Strangers in the land: Reimagining the gēr through Deuteronomic law, Derridean hospitality, and evangelical politics

Poppen, Zac

Item

Strangers in the land: Reimagining the gēr through Deuteronomic law, Derridean hospitality, and evangelical politics

Poppen, Zac

Date

2025-04-28

Abstract

This dissertation examines the figure of the gēr—the stranger or resident alien—as a theological and ethical touchstone within Deuteronomic law. Situated at the intersection of biblical studies, phenomenology, and political theology, the project explores how the gēr functions not only as a legal category but as a site of covenantal memory and interpretive challenge. Against the backdrop of modern evangelical engagements with immigration, the study argues for a renewed reading posture that foregrounds vulnerability, power, and the risks of welcome. Methodologically, this study develops a “phenomenological double reading,” rooted in the thought of Jacques Derrida and Edmund Husserl. Derrida’s concept of hostipitality—the tension between hospitality and hostility—exposes the instabilities within legal forms of welcome. Husserl’s phenomenology, particularly his theories of intentionality and historical consciousness, grounds the project in how ethical perception is formed by memory and experience. Together, these frameworks cultivate a critical, reflective encounter with the biblical text. The dissertation begins by surveying scholarly debates around the gēr and related outsider categories such as nokrî and zār, focusing on legal and theological interpretations in Deuteronomy. It then engages contemporary evangelical political theologies surrounding immigration, mapping how biblical texts are mobilized in ways that obscure the ethical tensions of hospitality. Chapter 3 outlines the phenomenological and deconstructive frameworks guiding the project’s method. Chapter 4 applies this method to four core Deuteronomic texts (10:17–19; 24:17–18; 24:19–22; 26:12–13), demonstrating how hospitality is constructed through legal memory, ritual practice, and socio-theological vision. Chapter 5 reflects on the broader implications for biblical scholarship and public theology, and names areas for future inquiry, including womanist, postcolonial, and disability hermeneutics. By re-centering the gēr as an ethical lens and reading Deuteronomic law through phenomenological and deconstructive methods, this project challenges readers to see hospitality not as a resolved moral value, but as an ongoing ethical crisis that demands reflection, responsibility, and the continual risk of welcome.