back and forth that
gives meaning to the experiences of the community with the
idea of who we ought to be. The excerpt below from the story
of a poor blind man from the famous South African Truth and
Reconciliation hearing, illustrates the power of telling stories:
Ms Gobodo-Madikizela: Baba, do you have any bullets in you as
we speak? Mr Sikwepere: Yes, there are several of them. Some
are here in my neck. Now on my face you can really see them,
but my face feels quite rough, it feels like rough salt. I usually
have terrible headaches. Ms Gobodo-Madikizela: Thank you,
Baba. Mr Sikwepere; Yes, usually I have a fat body, but after that
I lost all my body, now I am thin, as you can see now. Ms
Gobodo-Madikizela: How do you feel, Baba, about coming here
to tell us your story? Mr Sikwepere: I feel what –what has
brought my sight back, my eyesight back is to come back here
and tell my story. But I feel what has been making sick all the
time is the fact that I couldn’t tell my story. But now I – it feels
like I got my sight back by coming here and telling my story
(Krog 1998:30–31)
Telling the story in the presence of the other, whether the
other is part of my community or not, is the opportunity to
create a liberating future. Moreover, telling the story provides
the space to make sense of one’s experiences and gives
meaning to the lived experiences that would otherwise have
eluded the self and the potential to get one’s sight back.
Fodor (1997) avows:
In short, it is through the act of narrating that we learn how to
negotiate our world, acquiring – as we tell and retell our most
determinative stories – a certain ethical dexterity, a particular
finesse in our moral judgements. (p. 157)
The past is indispensable to the formation of the self. Whilst
the past does not have to remain absolutely the same, it does
inform the present and the future. What kind of past informs
the present? Historical facts that remain unchanged,
perpetuate an unchanged present, having less potential for a
dynamic creative future. Conversely, a narrated past that is
told through different selves, opens new possibilities for
growth and enrichment. In this regard, Taylor (1992) contends:
To the extent that we move back, we determine what we are by
what we have become, by the story of how we got there … And
as I project my life forward and endorse the existing direction or
give it a new one, I project a future story, not just a state of the
monetary future but a bent for my whole life to come. This sense
of my life as having a direction towards what I am not yet is
what Alasdair McIntyre captures in his notion … that life is seen
as a ‘quest’. (p. 48)
Rather than thinking of narrative mainly in terms of its
orientation to the past, I have tried to suggest that it bears upon
the future as well: the process of rewriting the self is at one and
the same time a process of articulating the self-to-be, or the self
that ought to be. At the same time, rather than thinking of
narrative mainly in terms of this category of the self. I have tried
to suggest that narrative is also very much about the other-than
self, about the ends-and the goods-that are operative in the
process at hand … the category of the Other is primary; that is, it
comes before the self. (p. 13)
Selves have the unique ability to expand beyond the
immediate boundaries. The future is both to be explored and
in the making. ‘In the making’ refers to the agency of humans
to respond to the different alternatives or options that the
future presents. Selves can shape the future by identifying
alternatives or options and responding with the maximum
information about the future. Van den Berg and Ganzevoort
(2014) proclaim that:
Both narrative and community have the interconnection of
past, present and future as a continuum. Time is not
… our expectations for the future are to a high degree
performative by nature. We create a future in as much as we try
to predict it. This may seem problematic in light of the scientific
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ideal of objectivity, but it fits quite nicely in a more constructionist
epistemology. More than that it allows us to develop desirable
future scenarios. (p. 169)
We have the two tensions of past and future, and self and the
other. These two tensions are not mutually exclusive or
antagonistic. They function in a creative tension that is
interlinked to expand the horizon and transcend the present
state of identity. The interconnectedness of the community
and narrative creates the space and time for the moments,
pauses, suspension or weaving of truthful identity. The other
becomes the trigger that causes the self to gaze and see the
self for who the self is created to be.
Migrant, the other and identity
Migration refers to both human and non-human movement.
