Article

Creed

Migration

14 March 2025

7 min read

I wrote Jesus was a child refugee, I got called crazy

Digging into history uncovers uncomfortable truths.

Joan Taylor

Joan is Professor Emerita of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism, King’s College London.

A red sandstone statue of Jesus as a child.

A Victorian statue of Jesus as a child.

As a historian of Jesus, I have sometimes been asked to comment on the question 'what would Jesus do today?'. I have sometimes responded. In September 2015 I wrote a guest post for the Jesus Blog, titled Jesus was a Refugee. It was on the story of baby Jesus’ escape to Egypt with his parents, as written in the Gospel of Matthew, which I conclude is historically true. It is interesting to me, because I want to understand what informed Jesus’ teaching as an adult.

I am not a theologian, a priest or a pastor. I have spent my academic career carefully working out what is true or false in terms of the many stories of the ancient past. So, when I discuss anything, it is after years of study, collegial discussion and discernment. Historians like me know that our ancient accounts come from particular people at different times, telling things with particular points of view. They don’t seek to tell the whole truth, but they shine a light on what is important to them. They can tweak, spin, modify or drop what is not essential to them, and we see this process unfold in retellings. In what I do, I am as analytical about biblical stories as I am about anything else, recognising that I too am located in a particular time and place, with my own capacity to see or not see. With biblical stories this is both rewarding and challenging because to me they are also Scripture, in that they inform my faith, spirituality and practice.

But this is a world in which sharing of expertise can go up in a puff of public pushback.

I wrote at the height of scaremongering about Syrian refugees who were fleeing to Europe to escape the dangers and devastation in their country and, given its relevance, the post was picked up on other sites. On Bible History Daily, there was a furious reaction in comments. People asked whether – even if Jesus was a refugee – his experience could be mapped on to issues of the contemporary world, which are so very different. Some commenters insisted that Jesus and his family could not be aligned with economic refugees like Mexicans or bogus refugees who were actually Muslim terrorists. More stingingly, I was told I was crazy, a professor of b******t and I was blaspheming for even suggesting that Jesus was a refugee.

That Jesus was a refugee has actually been recognised as part of his life from the very beginning of Christian tradition, and contemporary theologians like Barnabas Asprey can well explore what this means for faith. But it seems that some people were alarmed that I was diminishing Jesus by associating him with people they considered reprehensible.

My job is to understand Jesus in his own world. If I do it properly, people may well find resonances with today. But I do also understand that it is a tricky thing to map Jesus onto contemporary circumstances, especially contentious ones. Over a hundred years ago the philosopher and physician Albert Schweitzer critiqued the 'quest of the historical Jesus' as a whole as covertly creating a liberal model of Jesus. He commented that the 'historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma'. If we met Jesus today, he would seem completely alien to us. So, we do have to be careful when we look to him in our arguments concerning current issues. Yet, Schweitzer also put a lot of trust in the words of Jesus, because his 'spirit, which lies hidden in his words, is known in simplicity, and its influence is direct. Every saying contains in its own way the whole Jesus.'

So where do we go with this? What did Jesus say? Frankly, Jesus’ ethos was utterly uncompromising. "Woe to you who are rich … woe to you who are well-fed now" (Luke 6:24-25), he said. There are a decent number of Jesus’ statements that suggest people who were economically struggling should be fed and welcomed, and those with wealth should share what they have with the have-nots. Jesus said to a rich man that he should "go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me" (Mark 10:21). Following Jesus was not about becoming destitute, but about joining a community of disciples who saw each other as one big family of siblings. In this group resources were shared (Acts 2:44-45 and 4:32-37). This is beyond philanthropy. And Jesus didn’t talk about the worthiness of the poor; the problem was not with the poor, it was with the rich.

There’s a big question then in how to use Jesus as a model for ethics. To use Jesus as a model, you have to see the bigger picture of the whole movement he created, within an ancient context, a movement that does not exist any longer in its original form. Was Jesus a refugee? By calling anyone a refugee, in antiquity, I mean someone who flees their home to a place of refuge, to escape danger or disaster. As for my particular 'blasphemy', I reiterate it. Jesus was a child refugee: Jesus’ family fled from the danger of the Roman client king in Judaea, Herod, and escaped to Egypt. In classical Christian doctrine, this is not at all thought of as diminishing Jesus. It made Jesus one of us, in all our human hardships.

I think he turns things around, radically, so that the life of the wandering refugee is actually a paradigm for action.

Curiously, the fears expressed by the commenters on my post mirror ancient attitudes to poor, foreign people. Later apocryphal stories of the holy family in Egypt present them facing continual hostility from Egyptian townsfolk and attacks by robbers. These tales reflect an actual situation in which incoming foreigners, for whatever reason, were not welcome. For refugees, it could be a life of vulnerability. In the second century, the anti-Christian writer Celsus scoffs that child Jesus in Egypt worked for hire because of his poverty (Origen, Contra Celsum 1:28).

