Author Isaac Samuel Villegas is an ordained minister in the Mennonite Church USA and a community activist for immigrant justice in his hometown of Raleigh, N.C., and elsewhere. He was born in California to a Costa Rican mother and a Colombian father.
Villegas experienced what it meant to live in a racialized world when, as a child, his family was pulled over by government agents at a checkpoint on a desolate stretch of a California highway. His father was taken a short distance away for questioning, and their van was searched by agents and canines. About the experience, Villegas writes: “Accents rendered us suspect. Skin color made us eligible for interrogation. There, on the side of the highway, the dogs and their handlers taught me my racial difference.”
In his gut-wrenching narrative, Villegas shares what he learned throughout a decade of pastoral ministry and community activism, including how he and others in their church community embraced the sanctuary movement, a historical Christian tradition that offers refuge in churches to people who fear for their lives.
Villegas notes that his book is not an analysis of immigration policies worldwide: “I focus on what I’ve experienced and the people I’ve met while engaged in our collective struggles for immigrant justice here in my American homeland. … I tell the stories of ordinary people—with and without U.S. citizenship—who profess their devotion to each other through their steadfast love.” Villegas shows readers demonstrations of love in the streets as activists remember people who died in the borderlands, acts of hospitality in migrant shelters, stories of endurance in detention centers, and kindness shown in cooking meals and providing solace to people confined to church buildings in order to save their lives.
The author’s impassioned writing is a call for the church to rise up and seek justice. Villegas writes, “The theme of this book is my relentless hope for God’s redemption, personally and politically, in our churches and our society. These pages are prayers for heaven to transfigure the earth. Prayers of repentance for our collective harms, and healing for our political woundedness.”
Migrant God, though concluding on a note of biblical hope, is not an easy read. But it’s a necessary one. In fact, dare I say, the book is essential reading, as it urgently appeals to Christians, no matter where they live or their sphere of influence, to hear afresh what it means that “the Spirit of God dwells with people on the move. A migrant God for migrant life.” (Eerdmans)
About the Author
Sonya VanderVeen Feddema is a freelance writer and a member of Covenant CRC in St. Catharines, Ontario.