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Forced Migration and the Bible: Displacement, Statelessness, and Resiliency in...
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Forced Migration and the Bible: Displacement, Statelessness, and Resiliency in Sacred Texts

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Humanities/Philosophies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 March 2026) | Viewed by 7012

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Roberto Mata

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Religious Studies, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053, USA
Interests: migration in biblical narratives

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Forced migration refers to the coerced movement of individuals and communities, whether on a national or global scale, caused by diverse social, political, economic, and environmental factors. Biblical texts have responded to forced migrations through references to natural disasters, imperial interventions, deportations, and exiles. In the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Exodus, 1 & 2 Kings, Lamentations, Psalms) and the New Testament (e.g., Gospels, the Book of Acts, 1 Peter, and Revelation), forced migration often emerges as a sign of liberation, divine judgment, accompaniment, or missionary outreach, to name a few examples. Thus, the biblical authors articulate how such forced migrations have shaped their communities’ collective memories, histories, theologies, spiritualities, and ritual practices.

This Special Issue explores forced migration in sacred texts from an interdisciplinary standpoint. It endeavors to advance our understanding of forced migration by considering intersecting religious, social, economic, political, historical, and environmental aspects. Thus, we invite scholars to submit essays examining forced migration through new methodological and comparative approaches in ancient and modern religious contexts.

Essays may address specific or general topics related to migration, the Bible and their intersections with research areas that may include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Climate migration in ancient and contemporary contexts and interpretation.
  • Statelessness—refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, deportees, and exilees.
  • Imperialism/colonialism—occupation, displacement, deportation, and exile.
  • Persecution—religious intolerance, civil war, ethnic cleansing, and structural racism.
  • Trauma and lamenting—storytelling, resiliency, and healing rituals.
  • Borderlands—human trafficking, racism, and constructions of the self and others.
  • Paradigms of biblical interpretation—migration in theological, historical, cultural, and postmodern perspectives.
  • Theologies and spiritualities of migration.

We request that, before submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send this to the Guest Editor (rmata@scu.edu) or the Assistant Editor (evelyn.zeng@mdpi.com) of Religions. The Guest Editors will review abstracts to ensure they properly fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-masked peer review.

Deadline for abstract submission: November 30, 2025
Deadline for complete manuscript submission: December 14, 2025

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Roberto Mata
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • climate migration
  • trauma
  • borderlands
  • statelessness
  • neocolonialism

