Karen González is a speaker, writer, storyteller, and immigrant advocate who herself immigrated from Guatemala as a child. Karen is a former public school teacher and attended Fuller Theological Seminary, where she studied theology and missiology. For the last 17 years, she has been a non-profit professional. She wrote a book about her own immigration story and some of the immigrants found in the Bible: The God Who Sees: Immigrants, The Bible, and the Journey to Belong (Herald Press, May 2019). Karen’s second book is Beyond Welcome: Centering Immigrants in our Christian Response to Immigration (Brazos Press, October 2022). She also has bylines in Sojourners, Christianity Today, The Christian Century, and others. Karen lives in Washington DC with her cats, Oscar and Trudi.
To learn more about Karen, you can visit her webpage (https://www.karen-gonzalez.com/), listen to her podcast, read her Substack, or look her up on Instagram
In this interview, Karen digs into the concept of hospitality (which can be subversive!), where traditional boundaries are challenged by bringing together people from all walks of life—immigrants, students, the unhoused, and community members—as equals. Through real-life examples, the conversation explores the discomfort and growth that arise when we share space with those we might not otherwise encounter. Karen highlights the power of genuine hospitality to break down social barriers, foster mutual respect, and create inclusive communities where everyone is valued. Ultimately, Karen’s books and this conversation point to the need to reimagine hospitality as a radical, transformative act that centers dignity and equality for all.
Names mentioned:
Emmett Till, NAFTA, Mother Teresa, Shane Claiborne, St. Francis of Assisi, Isaac Villegas, Gary Haugen, International Justice Mission, World Vision, Fr. Gregory Boyle.
Books:
The God Who Sees: Immigrants, the Bible, and the Journey to Belong (Karen González)
UnChristian (David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons)
Migrant God (Isaac Villegas)
Radix: Karen, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. First off, what led you to write this book, and who did you have in mind as your audience?
Karen González: I wrote Beyond Welcome as a kind of part two to my first book, The God Who Sees. After publishing that, I did a lot of speaking and preaching on immigration—at conferences, universities, churches—and I began creating workshops to push the conversation forward. People were eager to go beyond the idea of simple hospitality, and that’s where this new book was born.
I like to think of it this way: when we come home, we don’t just park in the driveway, and plant roots there—we go inside. In the same way, I wanted to help people move deeper into what true welcome means. Over time, I also realized the themes reached beyond immigration. They apply to anyone in vulnerable situations, like people experiencing homelessness. Too often the approach is condescending, built on a charity mentality. What I advocate for is reciprocal hospitality: I can learn from you, and you from me. I can serve you, and you can serve me. That mutuality is what pushes the conversation forward.
Radix: The theme of this issue is subversive hospitality. “Subversive” can sound negative—like undermining something—but there’s also the good sense of dismantling what doesn’t belong. Combined with “hospitality,” it raises an interesting tension. And as you know well, in North America hospitality often gets reduced to something shallow—like inviting someone over for dinner. Could you talk about the deeper importance of hospitality, and how you see it being misunderstood?
KG: Our misunderstanding of hospitality isn’t unique to modern times, actually. In the New Testament world, people often used hospitality for advantage rather than genuine care or welcome.
I sometimes call Jesus “the rude dinner guest.” When invited into someone’s home, he would directly challenge the social dynamics at play. Today we’d consider that impolite—after all, you’re supposed to be gracious to your host—but Jesus confronted the ways hospitality was being misused. In that culture, you’d invite people who could benefit you: someone wealthy, or of higher status. You’d give them a place of honor, expecting they’d return the favor, which boosted your esteem in the community. Hospitality became a tool for social climbing. Jesus turned that upside down. When people rejected his banquet invitation, he told his followers: Go invite the poor, the disabled, the sick, the outsiders. In other words, bring in those who have no status to offer in return.
