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Reconciling Liberation and Charity: Central American Leadership in the 1980s Philadelphia Sanctuary Movement

Central American leadership in the 1980s Philadelphia Sanctuary Movement was cultivated through long experiences with social injustice, along with deeply political religious sensibilities rooted in Latin American labor organizing and the base Christian community movement. While it is sometimes assumed that they carried with them only an undifferentiated past of victimization and violence, Central American sanctuary activists and collaborators brought refined community organizing skills, which they intentionally employed to expand solidarity and sanctuary coalitions across Northern America. This dissertation explores some of the ways in which displaced Central American human rights workers moved within this international, interreligious context to further their liberationist goals. In a religious environment steeped in long histories of racialized missionary intervention and human exploitation, Guatemalans and Salvadorans asserted a different vision of sanctuary not only concerned with personal safety, but also with the opportunity to educate the U.S. public while they transformed the practice of sanctuary from the inside out. Harnessing the resources of their own cultural and religious histories and experiences, Central American human rights workers gained access to certain critical segments of the human, social, and political capital of the Philadelphia region to advance the cause of their own survival and flourishing. / Religion

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/8449
Date January 2023
CreatorsWard-Bucher, Mary, 0009-0004-2671-0753
ContributorsRey, Terry, Alpert, Rebecca T. (Rebecca Trachtenberg), 1950-, Tesfai, Rebbeca, Barba, Lloyd Daniel
PublisherTemple University. Libraries
Source SetsTemple University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis/Dissertation, Text
RightsIN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Relationhttp://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/8413, Theses and Dissertations

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