Creating a Sacred Space: An Iglesia Evangélica Response to Global Homelessness 1

Abstract :  Writing from the perspective of a bicoastal Puerto Rican  evangélica  (Latina/o popular Protestantism), the author argues that the contemporary ‘problem of immigration’ is really an expression of global dislocation that has led to migratory patterns of ‘homelessness’. While there may be myriad causes of global dislocation, she suggests that insofar as the Latina/o community is concerned, a principal cause is the exportation, and therefore immigration, of U.S. expansionist policies (i.e., ‘corporate immigration’) into Latin America and the Caribbean. The church needs to re‐vision “im/migrants” (the global homeless), itself, and God to respond adequately to the globally displaced. The article provides a brief synopsis of how past and present ‘corporate immigration’ has caused global dislocation for Puerto Ricans and Mexicans. Biblical understandings of stranger, as expressed through such terms as  gēr  and  nōkr î, provide scriptural and theological bases that allow the author to envision creation, and therefore salvation, as the living out of a ‘sacred space’. The author then concludes with the affirmation that the church, as the incarnated witness of that space, is called to treat all migratory dislocated people as ‘kin’ and thus it is called to provide a ‘sacred space’ wherein the globally homeless can find safe haven—a home—amid their  familia  (kin).