“Church Is a Solution Centre”: Strategies of Migrant Churches in Switzerland in Overcoming Hardships

Abstract

Migrant churches in Switzerland are an increasingly emerging, heterogenous phenomenon at the fringes of the Swiss church landscape. Migrant churches are mostly founded and visited by migrants, in many cases asylum seekers, who sometimes find themselves in precarious situations. Moreover, migrant churches cannot rely on government finances like state-affiliated churches in Switzerland do. This article provides a case study on two migrant churches. Both belong to the Pentecostal-charismatic family of World Christianity. The case study seeks to describe what difficulties the churches and their members face and how they deal with these. The coping strategies to overcome challenges are mostly not targeting the problems themselves but trying to regulate the negative emotional conditions the problems give rise to. In my sample churches, this is mainly achieved through a specific charismatic reinterpretation of the situation, where trust in God’s guidance and his providence are given more weight than prosperity promises.