Welcoming the Stranger

Catalog description

This course will examine how ancient communities grappled with welcoming the stranger and how various communities negotiated interpersonal relations. In addition, the course will focus on how to articulate an ethical response to the issue of migration in light of the diverse theological and philosophical ethical perspectives on the topic. Key themes in the historical and religious traditions will include: the biblical representation of the ger (stranger); ancient comparative hospitality rituals; and legal discourse in rabbinic and contemporary Jewish sources. Key topics in the theological and philosophical ethical traditions will include: distinctions between forced migrants in theory and law– including internally displaced people, asylum seekers, refugees, economic migrants, and ecological/environmental migrants. These distinctions will be explored through both an empirical/legal lens as well as an ethical lens informed by the overlapping consensus of the post-war Universal Declaration of Human Rights tradition and Catholic Social Teaching.