The Sanctuary Movement Reader

A first-of-its-kind documentary history of how sanctuary evolved from a religious tradition into a powerful movement for migrant justice.

For decades, the sanctuary movement has offered both refuge and resistance for immigrants facing deportation in the US. From the underground networks that sheltered Central American refugees in the 1980s to today’s sanctuary cities, churches, and universities, the movement has transformed a long-standing religious tradition of protection into a powerful set of strategies for migrant justice. The Sanctuary Movement Reader is the first documentary history to tell this remarkable story.

Bringing together manifestos, sermons, photographs, posters, policy resolutions, and other primary sources from the last fifty years, editors Lloyd Daniel Barba and Barbara Andrea Sostaita trace the evolution of sanctuary activism. Along the way, they show how activists have confronted immigration raids, expanding detention and deportation, and increasingly militarized borders. A vital history for these times, The Sanctuary Movement Reader reveals sanctuary as a crucial tradition of resistance that has transformed American religion, immigration politics, and movements for social justice.

Lloyd Daniel Barba is Associate Professor of Religion at Amherst College, coauthor of Sanctuary in America: How Activists Defied the Government and Defended Immigrants—and Why It Still Matters, and coeditor of Sacred Refuge: New Histories of the US Sanctuary Movement.

Barbara Andrea Sostaita is Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is author of Sanctuary Everywhere: The Fugitive Sacred in the Sonoran Desert.