InterVarsity Press (IVP) is pleased to announce that Refuge Reimagined has been recognized as a finalist in the annual Australian Christian Book of the Year Awards. 

The Australian Christian Book of the Year Award recognizes excellence in Christian writing by an Australian citizen. Candidates are judged according to the original nature, literary style, design, and contribution that the book makes in Christian writing for an Australian audience. Winners are now being decided by a team of past winners of the Australian Christian Book of the Year. 

Refuge Reimagined: Biblical Kinship in Global Politics is one of ten titles shortlisted for the award. Coauthors Mark R. Glanville and Luke Glanville apply the kinship ethic to issues such as the current mission of the church, national identity and sovereignty, and possibilities for a cooperative global response to the refugee crisis. Challenging the fear-based ethic that often motivates Christian approaches, they envision a more generous, creative, and hopeful way forward.  

“What would it mean if, rather than just providing support and protection for people experiencing displacement, we actually lived life with them?” said Erin Wilson, associate professor of politics and religion at the University of Groningen. “In this important book, Mark and Luke Glanville provide an answer to this question through the biblical concept of kinship. Building on existing work in political theory, theology on hospitality, and our responses to people on the move, Glanville and Glanville suggest that the Scriptures call us to enfold displaced people as kindred, in relationships where both the host and the hosted bless and receive blessing. This framework has the potential to radically disrupt existing approaches to refugees and protection in both scholarship and practice, as they demonstrate through their engagement with key biblical texts and day-to-day institutions and processes. It’s a radical disruption that is desperately needed in these dark and challenging times for the politics of migration and politics in general.”

Mark R. Glanville (PhD, Bristol University) is associate professor of pastoral theology at Regent College, Vancouver, and an Old Testament scholar. He is the author of Adopting the Stranger as Kindred in Deuteronomy and Freed to Be God’s Family: The Book of Exodus and has written articles for a variety of publications including the Journal of Biblical Literature, Refuge Journal, Journal of Missional Practice, Christian Educators Journal, Evangelicals for Social Action, Faith Today, The Light Magazine, and The Presbyterian Pulse.

Luke Glanville (PhD, University of Queensland) is associate professor in the department of international relations at Australian National University. He is the author of Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect: A New History, which won the Australian Political Science Association Crisp Prize in 2016 and the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award in 2014.

Winners of Australian Christian Book of the Year Award will be announced September 1, 2022, at the SparkLit Awards Night in Melbourne, Australia. 

For a complete list of IVP award winners visit ivpress.com.