The refugee crisis of 2015 and 2016 and the subsequent theopolitical responses in Europe, North America, and elsewhere have been marked throughout by concerns about Islam and Muslims. The long and often uneasy relationship between Christianity and Islam has shaped European and North American responses to forced migration and has been an often unchallenged source for anti-migrant policies and rhetoric. In order for Christian theology and the church communities to offer constructive engagement within the current migration context, they must find new avenues to address and engage with Islam. This essay borrows from Jürgen Moltmann’s theopolitical interpretation of interreligious dialogue and his innovative rethinking of Christian theology in conversation with Judaism to propose that an analogous posture toward Islam be developed. It concludes by outlining the contours of a theology of witness/ shahid that offers constructive possibilities for reframing Christian–Muslim debates to better attend to its theological, political, and ethical considerations.

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The author evaluates the current partnership between the church, religious NGOs, and the US State Department on refugee resettlement. In conversation with refugee studies, he teases out positive implications of and limitations in two prominent models of postChristendom political theology, those of William Cavanaugh and David Fergusson. He then draws on the thought of Johann Baptist Metz and the practice of the Jesuit Refuge Service to suggest ways that a political theology of refugee resettlement might reform current practice and occupy a space between the theologies of Cavanaugh and Fergusson.