Journeys to and among the Margins: Transnational Religio-Racial Identity on American Christian Palestinian Solidarity Tours

Abstract

This article examines the intersection of racial and religious identity among progressive US Christians in the context of transnational travel. We approach our analysis through a comparative ethnographic study of two majority-Black and two majority-white Christian Palestinian solidarity tours, representing mainline, evangelical, and historically Black Protestant progressive theological traditions. We conceptualize majority-white tours as “journeys to the margins” and majority-Black tours as “journeys among the margins,” considering how the racial makeup and theological orientation of trips offer a range of affordances for meaning-making, identity construction, and solidarity-building. Using Judith Weisenfeld’s religio-racial framework, we focus on how participants’ progressive Christian values are embedded in divergent racial schemas. Attending to how the logics of these schemas are reinforced or interrogated in transnational encounters, we extend Weisenfeld’s concept from the nation-state to the transnational as we examine how participants reproduce, revise, and re-envision religio-racial frameworks.