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 299 KB  
Article
Exile, Covenant, and Privilege: Sephardic Petitions and Institutional Autonomy in Bourbon Naples (1739–1740)
by Vincenzo Zocco
Religions 2026, 17(5), 587; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17050587 - 13 May 2026
Viewed by 373
Abstract
This article examines how Sephardic Jewish delegations from Livorno and Senigallia framed their petitions to the Bourbon court during the negotiations for their resettlement in the Kingdom of Naples (1739–1740). Drawing on forty-four chapters presented by the Livornese representatives and complementary Senigallian requests, [...] Read more.
This article examines how Sephardic Jewish delegations from Livorno and Senigallia framed their petitions to the Bourbon court during the negotiations for their resettlement in the Kingdom of Naples (1739–1740). Drawing on forty-four chapters presented by the Livornese representatives and complementary Senigallian requests, this study explores the legal and rhetorical strategies employed to secure corporate rights: judicial autonomy, exemption from corporation jurisdictions, commercial privileges, and the right to self-govern through elected Massari and rabbinical courts. While rooted in the contractual language of privileges and capitulations, these petitions also evoke a sacred lexicon, implicitly referencing biblical and halakhic categories such as the ger (resident foreigner), exile, divine providence, and covenantal continuity. This dual register—juridical and religious—allowed Jewish elites to legitimize their claims within a framework recognizable to Bourbon authorities while reinforcing a resilient communal identity. Analyzing the intersection of legal discourse and sacred rhetoric, this paper situates the Sephardic negotiations within the broader dynamics of eighteenth-century Catholic statecraft and minority governance. It argues that these petitions reveal not only pragmatic strategies to secure economic and legal stability but also a conscious use of covenantal and scriptural motifs to articulate endurance and justify corporate autonomy in a contested socio-political environment. These petitions, overall, must be situated within a longer continuum of forced displacement. The negotiations of 1739–1740 emerge not merely as administrative exchanges but as the latest chapter in a centuries-long history of expulsion, conditional return, and regulated residence. In this sense, the Sephardic petitions articulate a legal response to the structural precarity produced by forced migration. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forced Migration and the Bible: Displacement, Statelessness, and Resiliency in Sacred Texts)
23 pages, 1576 KB  
Article
A Theology of Mountains from the Margins: The Linguistic Practices of Mountaintop Prayer in Mam Mayan Experiences of Migration
by Christian Espinosa Schatz
Religions 2026, 17(3), 384; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17030384 - 19 Mar 2026
Viewed by 589
Abstract
The Mam Mayan Christians of Guatemala’s Western Highlands regularly ascend sacred mountains to pray for the precarious migration journey across Mexico and into the United States. This paper describes and explicates the cultural logic connecting mountains, migration, and prayer through an analysis of [...] Read more.
The Mam Mayan Christians of Guatemala’s Western Highlands regularly ascend sacred mountains to pray for the precarious migration journey across Mexico and into the United States. This paper describes and explicates the cultural logic connecting mountains, migration, and prayer through an analysis of linguistic practices across three domains: (1) the tacit and habitual reference to mountains in common Mam grammatical form classes, (2) the discourse patterns that link the precarities of migration to mountaintop prayer, and (3) the context for and structure of mountaintop prayer rituals. Taken together, the analysis of these three domains describes a Mam ontology of mountains that render mountaintop prayer the most important venue for facing the precarities of international migration. The paper closes by considering the habitus of Mam Maya Evangelical Christians as a source of Indigenous theological praxis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forced Migration and the Bible: Displacement, Statelessness, and Resiliency in Sacred Texts)
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12 pages, 208 KB  
Article
Migration from Africa as a Response to Changing Identities and Nationalism: A Biblical and Contemporary Perspective
by Barnabas Gabriel Akadon
Religions 2026, 17(3), 373; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17030373 - 17 Mar 2026
Viewed by 683
Abstract
This paper examines migration from Africa as a response to shifting identities and the resurgence of nationalism, bringing biblical traditions into dialogue with contemporary realities. In many African contexts, contested identities, ethno-religious nationalism, and exclusionary state policies intensify conditions of displacement alongside poverty, [...] Read more.
This paper examines migration from Africa as a response to shifting identities and the resurgence of nationalism, bringing biblical traditions into dialogue with contemporary realities. In many African contexts, contested identities, ethno-religious nationalism, and exclusionary state policies intensify conditions of displacement alongside poverty, conflict, and terrorism. As a result, migration becomes both a survival strategy and a negotiation of identity in an increasingly fragmented world. Biblical narratives of forced migration provide an interpretive framework for understanding these movements. The Hebrew Bible recounts exilic experiences, such as the Babylonian deportation, that reshaped Israel’s communal memory, identity, and theology. Similarly, the New Testament highlights dispersions caused by persecution, showing how migration functioned as a catalyst for the expansion of faith communities and the reconstruction of belonging. These texts illuminate how forced migration is not only a consequence of crisis but also a transformative process that redefines identity and community. By employing sociological and theological methods, this study demonstrates how African migration in the context of nationalism parallels biblical paradigms of exile and dispersion. It argues that African migrants’ narratives of identity, marked by struggle, hope, and resilience, echo biblical testimonies of displacement and offer theological resources for interpreting migration today. In doing so, this paper contributes to interdisciplinary debates on migration by showing how biblical exilic traditions can inform responses to Africa’s ongoing challenges of nationalism, identity, and forced movement. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forced Migration and the Bible: Displacement, Statelessness, and Resiliency in Sacred Texts)
13 pages, 315 KB  
Article
Remaining After Ruin: The Politics of Lament in Forced (Im)Mobilities
by Eliana Ah-Rum Ku
