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

Living as an alien in ones 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 Baileys 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.