We also see this reversal when Jesus himself was a guest—like at Simon’s house, when a woman came in, poured expensive perfume, and washed his feet with her hair. Instead of honoring Simon, the respectable host, Jesus honored this woman—someone likely marginalized in her community. Again, he upended the normal order of hospitality. In our context, hospitality has become mostly about inviting friends or family—people like us. We’ve lost the idea of welcoming the stranger. Too often it’s an “affinity bias”: I invite those I’m comfortable with.
But I’ve seen glimpses of a different way. I was part of a dinner church in Baltimore, where anyone could come—a Johns Hopkins student, a person living on the streets, anyone. To be honest, sometimes it was uncomfortable. It wasn’t just people like us. It was people we might never interact with otherwise. And that, to me, is subversive hospitality: sitting at the same table as equals with someone very different from you, and asking, What can I learn at the feet of this person? Not just, What do I bring?
We all have growing opportunities here. For some, it might look like joining a dinner church. For others, it might simply mean pushing ourselves to interact with people unlike us in small, intentional ways.
Radix: I remember reading unChristian, where the author asked people to check their phones and see how many contacts were truly different from them. For most, the answer was “not many.” That reflects our tribal nature, but it also traps us in echo chambers—political, theological, racial, cultural. That’s why intentionally stepping into diverse spaces can be so powerful.
KG: Yes, and often in ways you don’t expect. At the dinner church I attended, I was also part of a predominantly African American Lutheran congregation. The pastor invited me to preach once a month, and one Advent I gave a sermon on Mary. Afterward, a woman came up to thank me. Then she shared how she felt a deep kinship with Mary, because her own son had been killed by police in Baltimore.
That moment taught me more than any commentary or textbook ever could. I had been speaking about Mary in an abstract way, but for her, Mary’s grief was immediate and personal. Her perspective opened a whole new depth of understanding for me. Experiences like that show why posture matters, especially a posture of learning. Too often—even at the dinner church—I found myself thinking in terms of charity: How do we take care of our unhoused neighbors? Instead of asking, What does it mean to sit as equals and share life together?
Radix: That connects to what you write about reciprocity. In ministry, it’s easy to assume, “I’m the helper, they’re the ones in need.” Not out of arrogance, but just because of how service is framed. Yet in interviews I’ve done, almost every minister said the same thing: We’re the ones who are blessed. Yes, they’re handing out food, or driving someone to an appointment—but they’re also the ones learning and growing. And I appreciated how you warned about the danger of creating an unequal power structure, even unintentionally.
KG: When we position ourselves as saviors helping “the poor,” it harms everyone. True hospitality recognizes that while someone may need support in the moment, we’re still equals. It’s not about me being up here and them down there. What we need is reciprocal service, reciprocal hospitality—relationship, not hierarchy.
Radix: Have you heard stories from readers who started practicing this kind of hospitality?
KG: Yes, some readers have told me the book really challenged their assumptions about working with people in vulnerable situations. But let me share a few stories that inspired the book, though I didn’t have room to include them.
During the Syrian refugee crisis, one of our field offices resettled a couple from Syria. Preparing for their arrival was difficult: staff had to furnish an apartment with donated furniture, get the utilities running, and—hardest of all—convince a landlord to lease to people with no jobs yet. The couple finally arrived and, on the way to their new apartment, announced: “We also have a dog. A big husky.” The resettlement staff were dismayed. Pets weren’t allowed in that building, and it had already been a huge struggle just to secure the lease.
One of my friends, part of the team, stopped the frustration with a simple question: When we move, don’t we take our pets with us? Why would we expect refugees—who’ve lived in camps, where their dog provided comfort and safety—to abandon theirs? That reframing changed everything. They worked with the landlord, secured paperwork classifying the dog as an emotional support animal, and moved forward. To me, that was such a powerful moment of someone interrogating their assumptions in real time. They had every right to feel stressed, but they also remembered: we’re dealing with fellow human beings, not just logistics.
