From our founder’s outreach to immigrants in New York City in the 1880s to settlements established at home and abroad for those fleeing the horrors of the Vietnam War, the Alliance family has been caring for people forced to leave their homelands to escape the devastating effects of disaster, disease, famine, and conflict.
A recent Christianity Today online article by Matthew Soerens entitled “The Church and the Huddled Masses,” beautifully unpacks how the Church should position itself in response to the plight of immigrants and refugees. Mr. Soerens, the U.S. church training specialist for World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, uses the C&MA as both a historic and present-day example of the Church’s sacrificial love and Christlike compassion extended to disenfranchised peoples.
This legacy continues as Alliance international workers and national churches find (and place) themselves in the crossroads of the displaced and marginalized. Churches planted throughout the Middle East by pioneer missionary George Breaden and those he discipled nearly 100 years ago are now caring for refugees and internally displaced peoples who are victims of the Syrian civil war and the brutal advance of religious extremists.
See the impact one of these churches in Mafraq, Jordan, is having on Syrian refugee families and orphans.
U.S. Alliance churches have and continue to step in and help resettle refugees and immigrants from every corner of the world. After returning from Vietnam when the war ended in 1975, Alliance missionaries Grady and Evelyn Mangham worked furiously to resettle Vietnamese refugees in U.S. Christian homes. To this day, Evelyn, one of George Breaden’s daughters, continues to meet with and encourage immigrants and refugees from Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
The 2016 November/December issue of Alliance Life features stories from our past and present that show just how deeply the Alliance family cares for the world’s displaced and neglected peoples. You can view it online starting October 26.