Robert W. Heimburger
https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/heimburger
Robert W. Heimburger is Lecturer in Christian Ethics and Theology at Cardiff University, Wales, UK.
Heimburger is a theologian of ethics and politics. His book, God and the ‘Illegal Alien’: United States Immigration Law and a Theology of Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2018), questions the circumstances that led so many to be deemed ‘illegal aliens’. The book explores U.S. legal history and responds with biblical and theological reflections on what it is to be an alien church, a nation, a humble guard of territory, and a recipient of mercy from neighbours.
Heimburger’s research with the Faith and Displacement Project at the Seminario Bíblico de Colombia (FUSBC) includes, with Christopher M. Hays and Guillermo Mejía-Castillo, ‘Forgiveness and Politics: Reading Matthew 18:21-35 with Survivors of Armed Conflict in Colombia’ (HTS Theological Studies, 2019), as well as co-authored curricula used around Colombia to enable the wellbeing of those forced from home by conflict and other forces.
Address: School of History, Archaeology, and Religion
John Percival Building, Cardiff University
Colum Drive
Cardiff
CF10 3EU
UK
Robert W. Heimburger is Lecturer in Christian Ethics and Theology at Cardiff University, Wales, UK.
Heimburger is a theologian of ethics and politics. His book, God and the ‘Illegal Alien’: United States Immigration Law and a Theology of Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2018), questions the circumstances that led so many to be deemed ‘illegal aliens’. The book explores U.S. legal history and responds with biblical and theological reflections on what it is to be an alien church, a nation, a humble guard of territory, and a recipient of mercy from neighbours.
Heimburger’s research with the Faith and Displacement Project at the Seminario Bíblico de Colombia (FUSBC) includes, with Christopher M. Hays and Guillermo Mejía-Castillo, ‘Forgiveness and Politics: Reading Matthew 18:21-35 with Survivors of Armed Conflict in Colombia’ (HTS Theological Studies, 2019), as well as co-authored curricula used around Colombia to enable the wellbeing of those forced from home by conflict and other forces.
Address: School of History, Archaeology, and Religion
John Percival Building, Cardiff University
Colum Drive
Cardiff
CF10 3EU
UK
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Papers by Robert W. Heimburger
This is the 31 Jan 2019 version accepted for publication in Theology in the September 2019 issue. It is not the published version.
Books by Robert W. Heimburger
As the alien emerges in medieval English law, where do migrants stand within God’s world? As U.S. Supreme Court Cases responding to Chinese migration make it possible to be an illegal alien, how can authorities govern immigration under God? As legislation enables nationals of neighboring Mexico to be called illegal aliens from the 1960s onward, how can neighbors practice justice and mercy?
A theology of politics points toward answers through readings of biblical passages from Genesis, Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Luke, and 1 Corinthians, read in conversation with Luther, Grotius, Barth, O’Donovan, and more.
In every age, the Christian tradition has affirmed that Jesus’ claim humbles and qualifies temporal government, confronting every human authority that sets itself up as ultimate judge of right and wrong and as final protector of a people’s wellbeing. Just as the good news of the kingdom of God has challenged empires and monarchies, it challenges the modern state. What defines the state, and at what points might the kingdom of God stand against the state and resist its pretence to power? Could there be a gospel for the state, some good news about the role the state might serve under the authority of Jesus Christ?
These questions prompted our conference on ‘The Modern State and the Kingdom of God’. We focused on two features of the state among many we could have chosen: the rule of law and the participation and representation of the people. We gathered lawyers, politicians and theologians to help us understand the state and interpret it theologically. A successful and scintillating day of discussion followed, and four of the papers offered that day are included in this booklet.
In the first paper, Julian Rivers calls us to conceive of the rule of law not as a quality of political institutions but as a virtue, the virtue of those who live lawfully. In the next paper, Christopher McCrudden points out significant areas of overlap between legal and Roman Catholic notions of human rights, just as he details opposing tendencies within these two ways of framing human rights. In the third paper, Joan Lockwood O’Donovan describes a dynamic of divine law and human freedom, disrupted so that coercive political judgment is needed, with a view towards our future redemption. In the final paper, Jonathan Chaplin offers a Christian case for the election of rulers in a constitutional democracy so that citizens cooperate with government in promoting the common good.
The conference also featured two papers which are not included here. As a former Member of Parliament involved in local politics in Leeds, the Rt Hon. John Battle spoke on ‘Service and the Local State: Compromise and the Virtuous Citizen’. Finally, theologian and Revd Prof. Bernd Wannenwetsch spoke on ‘Loving the Law?’, asking how we might love divine law and love human law.
Chapters by Robert W. Heimburger
Reviews of Heimburger, God and the Illegal Alien by Robert W. Heimburger
Book Reviews by Robert W. Heimburger
Susanna Snyder, Asylum-Seeking, Migration, and Church (Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), xvi+293 pp.
Kristin E. Heyer, Kinship Across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012), x+198 pp.
This is the 31 Jan 2019 version accepted for publication in Theology in the September 2019 issue. It is not the published version.
As the alien emerges in medieval English law, where do migrants stand within God’s world? As U.S. Supreme Court Cases responding to Chinese migration make it possible to be an illegal alien, how can authorities govern immigration under God? As legislation enables nationals of neighboring Mexico to be called illegal aliens from the 1960s onward, how can neighbors practice justice and mercy?
A theology of politics points toward answers through readings of biblical passages from Genesis, Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Luke, and 1 Corinthians, read in conversation with Luther, Grotius, Barth, O’Donovan, and more.
In every age, the Christian tradition has affirmed that Jesus’ claim humbles and qualifies temporal government, confronting every human authority that sets itself up as ultimate judge of right and wrong and as final protector of a people’s wellbeing. Just as the good news of the kingdom of God has challenged empires and monarchies, it challenges the modern state. What defines the state, and at what points might the kingdom of God stand against the state and resist its pretence to power? Could there be a gospel for the state, some good news about the role the state might serve under the authority of Jesus Christ?
These questions prompted our conference on ‘The Modern State and the Kingdom of God’. We focused on two features of the state among many we could have chosen: the rule of law and the participation and representation of the people. We gathered lawyers, politicians and theologians to help us understand the state and interpret it theologically. A successful and scintillating day of discussion followed, and four of the papers offered that day are included in this booklet.
In the first paper, Julian Rivers calls us to conceive of the rule of law not as a quality of political institutions but as a virtue, the virtue of those who live lawfully. In the next paper, Christopher McCrudden points out significant areas of overlap between legal and Roman Catholic notions of human rights, just as he details opposing tendencies within these two ways of framing human rights. In the third paper, Joan Lockwood O’Donovan describes a dynamic of divine law and human freedom, disrupted so that coercive political judgment is needed, with a view towards our future redemption. In the final paper, Jonathan Chaplin offers a Christian case for the election of rulers in a constitutional democracy so that citizens cooperate with government in promoting the common good.
The conference also featured two papers which are not included here. As a former Member of Parliament involved in local politics in Leeds, the Rt Hon. John Battle spoke on ‘Service and the Local State: Compromise and the Virtuous Citizen’. Finally, theologian and Revd Prof. Bernd Wannenwetsch spoke on ‘Loving the Law?’, asking how we might love divine law and love human law.
Susanna Snyder, Asylum-Seeking, Migration, and Church (Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), xvi+293 pp.
Kristin E. Heyer, Kinship Across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012), x+198 pp.