Sojourners Meaning

[Fermina Enge]

EarlyChristians spoke about themselves as resident aliens, strangers, and sojourners, asserting that otherness is a fundamental part of being Christian. But why did they do so and to what ends? How did Christians' claims to foreign status situate them with respect to each other and to the larger Roman world as the new movement grew and struggled to make sense of its own boundaries?

Aliens and Sojourners argues that the claim to alien status is not a transparent one. Instead, Benjamin Dunning contends, it shaped a rich, pervasive, variegated discourse of identity in early Christianity. Resident aliens and foreigners had long occupied a conflicted space of both repulsion and desire in ancient thinking. Dunning demonstrates how Christians and others in antiquity capitalized on this tension, refiguring the resident alien as being of a compelling doubleness, simultaneously marginal and potent. Early Christians, he argues, used this refiguration to render Christian identity legible, distinct, and even desirable among the vast range of social and religious identities and practices that proliferated in the ancient Mediterranean.

Through close readings of ancient Christian texts such as Hebrews, 1 Peter, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Epistle to Diognetus, Dunning examines the markedly different ways that Christians used the language of their own marginality, articulating a range of options for what it means to be Christian in relation to the Roman social order. His conclusions have implications not only for the study of late antiquity but also for understanding the rhetorics of religious alienation more broadly, both in the ancient world and today.

In the nineteenth century, global systems of capitalism and empire knit the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds into international networks in contest over the meanings of slavery and freedom. Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves mines multinational archives to illuminate the Atlantic reverberations of US mercantile projects, "free labor" experiments, and slaveholding in western Indian Ocean societies. Gunja SenGupta and Awam Amkpa profile transnational human rights campaigns. They show how the discourses of poverty, kinship, and care could be adapted to defend servitude in different parts of the world, revealing the tenuous boundaries that such discourses shared with liberal contractual notions of freedom. An intercontinental cast of empire builders and migrs, slavers and reformers, a "cotton queen" and courtesans, and fugitive "slaves" and concubines populates the pages, fleshing out on a granular level the interface between the personal, domestic, and international politics of "slavery in the East" in the age of empire. By extending the transnational framework of US slavery and abolition histories beyond the Atlantic, Gunja SenGupta and Awam Amkpa recover vivid stories and prompt reflections on the comparative workings of subaltern agency.

The National Sojourners award recognizes cadets who meet the following: (1) Be a sophomore or junior; (2) be in the top 25% of the academic class; (3) have encouraged and demonstrated the ideals of Americanism by deed or conduct or both; (4) have demonstrated potential for outstanding leadership; and (5) have not previously received the award. The award consists of a ribbon with a medal pendant and a certificate.

Contact your local National Sojourners Chapter (click here to find a National Sojourners Chapter) or the National Office (h...@nationalsojourners.org) for a Sojourner to attend your presentation event and present the award. Our representative would also be happy to deliver a Toast to the Flag at the opening of your presentation event.

National Sojourners, Inc. conducts an annual National essay contest for high school students. Prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place include a plaque and cash prizes of $3000, $2000 and $1000, respectively. Completed essays must be submitted through a local sponsoring chapter. Interested student applicants should go HERE to find their nearest chapter (in their state or a nearby state) and contact information for potential sponsorship of the essay. Essay deadlines are in January of the year, and a new topic is chosen for the upcoming year. The 2024-2025 Essay submission form is available HERE: 2024-2025 Essay Contest-Authorized Cover Sheet

The Spirit of America YLC at Freedoms Foundation is a four-day conference which affords students an opportunity to interact with experts on citizenship, democracy, the free enterprise system, the judicial system, and the American political process. The program includes thought-provoking lectures; historical tours of Valley Forge and Philadelphia; and experiential workshops, all designed to develop leadership skills and deepen an understanding of the rights and responsibilities of engaged citizenship.

