Loehe's Legacy and Borderless Solidarity

Destigmatizing Immigrants in a Xenophobic Nation

Abstract

Reading history is more than taking a linear approach to past events, and so the same is true in reading Loehe’s legacy. This essay juxtaposes the lived experience of twenty-first-century immigrants in the United States with Loehe’s ministry and mission to German immigrants in the nineteenth century to create the intercontextuality that highlights the differences and similarities between past and present and allows us to read current contexts through the eyes of the people. Such an approach interrupts our assumptions about others and the world, thus forming new possibilities for ecclesial resistance against dehumanizing discourses and xenophobic violence.