In North America, immigration can be a benchmark for understanding contemporary Christianity in relation to social justice and xenophobia. Since the first group of European immigrants arrived and settled on the continent, Christianity, as the dominant religion, has been constructed and understood within a society that practises policies against non-European immigrants. The immigration story of non-European Christians and their lived experiences have largely gone unheard. In the past they had been invisible and regarded as ‘the other’. The situation in the present is similar.

After removing the bar against non-European immigration in Canada in 1962 and in the USA in 1965, North America has become home to a great diversity of churches. Furthermore, due to globalisation and the neoliberal economy, more people migrated, and cosmopolitan cities such as New York, San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver have become final destinations of a global cohort of immigrants, refugees and exiles. Now, in the twenty-first century, the Christianity of North America faces the task of building a sense of unity in Christ while fully acknowledging and addressing cultural difference and embracing the other.

As a way to comprehend the contemporary multicultural Christianity in North America, I apply the concept of borderlands, because a borderland indicates the liminal space where many different kinds of cultural expression are encountered, which can lead to unease, conflict and even violence. Yet, hope for transformation also arises. The process of creating the liminal space of encounter with the other invites Christians to fully understand the nature of xenophobia, which comes from the fear of the unfamiliar and the foreign other.

Immigration and Fear of the Other

Certain biases and fear of others, such as immigrants, people of colour and Indigenous peoples, has been pervasive in the entire history of mainstream North American culture and, more specifically, within the structure of the church. Christianity in North America has reflected and reacted to immigration in both the past and the present, which often results in racial injustice or the division of people and their particular communities. In the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the existential threat of climate change and frequent environmental crises, levels of anxiety about others have increased.