Although many definitions of migration abound, it generally
refers to the movement of humans from one place to another
and, in this case, from one country to another because of
economic, social, political, religious or environmental
reasons. The main reasons for migration in the last decade
have been the destabilising of countries and nations because
of wars, economic hardships and political intolerance. A
nuanced and broad definition of migration that I will use for
this study is ‘the movement of people across country … lines
within the African continent for the purpose of establishing
a new place or seeking peace and stability’ (Kalitanyi &
Visser 2010:377).
The number of immigrants grew considerably from 6545 in
2002 to 142 800 in 2013. This indicates a 39% increase between
2003 and 2013. More than half of the number are from other
parts of Africa. ‘This number of migrants has to be taken as
an estimate because the number of migrants to South Africa
between 1994 and 2001 ranges between 2.5 and 5.0 million.
However, the number of migrants from South Africa exceeds
5.0m (it is estimated to be up to 9.0m) (Consortium for
Refugees and Migrants in South Africa 2008)’. In 2010, the
number of immigrants totalled 7% of the country’s population
of 54.4m. This phenomenal increase in migration within
Africa is contrary to popular belief that migration from Africa
is towards Europe. ‘The problem is that such ideas are based
on assumption, selective observation or journalistic
impressions rather than on sound empirical evidence’
(Flahaux & De Haas 2016:2). These assumptions are fuelled
by sensationalist to attach the African continent to human
trafficking, boat overcrowding that leads to deaths at sea and
drug trafficking. There are currently about 4.2m immigrants
and 300 000 refugees from Zimbabwe in South Africa (Laczko
& Appave 2013). Although data and studies to determine the
number of immigrants varies and differs greatly, the rapid
increase of immigrants to South Africa became the focus of
attention with the rise of xenophobic attacks in 2008. It was
reported that, during that time, at least 67 people were killed
and 670 were wounded. In addition, approximately 150 000
people were displaced from where they lived, resulting in
some families being split, depending on their safety and
available accommodation. Within a few weeks, millions of
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Original Research
rands of damage was caused to property that either belonged
to or was rented by foreign nationals (Segatti & Landau
2011:10). More recent protests, such as the protest of truck
drivers over the employment of foreign drivers from other
parts of Africa, is another depiction of the conflict between
South Africans and non-South Africans. Headlines such as
‘Interdict granted against truck driver strike over employment
of foreign nationals’ (News24 07 July 2020) is indicative of the
perceived threat that immigrants pose for citizens of South
Africa. In response to the xenophobic attacks of 2008, Hansen,
Jeannerat and Sadouni (2009:187) asked the question that
underlies the fear, violence, suspicion and alienation of South
African inhabitants: ‘How can one make a legitimate claim to
being a part of South African society … Who can be a fully
entitled citizen, and who shall remain a temporary migrant
and visitor?’
For the most part, the conflict was not about economic
opportunities or the provision of health facilities, but it was
about who might lay claim to the resources and opportunities.
It was about identity. Timber (2005:3 in Kalitanyi & Visser
2010:367) maintains that, instead of competing for economic
opportunities and scarce resources, immigrants create jobs
and even provide jobs for South Africans. The following
story illustrates the many successes among immigrants in
South African:
Bezuidenhoud (2000:5) reports that it is not too long ago that a
Nigerian immigrant, Michael Inegbese, was selling potato chips
on a pavement near Cape Town’s central taxi rank. Just five
years later, the 35-year-old accountant, who arrived in South
Africa in search of a better life, owned a successful business
selling cell phones and accessories in a city-centre shop. Now he
is house-hunting: ‘I am looking to buy property, maybe get
married’. He is also about to start an Internet café, and hopes to
increase the number of his SA employees from five to ten.
