Sanctuary and Subjectivity: Thinking Theologically about Whiteness and Sanctuary Movements

The Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s was a movement led by white religious liberals that housed Central Americans fleeing dictatorships supported by the United States government, giving them a platform to speak about the situation in their countries of origin. This book focuses on the movement’s whiteness by centering the voices of recipients of sanctuary and taking their critiques seriously. The result is an account of the movement that focuses on the inherent the agential limitations of sanctuary and the struggles for agency by recipients. Using interviews with participants in the movement as well as auto-ethnographic research as the white pastor of a church in the New Sanctuary Movement, the author situates sanctuary as a site for theological reflection on some of the most pressing issues facing the church today – the possibilities of testimony, the Holy Spirit, ecclesiology, and mercy. In doing so, the author proposes a new theoretical framework for thinking about practice by introducing readers to Judith Butler’s theories of subjectivation and arguing for ethnographically engaged theology that is able to think beyond virtue and excellence towards an understanding of fugitivity.