Another example: a volunteer once complained to me about a refugee family that had saved up and bought a TV. She was upset, saying, “They should be saving for a house or a car, not wasting money.” I asked, “Are they stealing money? Doing something dishonest?” She said no—it was just that she thought a TV was frivolous. But I reminded her: these families are in a foreign country, never going back home. Sometimes, a TV isn’t just entertainment, it’s a way to connect, to feel normal, to have a sense of belonging. I don’t need a TV. You don’t need a TV. None of us do. It’s not essential to breathe or to live—it’s simply something nice to have. And even for refugees, coming home from work and finding one channel in their own language can be a real comfort. For Somali refugees, for instance, it’s a way to relax and experience the same ordinary things we all take for granted.
Yes, in the long run it’s good to buy a home or a car, but at the end of the day, it’s their money. We need to respect their choices. They are dignified human beings with the right to decide how to spend their resources.
I’ve had arguments about this—someone on social media was upset that immigrants send money back to their home countries. But it’s their money. Imagine someone telling you that you couldn’t spend yours on something they thought was a waste. We make decisions for the poor all the time, as though we know better. We say things like, “I’m not giving that homeless person a dollar, they’ll just buy drugs.” But the truth is, once you give money away, it’s no longer yours to control. And even then, what if that person does buy drugs? Maybe they’re using them to stay awake so they don’t get robbed or assaulted. Or maybe they buy water, or clean socks. It’s not my business anymore once I’ve given it away.
Those kinds of situations—moments that troubled me but I couldn’t always explain why—made me think more deeply. I’ve done it too. I’m not above this. But I am challenging myself to think differently, to regard people as equals, with dignity, and with the ability to make decisions about their own resources.
That’s the heart of where that chapter came from. People often tell me they never looked at it that way before. In the book, I use the story of the road to Emmaus: the disciples think they’re the only hosts, but then Jesus reveals himself and becomes the host at their table. It’s a reversal.
That’s what I want readers to see: Scripture invites us to encounter people as though we are meeting Christ himself, angels in disguise. Would we really say to Jesus, “I’m not giving you a dollar because you’ll waste it,” or, “You shouldn’t be allowed to spend your money that way”? Or do we simply respect that people have a right to choose? Of course, if they ask our advice, we can share what we might do—but there’s nothing wrong with a refugee family wanting some entertainment in a foreign country, after spending all day speaking a different language, just trying to rest like anyone else.
That’s the heart of it. And honestly, it’s why I still hear from people that this chapter changed how they see things.
Radix: And think about how many small cruelties, or even large cruelties, we could avoid in our interactions with other people if we were actually more empathetic. The word you used earlier—having a posture of humility toward everybody—is key. But especially that kind of empathy, and that’s something that actually takes practice. It takes work.
Some people have this idea—depending on their theological stance—that there’ll be a last-minute confession. I can’t remember which church theologian said it, but they said, no, repentance is something you practice. If you think you’re going to suddenly convert on your deathbed, you’re not going to, because you never practiced it. And I often think about other things we assume we can handle last-minute. We think, “Oh, I’ll say sorry, or I’ll be empathetic when the need arises. Or I’ll be listening—whatever it happens to be.” But if we don’t practice these things regularly, when the occasion arises, it’s highly improbable that we’ll act differently. So, listening to some of your stories, and in the book as well, really highlights the need for true empathy. And that can be hard work. It can be uncomfortable.
KG: Yeah, and it can really challenge your sense of your own goodness and compassion. We all want to think of ourselves that way, but there’s always room for growth. We have biases, whether we realize it or not, and we act on them. To create a new way of being, we have to practice our way into it. It’s not going to just fall from heaven and make us different people.
When I was part of that African American church in Baltimore, we were talking about Joseph in Genesis—a vulnerable young man taken to a foreign country, enslaved, lied about, thrown into prison. An older woman said, “That reminds me of Emmett Till.” He was also a young man in a new place—visiting the South from Chicago—accused falsely of whistling, punished, and killed. The parallel was powerful. Joseph’s story ends in triumph, Emmett Till’s doesn’t.