(Kalitanyi & Visser 2010:382)
A comprehensive study by the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development and International Labour
Organization (OECD/ILO) (2018) concluded:
That foreign-born individuals can positively affect the fiscal
balance of a developing economy. In both 2001 and 2011,
foreign-born workers contributed more than they received
under the two alternative scenarios for the respective years …
In comparison, revenue collection from the native-born
population covered slightly more than the value of public
expenditure in 2001
Both migration policies and conflict between migrants and
the host people is not necessarily about economic and social
benefits, but about identity. It is about how migrants affect
the nature, norms and values of a nation. If migrants are
regarded as a threat to the identity of a host nation, then there
will always be potential for conflict. Whereas if migrants are
perceived to add value to identity formation, then the
presence of migrants is opportunity for truthful identity and
peaceful co-existence of difference without separation. It is
my contention that religion can facilitate the peaceful
existence of migrants and host nations. The church, as the
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embodiment of the mission of God, can provide the space
and time for people characterised by differences without
separation. The church through its narrative of suffering and
redemption does mission when it tells the story of Jesus
Christ who was born, raised, died and resurrected in order
that all humanity may live in a mutually enriching
relationship with each other, with the non-human community
and with God. The church tells a narrative that expands
horizons, transcends differences and weaves barriers into a
fluid, flexible whole.
The church, narrative and identity
The church understands its identity by the stories that have
been passed down and retold within the community. It is
from these stories that the gathered community derives their
identity. Christians draw from the narratives of the church to
make their experiences intelligible and give meaning to their
behaviour and actions. To give meaning to his beliefs, Cone
(1975) rightly refers to the story of the church – the story of
Jesus Christ:
If someone ask me, Jim, how can you believe? What is the
evidence of truth? My reply is quite similar to the testimonies of
the Fathers and Mothers of the Black Church: let me tell you a
story about a man called Jesus who was born in a stable in
Bethlehem. He went throughout … Galilee preaching that the
Kingdom is coming, repent and believe the gospel. The Kingdom
is the new creation where the hungry are fed, the sick healed and
the oppressed liberated. It is the restoration of humanity to its
wholeness. This man was killed because of his threat to the order
of injustice. But he was resurrected as Lord, thereby making
good god’s promise to bring freedom to all who are weak and
helpless … All I can hope or wish to do is to bear witness to it, as
this story leads me to openness to other stories. (pp. 116–119)
The story of Jesus is told and retold by different people in
various ways on different occasions and in different forms.
The facts might not remain the same, but the impact, the
formation of the teller and the hearer takes place. The story
of Jesus and the story of the church gives meaning to
questions like ‘who are we?’ or ‘who am I?’ The Christian
story answers some of the questions which the cosmological
story cannot answer. It is precisely because the church uses
an open-ended story to make sense of where persons come
from and how persons came into being that the church has a
unique contribution to make during times of crises such as
migrancy.
This is further supported by Conradie (2008) when he
stresses that:
God’s work may be understood as a narrative, and immense
story, a drama. Christianity is essentially a historical religion.
The God of Christianity is a God of history … Christian faith
may be understood not as a set of beliefs or propositions, but as
an attempt to capture the meaning of the story, to discern the
presence of God in history from within our particular situation
as it is embedded in history. Accordingly, the church is a storyshaped and story-telling community and Christian worship is
the continued recital, proclamation and celebration of this story
through which the ‘dangerous memory’ (JB Metz) of the passion
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of Jesus Christ is kept alive. Telling the story is both an act of
remembrance and, since the story is still unfinished, also of
anticipation. (p. 29)
The Christian story is relived in the drama of the Eucharist.
The Eucharist is a sacrament that depicts God’s work through
Jesus Christ in the world. The Eucharist is a gathering of
people or a community who listens to the story of Christ’s
passion and resurrection, and are thereby reminded of their
agency, of their identity. The Eucharist is an assembly of
those who by their baptism participate in the narrative that
confirms their calling in the church and the world. Zizioulus,
a prominent Orthodox theologian, regards the ecclesia as the
divine body where personhood (identity) is formed. God is
person and personhood in the identity of humans. This
implies that humans are not individuals, but are formed in
relationship with each other. The other is primary for the
formation of the person. For Zizioulas, the community, where
personhood is formed, is the ecclesia. Personhood entails a
relationship with God, the other and the rest of creation.
‘Personhood implies the freedom to be oneself, it means the
freedom of being the “other” and the freedom to live with the
“other”’ (Otu 2012:58), and:
… this freedom is not freedom from the other but freedom for the
other. Freedom in this case becomes identical with love. God is
love because he is Trinity. We can love if we are persons, that is if
we allow the other to be truly other, and yet in communion with
us. (Zizioulus 1994:17)
Three derivations can be made from divine personhood.