Regional YLC attendees receive patriotic education, including elements of leadership needed to maintain a free society, concepts of a free enterprise system, and the founding principles upon which the US was built. Attendees develop an appreciation for the Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc., and an awareness of the civic responsibilities associated with preserving rights and freedoms. Students also develop leadership and public speaking skills that help them be better citizens and future leaders.

Contact your local NSI Chapter or NSI HQ, phone: 703-765-5000, for information on NSI sponsorship to Regional YLCs. Please provide a brief bio to include your name; age; contact information; high school grade and academic standing; overview of your extracurricular activities; and a brief explanation of why you desire to attend.

This issue needs studied in much more depth than I can do below. A book like Christians at the Border by Daniel Carroll or Generous Justice by Tim Keller is a good place to start. What I seek to do below is summarize a few over-arching categories for wrestling with the issue and then list some of the related biblical references.

God roots his commands for how Israel is to treat the sojourner in the fact that Israel was herself a sojourner. Because they were sojourners welcomed and loved by God, they should empathetically feel for the sojourner, welcoming and loving them. Just as God graciously cared for Israel in her wandering, so Israel is to reflect God in how they care for and love the sojourner.

God tells Israel to remember they were sojourners as motivation to love sojourners. God even calls them stewards of his land, and as stewards they are to reflect the priorities of the owner, in this case, hospitality to sojourners (Lev. 25:23).

Seems to me no matter the national/political policies, the People of God have an obligation to open the door to the strangers the poor and welcome them in to eat, to food/clothing/shelter/nursing/and love.

It may or may not be relevant to this question, but in Leviticus 25:23 the same exact terminology, ger v'toshav is used again. There, God is describing ownership of the land of Israel and his relationship with the people of Israel:

Throughout Tanakh the word ger is used to mean "resident alien," eg: Exodus 2:22, 12:49, Numbers 9:14-16 and many other places as well. How is ger v'toshav different from the type of resident alien implied by the term ger alone?

Abram was 75 when he left Haran, 100 when Isaac is born (Sarah was 90). When Sarah died at 127, Abram was 137 y.o (back to Hebron again), which means he had been going on a journey for 62 years of his life (simple math). He was not born in Canaan, though Canaan (or Ham) was Shem's brother and were both Noah's sons, but that was about 10 generations before Abraham. He was a stranger to the land, and since he stayed in many places temporarily, he was also a sojourner.

Note that in OT concept, the land is God's possession (consistent with Lev 25:23), and Israelites were actually acting as a guest of the land and God entrusted them to work in the land (as a steward/manager). Joshua divided the land by lots, and the Jubilee year system was actually established to exhibit the nature of temporal stewardship (25:10, proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants) where God is the Lord/owner of the land. This automatically made the Israelites a sojourner (someone who resides temporarily in a place).

As the 2 books were written by Moses, the consistency between Gen and Lev is apparent. As Abraham was called out of his land to live as a stranger and sojourner, the Israelites were also strangers and sojourners of the land/world. This theme is embedded strongly throughout the OT (arguably throughout Jewish history before they were exiled and conquered), even David referred himself as a sojourner, a guest in the land of God, just like his fathers (Ps 39:12).

Lastly, 'ger' seems to make more emphasize on the state of alien or stranger. Ex 2:22, Moses named his son Gershom, saying, "I have become a foreigner in a foreign land." (NIV). While, toshab carries the meaning of residing in a place that doesn't belong to you, hence, a temporary residence. This concept actually survived through NT as well. A part of Christ's high priestly prayer goes:

13 I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. 14 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. 15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. (John 17:13-16, NIV)

The Marginalian has a free Sunday digest of the week's most mind-broadening and heart-lifting reflections spanning art, science, poetry, philosophy, and other tendrils of our search for truth, beauty, meaning, and creative vitality. Here's an example. Like? Claim yours:

Like Emily Dickinson, who drew from the rest of the natural world mighty metaphors for the central problems of human existence, Dillard draws from the drifting mangrove islands a metaphor for our civilizational and existential predicament:

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