That conversation showed me how reading scripture in community with people different from us can really challenge us—our growth, our view of God, our discipleship. And I’ve found that in my own writing. I usually get positive feedback, but the pushback always comes when I read scripture differently than someone was taught. People will write: “Ruth is not an immigrant,” or “This story isn’t about hospitality.” But Ruth is an immigrant woman in Bethlehem. The Road to Emmaus is a story about hospitality—the tables do get turned. Something is revealed in the meal.
Take the story of Rahab, a foreign-born woman of ill repute, welcomed into Israel’s community and even honored. She’s exactly the kind of person many of us would exclude. In fact, if you had a history of sex work today, it would be nearly impossible to get a U.S. visa, let alone residency. Yet Rahab is the very person God uses as a catalyst for Israel’s salvation and the conquest of Jericho. That can be hard for us, especially if we’ve been taught there’s only one “right” way to read a story. In my book I tell of a friend working with students in East Africa. When they read the Parable of the Prodigal Son, what shocked them most was that he left his family. Why would you abandon your people to go live alone? That was their cultural lens.
When I was in the former Soviet Union, people read the same parable differently. Their collective memory of famine during World War II—how many starved in Leningrad—meant the word “famine” stood out to them. To them, famine was the real crisis: when it comes, good or bad, everyone suffers. But I wasn’t open to those perspectives. I assumed the “correct” way to read the story was to focus on the son demanding his inheritance and squandering it. That was my cultural lens. Looking back, I wish I’d been more open. There was so much I could have learned, so many ways I could have grown in faith.
Radix: Hmm. The culture-location thing … really interesting, I had two questions. What things help you that you could suggest for people to break out of these typical lenses? Some of that is probably empathy, some of it is trying to step outside of the perspectives we rigidly hold. And maybe we don’t hold them meanly—it’s not like I meanly hold to them—but we just do.
KG: Yeah. For me, the thing that has worked best is, first, being aware of that. Being aware that I can be rigid and black-and-white—that this is just my way of being in the world. It’s not really a flaw, but I can be like this. So being self-aware helps. I also try to come into a space with a learning posture, realizing, “Yes, I’ve read this story a hundred times, but perhaps there’s something new that God would like to reveal to me today.” A learning posture instead of a teaching posture, which we often slip into when we think we already know something. And then, reading the scriptures with people in community—with openness and a sense that God may show up today in a very different way.
Many years ago, I did a silent retreat at a monastery in Santa Barbara, California. At the beginning, one of the monks gave me some guidance. He said, “You may have come here with an idea of how you want God to meet with you. But I encourage you to be open to how God may actually want to be with you. If you hold too tightly to your expectations, you may be disappointed, because God may have something else on the agenda for this time.” That was very helpful. It taught me to be open and to hold my expectations with an open hand. Honestly, it’s the most helpful guidance I’ve ever received about prayer and about my spiritual life.
And if we’re honest, we don’t often come that way. Especially when we think we know things. I’ve been to seminary, and some people have grown up in the church their whole lives—they know these stories, they’ve heard them over and over again since childhood. It can be very hard to come with fresh eyes. But people who sit in other places can really teach us a lot about how to view a story from their position.
For me, I first began to realize this when I was in seminary—which in some ways was the worst thing for becoming rigid, because then you think you know so much. I remember we were studying a book about Ruth. A friend of mine, who had recently gone through a pregnancy loss, was walking with me. What stood out for her was the ten years of infertility Ruth experienced—ten years of being married and not having a child. In that time, you were considered cursed if you couldn’t conceive. No one said, “Let’s go see a doctor.” And so, for her, that part of the story spoke deeply, because it connected to her own experience.
When I read the story, though, I connected most with Ruth as a foreigner—yet one who is loved and cared for in Bethlehem, as though she were one of their own. Even though she would be considered “unclean,” they still drank from the same water containers, dipped bread in the same oil. They didn’t treat her like she was contaminated. For me, that sense of belonging—something many immigrants long for—was what spoke to me.
There are these small ways we can notice new things, but if we’re closed off, it’s very hard. And honestly, I still get emails from people insisting the story is really about Boaz, the kinsman-redeemer, the third main character. But I think in some ways our teachers did us a disservice by not encouraging us to be open to how God may show up in the scriptures.