Firstly, the person develops identity through relationship;
secondly, freedom is freedom with the other and from the
other; and thirdly, personhood is creative when it comes to
creating the Other (Micallef 2019:229–230).
The mission of the ecclesia is faithfulness to God’s mission
which is embedded in community and, according to
Hauerwas and Zizioulus, in a specific ecclesial community.
Those who participate in this community adopt an identity
that derives from the telling of the narrative that the
community gets its identity from. The identity of the
community and its members are not absolute, static or
unchangeable. The identity is formed whenever one tells and
hears the narrative of the church. The narrative of the church
makes sense of the particular experiences through the past.
The narrative also points to the future, and the plot of the
narrative is never fully realised as absolutely complete. The
ecclesial narrative draws the hearers and the teller of the
narrative into moments of pause and imagination, which
raises the following question: Who ought I to be?
In conclusion, some markers for the
church’s response to migration
Migrants are not a threat to the identity of persons or
communities. The church’s narrative welcomes migrants as the
other. Those who participate in the narrative of the church,
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share a common narrative that makes their experience
intelligible. The open-ended narrative of the church welcomes
the migrants as the other who provides the pause in the
identity of the host nation. This does not mean that the
identity of the hosts is threatened to dissolve or to be
discarded as a false identity. A pause of identity is what
Ricoeur refers to as mimesis – an accrual of an action or
conduct’s meaning (Fodor 1997:155). The pause is an action
that extends the identity of both the hosts and the migrants
into a greater sense of identity.
Through symbols and metaphors, the Christian story is in a
better position than the cosmopolitan story, because it is not
limited to the lived objectified experiences. The architecture,
symbols, rituals and metaphors that form part of the ecclesia
are means to the transcendence of the lived experiences and
objective meaning. The other draws the self into a non-static
state with mutually enrichment as the constant.
The plot of the church’s narrative is the content of mission
towards the migrants. Salvation of all people as the core
mission priority of the church is freedom for the other and
self. It is not freedom from migrants, but freedom for
migrants. Freedom does not imply self-realisation, but to
be in communion with one’s hosts. Freedom in the sense of
the mission of the church does not mean difference that
leads to alienation or isolation. Freedom means that
difference exists and is acknowledged within connectedness
and interdependence.
The church’s narrative brings different narratives together through
its critical engagement with its own narrative. The church’s
narrative is not only about remembering, but also about what
is in the making and ‘in anticipation’ (Conradie 2008):
There is a crossing over from the one to the other as well as
continuation. In such an understanding of narrative, the one
does not dominate the other, but two narratives engage critically
to form morality. (Klaasen 2012:115)
The narratives of the migrants are lifegiving moments for
both the host people and the migrants. Their stories are not
absolute or timeless, but the narratives give meaning in the
new particular that they find themselves in.
The Christian community is one of agency. The identity of the
community is not restricted to being. Being and doing is
inextricably bound in the narrative of the church. The church is
faithful to the narrative of Jesus Christ when it exercises its
agency as affirmed by the baptism and ordination within the
community – a common narrative. Baptism is a calling to
participate in the narrative – telling and doing of the church. In
baptism, being and doing are the hallmarks of identity. With
these hallmarks, being and doing, there is continuity of the plot.
The agency is not any effort to be involved with migrants, but
it is a particular type of agency that was formed within the
church community. Such agency is aware that the self is not
absolute independent, but that interaction with migrants is
both a calling and a vocation. Agency is the gift to know the
http://www.indieskriflig.org.za
Original Research
narrative rather than the ability to do according to one’s own
strength.
Acknowledgements
Competing interests
The author declares that he has no financial or personal
relationships which may have inappropriately influenced
him in writing this paper.
Authors’ contributions
I declare that I am the sole author of this research article.
Ethical consideration
This article followed all ethical standards for carrying out
research.
Funding information
This research received no specific grant from any funding
agency in the public, commercial, nor not-for-profit sectors.
Data availability statement
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data
were created or analysed in this study.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of
the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or
position of any affiliated agency of the author.
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