Egypt itself was not a totally safe place to be Jewish. Under the Roman prefect Flaccus (38-39 CE), soon after Jesus, there were riots and pogroms against the Jewish population of Alexandria, as the historian Josephus records (War 2:487-98; Ant. 18:257-60). In 41 CE the Roman emperor Claudius cautioned the long-settled Jewish population of Alexandria that they lived in 'a city not their own', and they were 'not to bring in or invite Jews who sail down to Alexandria from Syria[-Palestine]' (CPJ I:151). Later in the first century (70-73 CE), there were many Jewish refugees fleeing dangers in Judaea by going to Egypt (War 7: 407–419). Hundreds of these men, identified as troublemakers by the Romans, were killed, along with their families. I explore this and much more in my new book, Boy Jesus: Growing Up Judean in Turbulent Times. The life of a refugee was hard, and Jesus would have been told his parents’ stories about what they endured.

This is what is so interesting to me, because we know from contemporary studies of trauma that this would have had an impact on Jesus. There is received trauma resulting from the suffering, persecutions, hardships and distresses of parents and grandparents.

So how are these experiences reflected in Jesus’ sayings? I think he turns things around, radically, so that the life of the wandering refugee is actually a paradigm for action. Jesus, in his mission as a teacher and healer, identified himself as a displaced person: "Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of humanity has nowhere to lay his head" (Matt. 8:20), he said. Jesus was itinerant, and he entered villages with nothing, offering healing and looking for kindness (food, shelter). He asked those who acted in his stead to go out without money or extra clothing, essentially to walk along the road like destitute refugees who had suddenly fled from home, relying on the generosity and hospitality of the ordinary people whose villages they entered (Mark 6.8-11). And it was precisely the villagers’ welcome or not to such people that showed what side they were on when it came to divine justice: "And if any place will not receive you and refuse to hear you, shake off the dust on your feet when you leave, for a testimony to them" (Mark 6.11).

If the sayings of Jesus show his spirit, time and again this spirit rests with the experience of the marginalised, the displaced, the persecuted, the sick and the poor. I say this as a historian, thinking of Jesus in his own time. How that sits with contemporary issues remains a question. To what extent can people of modern times, with all our baggage of private ownership, debts and anxieties about our jobs and livelihoods, share in Jesus’ ethos? In answering it, I suspect few of us will feel comfortable, whatever side we think we are on. But taking out the logs in our own eyes, rather than the specks in someone else’s, has never been easy.

Boy Jesus: Growing Up Judaean in Turbulent Times, Joan Taylor, SPCK Publishing.

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Article

Belief

Creed

Mental Health

Spiritual formation

11 June 2025

7 min read

We have become myopic when it comes to prayer

We have scienced the s**t out of how to talk to God

Roger Bretherton

Roger is a Clinical and Coaching Psychologist.

A woman stands against a sparse white background looking up.

Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash.

When I was a kid in the eighties, Japan belonged in the realm of science fiction. The Land of the Rising Sun was the land of bullet trains, robotics, the Sony Walkman, the home of Sonic and Mario. British engineers and technicians learned Japanese to avoid being left out when the inevitable Nipponese future arrived.

In recent years the news has been more concerning. One and a half million young Japanese people have become hikikomori, locked in their rooms in extreme isolation. The birthrate has bottomed out. Loneliness is pandemic, with restaurants designed to serve food to diners without needing to meet another person, not even a waiter. Yet Japan remains a place of profound spiritual heritage. Even its cultural exports reflect this. Take Studio Ghibli. There is a word for the moments of quiet contemplation that punctuate their films- ma. It’s the Japanese concept of the interval or space between things. A moment to breathe. If Pixar warms our hearts, then Ghibli heals our souls.

One of the most impressive people I know is Japanese. When asked about his upbringing he is characteristically understated. His parents, he says, were very religious. What he means by this is that they were practicing Buddhists and by the age of three he was meditating with them for hours every day. He now speaks multiple languages, has worked in universities all over the world, and has single-handedly taught more people psychological wellbeing skills than anyone else know. He carries himself with an elegant and compassionate poise that gently permeates any room he enters. He’s very, well… zen.

No doubt my characterisation of Japan is deeply culturally ignorant, unencumbered by any actual awareness of the economics and sociology that have determined the nation’s profile in recent decades. Chief among my many ignorances was the idea that the practice of meditation was widespread in Japan. You couldn’t throw a stick in Kyoto, I assumed, without hitting half a dozen robed monks perched on a rock. But it turns out I’m wrong. When I ask my friend, freshly returned from leading a retreat on Mount Fuji, if his meditative upbringing was typical, he says it wasn’t. It was very unusual. The notion of religious affiliation is not well matched to the complexity of Japanese culture, but more than one commentator has wondered whether the dominant ideology is not Buddhism, nor even Shinto, but Materialism.

