Show of Hands: Searching the Gospel in the Post-migrant Society
Ulrich Schmiedel
Lund University, Sweden
“Show of hands: Do you want everyone to become a Christian, yes or no?” This question was posed to the current candidates for the position of Bishop of Oslo in Norway. As one of the candidates who didn’t raise his hand suggested afterwards, “it can be an entertaining way to direct a debate, but it is not always so enlightening.”
Perhaps it was a no-brainer to the person requesting the show of hands. These people want to be Bishop of Oslo: surely, they want to share the gospel with each and every one so that they can become Christian. Yet what might seem like a no-brainer to some, is a crucial and controversial issue to others.
Norway—like many countries in Scandinavia—has moved from being a rather homogenous to a quite heterogenous society. Migration continues to stir up controversy. Some scholars point to a shift in some cities from “diversity” (a situation in which one can distinguish between a minority and a majority) to “superdiversity” (a situation in which one cannot distinguish between a minority and a majority).
If more than half of the population of a city have what the authorities call a “migration background”—meaning they were born or have a parent who was born outside the country—it makes little sense to distinguish between “migrants” with a “migration background” and “non-migrants” without a “migration background”. This is what scholars call the “post-migrant society”.
The “post” in “post-migrant” is perhaps a bit ambiguous. The point is not that migration is over. On the contrary, migration is the new normal. This new normal puts the categories of “migrant” and “non-migrant” under pressure. As Naika Foroutan, a social scientist who specializes in migration argues in The Postmigrant Society: A Promise of Plural Democracy, it “poses the fundamental question of how we can get beyond the social dividing line of migration, if we want to live together in societies that are becoming more and more plural”.
What does the post-migrant society have to do with the Gospel? Church leaders, such as candidates for a bishop’s seat or coordinators interviewing candidates for a bishop’s seat, have to come to terms with superdiversity. This is tricky—not only in Scandinavia, where the Lutheran churches used to be state churches supposed to represent the population as a whole.
Where being Christian (or Lutheran) is connected with being Norwegian and not being Christian (or Lutheran) is connected with not being Norwegian, “Christianity” is tied all too closely to a specific church and a specific country. In such a situation, a bishop or a candidate for bishop’s seat who does not raise their hand when asked “whether they want everyone to be Christian, yes or no” makes an important and instructive point.
In a short but striking article for the Norwegian Christian daily Vårt Land (“Our Country”), the candidate who didn’t raise his hand, Sturla Stålsett, puts it this way: “The Gospel is a treasure. It comes with liberation to everyone who is … oppressed, with restoration to everyone who … is held down. It comes to us with forgiveness when we despair …, and bubbling joy when God’s goodness surprises us… It gives us courage … when the forces of death are raging, in us and around us.” The Gospel comes, he continues, “as a gift”.
Between the lines, Stålsett points to a classic concern that has characterized the history of theology: the Gospel is not something that the church owns, but something that owns the church. Already in the biblical gospels that revolve around the Gospel, Christians grapple with this distinction.
If the Gospel is always greater than what we can say about it, it cannot be constructed, captured, or controlled by Christians. For the Gospel, it might not matter whether you do or don’t identify as “Christian.” In superdiverse post-migrant societies, this understanding of the Gospel comes with social as well as political problems and social as well as political promises that theologians must grapple with.
As for the church, it might be best to follow Stålsett’s advice: “That is why I hesitate to make simple proclamations that everyone should ‘become a Christian,’ although it may seem paradoxical for … candidate for bishop. It is in no way about a lack of faith in the liberating power of the Gospel. On the contrary, that power is greater than my—or the church’s—power… Believing that gives me calm when meeting others—and room for the other to be themselves.”