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Paper short abstract

Church asylum in contemporary Germany means protection of ‘refugees threatened with deportation’ within the site of a local church community. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the meaning of church asylum for its practitioners from their own terms of reference in its social and historical context.

Paper long abstract

This ethnographic study focuses on church asylum (Kirchenasyl) in contemporary German society. Church asylum after the middle of the 1980s means protection of foreign refugees threatened with deportation within the site of a Christian church community. 'Refugees threatened with deportation' represent a paradoxical and liminal category of humankind. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the meaning of church asylum for its practitioners from their own terms of reference in its social and historical context. Results of ethnographic case studies reveal that church asylum is a complex social phenomenon which contains the following elements: (1) a response of a local religious community to a (post-) modern refugee issue, (2) a questioning of state sovereignty over the acceptance and exclusion of a refugee, (3) a reinterpretation of medieval tradition and (4) hospitality based on a transnational imagination.