Religions 2026, 17(2), 158; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17020158 - 29 Jan 2026
Viewed by 495
Abstract
How do survivors mourn when violence controls movement, speech, and public grief? This article reads lament as a political–theological practice that keeps the dead publicly addressable under forced (im)mobilities—conditions in which some are deported, disappeared, or killed while others are compelled to remain [...] Read more.
How do survivors mourn when violence controls movement, speech, and public grief? This article reads lament as a political–theological practice that keeps the dead publicly addressable under forced (im)mobilities—conditions in which some are deported, disappeared, or killed while others are compelled to remain amid ruins, surveillance, and stigma. Through a comparative reading of Lamentations and Han Kang’s Human Acts, this study develops “fourth-person lament” to name a ruin-saturated address (“you”) that is relayed through multiple voices and across the boundary of death, refusing to resolve responsibility into a single speaker or a finished story. The analysis shows how lament is mediated through bodies that remain—hunger, wounds, exhaustion, unburied dead—and through spaces turned into archives of violence, so that catastrophe cannot be sealed into closure or denial. By tracing struggles over memory and affect—over who may move, who must stay, and whose deaths can appear as grievable—this article argues that lament operates as resistant passage within enforced (im)mobility: a communal and public insistence that memory, mourning, and responsibility remain open to contestation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forced Migration and the Bible: Displacement, Statelessness, and Resiliency in Sacred Texts)
18 pages, 335 KB  
Article
Seeking Subjectivity in/with/Through Esther’s Mobility
by Alexiana Fry
Religions 2026, 17(1), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17010091 - 13 Jan 2026
Viewed by 771
Abstract
The erasure of mobile female-identified bodies amongst both biblical and migration scholars is being redressed, to a certain point. Building upon the work of both disciplines, this article attempts to provide a thorough feminist analysis of the mobility of the Hebrew Bible character [...] Read more.
The erasure of mobile female-identified bodies amongst both biblical and migration scholars is being redressed, to a certain point. Building upon the work of both disciplines, this article attempts to provide a thorough feminist analysis of the mobility of the Hebrew Bible character Esther. The article begins with a discussion on what feminist migration studies might include, along with a critical look at the framework of forced migrations. Thereafter, the article brings together multiple scholars of the ancient world in conversation, using the work that has rightly labeled her movement by the story world regime as trafficking, along with comparative analysis to captivity studies. The article argues, however, that a feminist hermeneutic of the Bible should not only speak to the world, but also practice and model active reflexivity. Thus, a holistic account of interpreting Esther’s mobility in the Masoretic Text requires an interrogation of both the author of the biblical text and the author of the article itself. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forced Migration and the Bible: Displacement, Statelessness, and Resiliency in Sacred Texts)
12 pages, 303 KB  
Article
From Eden to the New Jerusalem: Migration as a Narrative Arc in Scripture
by Rodolfo Galvan Estrada III
Religions 2026, 17(1), 49; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17010049 - 2 Jan 2026
Viewed by 1551
Abstract
This essay argues that a canonical reading of Scripture that is attentive to the experiences it portrays must notice the centrality of the migrant experience throughout both the Old and New Testaments. We begin by tracing patterns of displacement, forced migration, and exile [...] Read more.
This essay argues that a canonical reading of Scripture that is attentive to the experiences it portrays must notice the centrality of the migrant experience throughout both the Old and New Testaments. We begin by tracing patterns of displacement, forced migration, and exile that define the lives of biblical figures such as Adam and Eve, Abraham, Ruth, Jesus, Paul, and the Early Christians. We also explore contemporary uses of the Bible that justify anti-immigrant policies and the dehumanization of immigrants, arguing that such interpretations contradict the text’s narrative. By reading Scripture through the lens of migration, Christians can better identify how the migration experience is both a theological and hermeneutical key to understanding God’s redemptive work in history. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forced Migration and the Bible: Displacement, Statelessness, and Resiliency in Sacred Texts)
14 pages, 281 KB  
Article
Wine Inebriation: Representation of Judah’s Cultural Trauma in Proverbs 23:29–35
by Shirley S. Ho
Religions 2026, 17(1), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17010024 - 25 Dec 2025
Viewed by 619
Abstract
Regarding Judah’s exilic realities and forced migration experience, this article proposes that the sage responsible for this poem functioned as a carrier group in articulating a narrative of collective trauma. The paper begins by summarizing key components of cultural trauma theory as developed [...] Read more.
Regarding Judah’s exilic realities and forced migration experience, this article proposes that the sage responsible for this poem functioned as a carrier group in articulating a narrative of collective trauma. The paper begins by summarizing key components of cultural trauma theory as developed by Jeffrey C. Alexander. It also situates the shared socio-historical context of the final textual forms of Jeremiah and Proverbs within the exilic/post-exilic realities of the Judahite community. It next traces the trope of wine inebriation across several Jeremiah texts, focusing especially on Jeremiah 25:15–29 to show how this motif is integrally woven into the book’s overarching themes of indictment, judgment, and exile. A conventional wisdom reading of Proverbs 23:29–35 yields a moralistic warning about the self-destructive cycle of wine intoxication of the fools in the book of Proverbs. But a cultural trauma hermeneutic of the poem—when paired with intertextual echoes of Jeremiah 25:15–29—opens the poem to a deeper reading. Within this framework, the sapiential poem emerges as a creative, dramatic and theologically rich act of trauma storytelling, depicting foolish Judah’s metaphorical intoxication as an embodiment of exilic indictment, woes and suffering, yet gesturing toward the possibility of healing and restoration through wisdom reflection and re-narration of their past. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forced Migration and the Bible: Displacement, Statelessness, and Resiliency in Sacred Texts)
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