Perhaps then it is not a complete surprise that in a recent study of more than 200,000 respondents from 22 countries, Japan is ranked last of those who report praying or meditating daily. According to this analysis, only 10 per cent of the Japanese population pray or meditate each day, just behind Sweden on 11per cent and Germany on17 per cent. Nigeria comes top of the list, with 92 per cent of the population reporting daily prayer or meditation (a result which tempted me to wonder whether the study had measured prayer in decibels rather than percentages. If like me, you’ve been fortunate enough to join Nigerian Christians in prayer, you will know what a joyously raucous occasion that can be). The national data equally represents Nigerian Muslims engaged in daily salat. Even more so the data from Indonesia, ranked second with 84 per cent of the population reporting daily prayer.

Roughly halfway down the table of results there is a sort of break, a statistical chasm if you like. Brazil is listed as 10th on the list with 65per cent of the population praying/meditating each day and then, after a bit of drop, Mexico and the United States come in as the best-of-the-rest at 48per cent and 42per cent respectively. The UK hovers just above the relegation zone, fifth from the bottom at 24per cent. If this was the Premier League, we would be Everton. Not good enough to win, but not great at losing either. I support Everton. They are my team. I pray a lot.

Of course, the major thing the authors had to clarify in their first few sentences was whether they were right to treat prayer and meditation as the same thing. Many people would argue they are different things. Prayer is usually directed towards one or more divine recipients. Meditation may include the quietude and introspection of prayer but does not necessarily require a theistic focus. The authors argue – I think rightly – that while prayer and meditation can be differentiated, they are similar and overlapping practices, which psychologically perform similar functions. They have both been linked with similar outcomes for those who practice them: increased psychological wellbeing, higher gratitude, greater purpose in life, reduced aggression, greater social connectedness, longer life expectancy, and so on. And this research certainly confirms demographic findings across cultures. Those who pray or meditate daily are likely to be elderly, retired, women, homemakers, and regularly attend religious services.

We’ve become myopic. Our technical prowess occupies the foreground, but the infinite mysterious background is chronically out of focus.

The reason this research interests me so much is because prayer and meditation – which are pretty much the same thing for me – are the most important things I do, but probably the ones I talk about least. So when I read that one-in-four people here in Britain are praying or meditating every day, I’m surprised twice. First surprise: so few people pray. Second surprise: more people are praying than I thought.

The first surprise is the realisation that it simply does not occur to many people to pray, even in situations when a bit of prayer would come in quite handy. This hit me most strongly when I watched Matt Damon playing The Martian. Stuck alone 140 million miles from home, he survives by growing potatoes in his own faeces, but at no point in his isolation does it ever occur to him to pray. Faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem he opts (in his words) to “science the sh**t out of it”. Personally, if I were stuck on Mars I would science the sh**t out of it and pray the sh**t out of it - though I suspect overcoming the disgust of wolfing down potatoes smeared in excrement would feature prominently in my daily devotions. But I can’t imagine not praying. I mean, Tom Hanks couldn’t survive two minutes on a desert island without worshipping a volleyball. Hopefully I’d do a bit better than that.

Much of the daily prayer recorded internationally was corporate not solitary: people gathering to pray or meditate, not sneaking off to do so in secret. But there is something about praying alone that captures my imagination, that is both enthralling and intimidating. William James famously defined religion as what we do with our solitude. We are who we are when we are alone with God and no more, claimed C.S. Lewis. And mystics down the millennia have loved to cite the definition of prayer offered by Plotinus, the flight of the alone to the alone. Praying alone ups the stakes. Because if there is no God and we make time to be alone, we are truly alone. If there is no God and we whisper our deepest desires into the darkness with no one to hear them, we are exposed as ridiculous creatures wasting our breath. Not meeting with God, just talking to ourselves.

Praying together is good, but it can be distracting, too susceptible to the mixed motives of impressing, appeasing or opposing others. Jesus was aware of this tension. His advice not to pray publicly for spiritual status, but rather to find a secret space where God could be found in secret, is pretty exacting. He knew that the danger of praying in a group is being satisfied with social rather than spiritual reward. To settle for the impression our prayers make on those around us, rather than surrendering to the impression God would make on us.

So maybe all that worrying about Japan is really just a projection of my own hopes and fears for people closer to home. On the one hand I worry that we have scienced the sh**t out of our ability to pray or meditate. Everything is a problem to be solved. We’ve become myopic. Our technical prowess occupies the foreground, but the infinite mysterious background is chronically out of focus. On the other hand, I find solace in knowing that every fourth person I pass in the street may have some inkling of what it means to connect with a deeper reality in prayer or contemplation. It gives me hope. Hope that wherever we are, whatever we are doing, whenever we wish to, there is always time to take one long deep breath in. And without fanfare or posting to Instagram, exhale our love, our worry, our sadness, our gratitude to the one Jesus called Our Father in secret.

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