From the Archives: "Sent as Host and Guest in Little Mogadishu"
Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.
Jane Buckley-Farley, ELCA pastor of a congregation in the diverse Minneapolis neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside, writes about how the church she serves has adapted to a changing culture. When East Africans, especially Somalis, made this neighborhood their home, the Lutheran congregation Jane serves came to see itself as both host and guest for the immigrants because of the need for the church to welcome new people and also come to be introduced as “guests” to new ways of life and worship. Trinity Lutheran has found ways to welcome people of non-English language and foreign cultural expectations like the absolute need to avoid pork at potluck meals. The worship often uses three languages at once. This essay is filled with insights into adaptations that welcome people who have sought a home in a new land––a much-needed vision for our time. –– Melinda Quivik
Selected Quotes from
"Sent as Host and Guest in Little Mogadishu"
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In the 1990s Cedar-Riverside began to welcome immigrants from the Horn of Africa—Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia—who came to escape civil war and conflict in their home countries. In 2010, over 50 percent of residents in Cedar-Riverside were East African. The largest concentration of Somalis outside of Somalia now calls this neighborhood home and they have
affectionately nicknamed the neighborhood “Little Mogadishu.”
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This rich history of diversity has made Cedar-Riverside a unique place to live, work, learn,
pray, and play. Once known as a center of Scandinavian culture, it was home to several Christian
churches and had a reputation for its Lutheran institutions, including Fairview Hospital and
Augsburg College. Today it is better known for its East African cultures and being a center for
East African Muslims. As such it has often been mischaracterized as a questionable neighborhood in the news media. It is in this neighborhood that Trinity Lutheran Congregation has been sent as both host and guest for over 150 years.
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People of color and Muslims are at times treated differently from the white people on our own streets. Anti-Muslim graffiti appears regularly on mosque walls; I have never seen anti-Christian graffiti anywhere in Cedar-Riverside. Stories of anti-Muslim words and actions proliferate at bus stops, on the streets, and now even in national speeches.
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Being a host in this community calls us to acts of welcome: providing hospitality, opening our
building, providing food, accommodating differences, and offering other outward signs of wel-
come. Being a host also goes deeper than action, requiring an attitude of humility, of being open
to learning to being changed.
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When hymns are available in all three languages, those hymns are given priority. They may not fit the theme of the day, but using hymns that all congregants can sing has become an important part of who we have become as a congregation. Despite traditional prohibitions against saying “alleluia” during Lent, we now sing a hymn using “alleluia” on Good Friday because of the availability of a hymn in Tigre, one of the languages of our congregants.
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Having been sent as host and guest Trinity has come to see God at work in Little Mogadishu.
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Jane Buckley-Farlee, Senior Pastor at Trinity Lutheran Congregation in the Cedar-Riverside, Little Mogadishu neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, writes a blog: seeinggodinlittlemogadishu.com.
Jane Buckley-Farlee, “Sent as Host and Guest in Little Mogadishu,” Liturgy 35, no. 2 (2020): 11–17.