Aliens in Your Native Land: 1 Peter and the Formation of Christian Identity

Living as an alien in one's native land is a familiar reality to marginalized communities. Cultural, economic, and political shifts can cause people to become alienated by a system of greed, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and media manipulation.

How can Christians persist under a sustained threat within a social order diametrically opposed to them? This question drives Warner Bailey's investigation of 1 Peter. The mature Christology of 1 Peter yields a profile of Christian identity. This picture is funded by texts from the Book of the Twelve (Hosea-Malachi) and is counter-intuitive, in that it is able to create new initiatives for behavior that offer hope for redemption in the midst of oppression.

Bailey explores how 1 Peter has been used in shaping the life of modern "aliens, " such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, living in his own country under the oppression of Nazism, and feminist, black, immigrant, and LGBTQIA+ readers. Placing 1 Peter within the crisis in U. S. political and economic life opens up fresh implications for faithful ecclesiastical practice and personal witness.

© 2020 Pickwick Publications (Ebook): 9781725268500

Release date

Ebook: 24 July 2020