That’s what I encourage people to do, and it’s what I try to do in my own life. And I’m constantly surprised. For instance, I did all that research for my sermon on Mary, but I had never before encountered a woman who had lost her child to state violence. She had a way of really understanding Mary’s heart and Mary’s loss that I never could have on my own.
Radix: This speaks to the desperate need for reading the Bible in community. On our own, we can be as honest and diligent as possible, but we still miss what other members of the body of Christ perceive. Just as the ear only perceives sound, and the eye only perceives sight, so too we need the perspective of others. Growth comes when we trust those other voices and allow them to shape us.
KG: It can be very powerful, but it does require humility: the recognition that I don’t know everything about the Bible. I’ve experienced this especially when reading Scripture with people from a different socioeconomic class, nationality, or ethnicity. Sometimes it’s jarring. For instance, when I was reading with Russian students, we came across the verse, “He who does not work, does not eat.” They told me, “That’s what the Soviet Union used to tell us.” It was striking to see how a verse was weaponized against people.
We can all think of examples where Scripture has been misused or cherry-picked. We rarely admit that we do it too, but we do—because we each read from our own cultural location. Living overseas made me realize how much of my faith carried culture without my noticing. Everything, from the way worship was organized, to the songs we sang, was culturally shaped. That’s why some of us feel at home in a Pentecostal church but not in an Episcopal one, or vice versa. Faith is wrapped in culture.
I remember visiting a Russian Orthodox church. Everyone stood; there were no seats. That was very different from my experience, but in the Eastern church that’s normal. Not wrong—just different. Entering spaces like that can be disorienting, but it’s also an invitation to growth.
I still need to press against my own preconceived notions. One of the most recent examples was the story of the woman at the well in John 4. New scholarship suggests she wasn’t a promiscuous sinner but a vulnerable woman, likely infertile, which in that culture meant repeated abandonment by husbands. That reframes her as a victim rather than a villain. The first time I read it, I thought, I don’t believe this—I don’t like this. But then I realized the woman is actually vulnerable. She was probably infertile, which may explain why she had so many husbands. Back then, women who couldn’t conceive often had their husbands leave or take another wife. She was likely alone, a victim rather than the “sinner” I had been taught to see her as. In the story, she becomes an evangelist to her own community. We can’t argue with the ending. But seeing her in this new light was difficult at first. It challenged what I had been taught. Yet that’s the very path of growth: being open when God shows up in unexpected ways, and allowing our assumptions to be reshaped by the witness of others.
Radix: In terms of typical Americans relating to non-typical Americans—though that may be the wrong way to categorize it—do you see positive change over the years? Are you hopeful? Are North Americans actually becoming more welcoming, not just outwardly polite? Do you feel things are getting better in some ways? And you can say no!
KG: That’s a complicated question. In some ways, yes. But obviously we have a government at the moment that is not open to people who are different, particularly refugees and other immigrants, and that has a lot of influence. When you have a strong leader telling people, “You’re struggling, and these people are to blame,” it resonates. People want someone to blame when they’re economically imperiled—when they can’t afford a home, or when they aren’t earning enough to live on.
I understand the desire to hold someone responsible, and our leader is telling them immigrants are responsible. So in that way, the country has become less welcoming, because people are eager for that message. Even immigrants themselves, just look at the Cuban community in Miami. They’ve been very hurt and disappointed to find themselves also victims of raids. They supported the president, and now they’re seeing their own relatives deported and harmed by these policies they thought wouldn’t touch them. On the other hand, there’s also the world of the internet. For better or worse, it has democratized information: anyone can start a blog or a conversation on X, Threads, or Facebook. And there’s a lot of resistance to anti-immigrant messaging—people saying, “This isn’t really true. Immigrants aren’t to blame.”
