Acts 17:22–31
This passage from Acts contains Paul’s striking insistence on the universality of God’s creation of and love for the whole world, regardless of ethnicity or national origin.
Paul proclaims the “unknown god” to whom he saw an altar inscribed, saying, “From one ancestor he made all people to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live” (17:24). God is the creator and loving parent of all people. God created national and ethnic diversity and unites us across borders.
For Paul, of course, it is in Jesus Christ that God is seen and known. Our theology, following Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:35-46, often reminds us that we “seek and serve Christ in all people” (Book of Common Prayer 305) and especially in those who are sick, imprisoned, or strangers. We see God in Jesus; we see Jesus in our neighbors, wherever they come from.
Paul promises to the Athenians that God “is not far from each one of us” and “in [God] we live and move and have our being” (17:27–28). Wherever and whoever we are, wherever we are from, God is with us. For Paul, this is a call to turn from idolatry and towards the true God. For us, it is that and, as a consequence, a call to turn from our idolatry of nation or race and recognize God as present in Christ who is with neighbors wherever they are from.
Hannah Bowman is a member of the Episcopal Migration Caucus who lives in Los Angeles, the founder of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons, and the author of Abolition Ecclesiology: A Spatial Theology for a Church Against Prisons (forthcoming from Fortress Press in November 2026)