The Strangers in Our Midst
American Evangelicals and Immigration from the Cold War to the Twenty-First Century
Ulrike Elisabeth Stockhausen
Reviews and Awards
"The Strangers in Our Midst asks us to imagine a time when evangelicals saw immigrants not as foreigners to be deported, but as sojourners to be welcomed. This book is a probing account of evolving legal codes, migration patterns, and theological commitments, and Stockhausen is the expert guide who takes us from refugee camps in Southeast Asia to Southern Baptist pulpits in Alabama to the corridors of power in Washington. Exhaustively researched and lucidly narrated, this is an important book." -- David R. Swartz, author of Facing West: American Evangelicals in an Age of World Christianity
"Based on robust research on American evangelical denominations, Stockhausen offers a much-needed look at the extensive Cold War era leadership of evangelicals in refugee resettlement and immigration work. She contends these efforts were driven by a common theology of hospitality held by evangelicals on the political right and the left. Post-Cold War, evangelical positions on immigration diverged for partisan and demographic reasons. Yet today, in spite of well-known divisions amongst evangelical laity regarding immigration, Stockhausen shows that significant sectors of white evangelical leadership, challenged by Latinx leadership, are beginning to re-converge on evangelicalism's historic emphasis on hospitality." -- Ruth Melkonian-Hoover, co-author, Evangelicals and Immigration: Fault Lines Among the Faithful
"At a time when white evangelical Christians in the United States have become polarized over the issue of immigration, Ulrike Elisabeth Stockhausen's The Strangers in Our Midst provides a nuanced, balanced historical account of how we reached this point. Filled with perceptive insights and surprises, Stockhausen's analysis is essential for understanding why conservative white American evangelicals changed their views on immigration — and, in turn, changed American politics." -- Daniel K. Williams, author of God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right