Globalization has changed everything. When my father’s family first came to Rhode Island, they worked in factories making costume jewelry. Today all those factories are closed, moved to Mexico or elsewhere. That’s not the fault of immigrants; that’s NAFTA. Corporations sought cheaper labor abroad. So there are people who speak these truths, organize movements, and push back through social media.
If we look only at mass media, it can be discouraging—bad news after bad news every day. But often at the grassroots, good work is happening that never makes the news. During the pandemic, for example, there was a small Lutheran church in Baltimore. The neighborhood had become predominantly Central American, mostly Salvadoran and Honduran, while the congregation was still mostly white. The church asked the community, “We have resources; how can we help?” Some members wanted to start a food pantry, but the pastor wisely said, “Let’s ask what people actually need.” And when they did, the community said, “We’re working. We don’t have internet at home. We need a place where our kids can get online for school.”
And so this community did exactly that. They set up social distancing between the tables, let kids use their space, and provided adult supervision—not that the kids were little, most were older. To me, this is the kind of thing that never makes the news. But this church had a real, lasting impact in their community. After the pandemic, they held a big festival and were very intentional with their wording. They called it Neighbors Welcoming Neighbors because they didn’t want a sense of “us” welcoming “them.” It was, we’re all neighbors here. The whole community came out, and this church continues to do a lot of good work.
You don’t hear about it in the news, because it’s not big enough for national headlines. But it makes a huge difference locally. I’ve seen this kind of work in many places. I think about Jesus saying faith is believing in what you don’t see. And even though we don’t always see it, there is so much happening quietly. When I’ve visited the borderlands, I’ve met people who devote themselves to finding human remains in the desert so families can have peace and bring their loved one’s home. Others drop off water so migrants don’t die of dehydration. This is beautiful, neighborly work. It’s not done alone, but in community.
There’s a lot of quiet goodness happening, even if it never makes the news. If all we see is deportations or detention centers, or the devastation in Gaza, it’s easy to despair. But we can join in the good work. It may not happen on a grand scale, but it is real. We need eyes to see it, and trust it’s there.
Radix: That was a meaningfully hopeful response. You bring up the media—how it trains us to notice only the big, the flashy, the dramatic. As Christians, we can fall into that same mindset: thinking that if in order to be doing God’s work, we’ll have a TV station, or become Mother Teresa, or Shane Claiborne—some big, visible figure. But the Kingdom of God often works through the small. Instead of trying to do something really big, what if you gave just an hour and a half each week to help a single mother? Or dropped off one meal a month for a foster family? Those “small” things are what we’ll actually do. And they grow. That’s the grassroots power you mentioned—the collective small things that together become something much larger. That’s what the Kingdom looks like.
KG: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think of someone like St. Francis of Assisi, who we revere for his devotion to the poor. But what did he really do at first? He looked around and saw that poor people couldn’t sit in church because the seats were reserved for the well-to-do. So he found a church in disrepair, began to fix it up, and invited the poor to come sit there. Initially, all he wanted was to provide them a place to sit and be seen, not pushed to the back or on the floor. That small act grew into a movement—so significant that eventually others took it from him and scaled it up.
I think we can all participate in God’s work of caring for our neighbors in that way. You don’t have to go out and protest if that’s not you, but we all have something to offer. Some people tutor immigrants in English once a week. Others set up apartments for refugees. None of it is glamorous. Isaac Villegas wrote a book called Migrant God where he writes about working in the kitchen of a migrant shelter, spending a summer peeling potatoes and chopping carrots. It was humble work, but it meant so much to those who arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Volunteers also organized donated clothing, cleaned, and kept the shelter running.
I once heard Gary Haugen, founder of International Justice Mission, say that most anti-trafficking work isn’t daring rescues—it’s paperwork: filing documents, getting permits, handling logistics. If we adjust our expectations, we’ll see a world of service opportunities open up.
A friend recently needed a French speaker to translate a document for an immigrant’s case. I studied French, so I helped. We all have skills we can offer. But just as important is asking people what they need rather than assuming. At World Vision, where I used to work, the model was the same: ask first. In one community, people said their greatest need was caring for children with disabilities, not the assumed water well. That’s where the resources went: caring for the children. I really value that model—it respects people’s dignity.
