More than an Event: Integrating Scholarship and Identity through the 2025 Symposium

For some, this year’s Symposium on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture began February 14 and ended February 15. For the North Park Bible faculty, this event requires over a year of planning and prayerful decision-making in field meetings. In addition to the logistical preparation for the two-day event, this year’s symposium topic, Immigration and Hospitality, required a great deal of personal reflection and integration for me as a recently hired faculty member and daughter of an immigrant.  

My preparation for the symposium coincided with the start of my journey at NPTS, joining A Migrant Journey: Scripture’s Call to Welcome the Stranger,  an immersive immigration discipleship experience at the border between San Diego and Tijuana. Partnered with Journey Home, the ECC’s Love  Mercy Do Justice team invited me and my colleague, Professor Armida Belmonte Stephens, to participate in this inaugural opportunity. At first, I was a bit taken aback; I had only just moved to Chicago and had not anticipated returning to a place I knew well in my formative years.  

From the age of eight to twenty-six, my parents took me and my sisters to the colonias of Tijuana monthly to minister at different churches. My father, who had grown up in the Bordertown of Juarez, instilled in me a need to read the Bible with the awareness of real-life marginalization and poverty. In returning to a place familiar from my youth, I could not image how God would use this experience and the symposium to launch me into a new chapter of my life and vocation at North Park Theological Seminary.  

In returning to the Mexican border, I was prompted by the Holy Spirit to examine my academic work in Old Testament studies. In this reflection I became aware that a border still existed between who I was before going to Scotland to pursue my PhD and who I have been trying to be as a scholar the past fourteen years. This journey revealed to me a well-defined boundary between my life and ministry before embarking upon my professional academic path and my life and ministry after.  

Following this immersive experience, I received an opportunity that invited me to begin integrating biblical studies with a renewed call to speak prophetically on immigration: participation in North Park Seminary’s fall panel, “Political and Hospitable: Engaging Neighbors.” My short paper on Jesus’ command to wash one another’s feet was my first experience integrating what had been two parts of myself: Latina and scholar. This journey of integration continued as I participated in the spring symposium, both offering a response to Old Testament scholar Dr. Daniel Carroll Rodas and teaching a for-credit course offered in conjunction with the event, guiding NPTS students into their own learning and integration. 

Immigration is a difficult topic to engage, and the topic of immigration policy reform is widely debated in church contexts. The United States’ relationship with the Latino/a community has been complicated since the time of western expansion. Because of this, many US citizens approach immigration as primarily a problem with migrants from our southern border, with special attention given to Mexicans. Although many migrants do come from Mexico, Central America, and South America, the truth is that immigration policies affect migrants from all over the world as well as those who are forced to migrate due to political and socio-economic instability in their respective countries.  

Our symposium speakers presented a clarion call to Christians living in the United States to view immigration not only as a social construct but through a biblical theology, providing a survey of the scriptural instances where God commands his people to extend hospitality to the vulnerable.  

Immigrants are among what some scholars call the “quartet of the vulnerable” (poor, orphan, widow, immigrants, Exodus 22:212–4; Deuteronomy 10:18; 24:17–22) —groups that were the first to be neglected when the children of Israel turned their backs on God (Isaiah 58:6–10; Jeremiah 7:5–7). Often idolatry preceded these injustices: injustice and idolatry go together, not only in the law, but also in the prophets (Isaiah 1:17; Zechariah 7:9–10). Jesus’ incarnation furthers God’s command to treat the marginalized with respect, dignity, mercy, and care. In Matthew 25 Jesus echoes what Yahweh says in the Old Testament: whatever you do to the most vulnerable in society, foreigner included, you also do to him (Matthew 25:40, 45). This command to care for the marginalized is echoed in the epistles of the New Testament as well as in the apocalyptic literature.  

Based on the principles that we can glean from the biblical texts of both Old and New Testaments, Christians are prompted not only to anchor their compassion and just actions toward immigrants, but to deeply root their hospitality to the stranger in an understanding of God’s grace, mercy, and justice.   

Even if US immigration policies fall short, God commands that his people would remain the same: obedient to his commands to love the stranger throughout the whole counsel of Scripture. In a democracy like the United States, there is also the opportunity for believers to reform immigration policies, so they are more just. Given today’s political climate, especially regarding immigration in the United States under the new administration, it is up to the Church to stay obedient to God’s laws concerning the immigrant above the laws of the land wherever those laws fall short of acting justly and respecting the dignity of all people who bear the image of God. 

One of the greatest gifts of teaching the symposium course was seeing North Park seminarians grow in their educational journey as well as in their spiritual discernment of how to integrate newfound knowledge. More than half the students left the symposium with a sense of urgency to answer the Spirit’s call to extend hospitality to immigrant populations. Certainly, all of them longed to investigate ways of beginning the conversation in their local churches and ministries regarding how to serve these vulnerable populations.  

My most notable memory is when a student asked if we could pause and ask the Holy Spirit to lead us in ways to advocate for and address the needs of immigrant populations in the United States. I join with this student and ask the Holy Spirit to lead us in our advocacy and hospitality toward our immigrant neighbors and siblings. Amen.