CURA Colloquium: “Sanctuary Syndrome”
The Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs (CURA), an affiliated regional studies center of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, hosted a talk with CURA Fellow Daryl Ireland, Research Assistant Professor, School of Theology, on Janaury 31, 2020, as part of their 2019-2020 Colloquium on Religion and World Affairs. The talk was entitled “Sanctuary Syndrome” and was co-sponsored with the School of Theology.
This paper examines the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s. In direct defiance of US law, houses of worship across the country provided asylum to immigrants from Guatemala and El Salvador. They aimed to convert America’s political imagination through the stories of the people living in their sanctuaries. Refugees were a new kind of missionary to the United States, and churches and synagogues hoped they could turn the country around. However, when government policies did not dissolve and the FBI began to make arrests, religious communities were forced to ask, “How long can we do this?” and “What happens if we fail?”
CURA hosts a yearly interdisciplinary Colloquium on Religion and World Affairs, in cooperation with the BU School of Theology. The Colloquium meets bimonthly throughout the academic year to discuss working papers on the chosen theme, either written by CURA Fellows or invited scholars from outside BU. CURA Fellows are selected from across the BU community during a competitive application period every spring. The Colloquium sessions are open to the general public, but all attendees are expected to read the papers in advance. The sessions focus on providing feedback and suggestions to the authors. Authors do not make a formal presentation but are able to engage with the audience and answer questions after the papers are discussed.
The theme for the 2019-2020 colloquium is “Religion and Identity.” The working papers will explore the ways in which religion creates, shapes, and interacts with individual and social identities. We welcome work that explores specifically religious identity as race, gender, sexuality, and nationality.