Radix: Just as a side note, I really appreciated your comment in the later chapter about not using stories in the wrong way. That meant a lot. My sister works with ex-offenders, and when she comes home for Christmas, people will say, “Tell me a story.” And of course, they know she has plenty. But she mostly says no—she won’t share just to give someone the satisfaction of hearing a dramatic or “sexy” story. These are people she’s working with, not entertainment.
That’s why your reminder to be careful with stories struck me. For two reasons: first, because the small ones you’re talking about now—that’s the real world. It’s in the small acts of kindness, not just the big, dramatic gestures that make people feel good. And second, because I don’t hear it said often. I love Father Gregory Boyle’s books—I cry when I listen to them.
KG: Me too.
Radix: How could you not? If someone doesn’t feel something listening to him, they’re either not paying attention or they’re not human. But sometimes his books can feel like a whole collection of really powerful stories, and in a way, that’s a shame. They don’t always leave room for the mundane things—the banal, the peeling of potatoes. I know he knows those things matter too, and I understand he’s writing for a major publisher who wants gripping stories. No condemnation there. But hearing you emphasize the importance of the small things—it matters. Because everyone can do that. We can all make the world just a little better, make our neighbors feel seen, help them in small ways. That’s the work of the gospel.
KG: Right. The gospel talks about the mustard seed, and I think that’s real and true. These small things are hopeful spaces. It can be easy to lose hope when we look at the world at large, with everything that’s happening. But it helps me to remember: this is normal. People have always thought they were living in the end times, that the world was at its worst.
In the first century, the Jewish people saw their temple destroyed, Rome was persecuting the church, the world seemed on fire. And yet, in the midst of it, we get these small stories in the Bible of what the disciples were doing during that time. Compared to the Roman Empire, their acts were tiny. But the church is still here, and Rome is long gone.
People often ask me where I’m finding hope. I find it in the small, quiet work that often doesn’t make the news—churches helping their neighbors, even when it looks like endless paperwork. My old church in Baltimore, for example, helped people keep their electricity on by negotiating with the power company, working out payment plans, sometimes even covering part of the bill. It’s not glamorous, but it’s real, hard work—helping people find affordable housing, walking with them through struggles. That’s where I see hope. But don’t look for it in the news. I don’t think we were meant to carry so much information about everything happening everywhere.
Radix: If you could gather all the pastors in a room—maybe like Hermione’s magic bag so they’d all fit—and they had to listen to you, and listen with a smile on their face, because people are more receptive when they’re smiling, what would you want to tell pastors?
KG: I’d tell them to preach and speak about immigration. Most don’t, because it’s polarizing. But you don’t need to give your personal opinion. Just show people what Scripture says about caring for the foreigner in our midst. When I came to faith, I was taught that salvation is moving from bondage to freedom, from lost to found. But it’s also moving from being a stranger, a foreigner, to being part of the family of God. That’s a story woven all through Scripture.
It takes courage. Pastors depend on their congregations for a living, so it feels risky. But it’s vital. We’re seeing what happens when sermons just “tickle ears.” People are drifting toward Christian nationalism, siding with the powerful instead of with the vulnerable—the very people Jesus told us to care for. Sermons shape people. Sometimes they reinforce biases. But with courage, pastors can bring out a different message—kindly, gently, yet truthfully.
Paul said the first quality of love is patience. That includes patience with God’s people as they grow and become aware. But we must trust the Spirit to work in them, and we must still speak the truth. A Lifeway survey showed that 70% of pastors never say anything about immigrants, though immigrants make up 16% of the population, with 11% undocumented. Silence leaves people to form their views from peers, family, or media. This needs to come from spiritual leaders. That’s what I would say.
Radix: Thank you for all of this. It’s been really lovely, and I so appreciate your time. Best wishes for your work and your life—may the Spirit continue to speak through you as graciously as you’ve spoken here.
KG: Thank you. I really appreciate it too. Take care.