By Morgen White | FāVS News Reporter
On Tuesday the Department of Religious Studies at Gonzaga University’s College of Arts and Sciences will continue its Flannery lecture series with “Strangers No Longer: Comparative Lessons on Otherness from a Demon Devotee.”
Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier, associate professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, will examine Catholic leaders’ messaging around immigration, while drawing on South Indian folklore and comparative work in Jain and Hindu traditions.
“If the Catholic Church has such great teaching, why is it that there are some very prominent Catholics in the public eye who are using very degrading language? I’m not talking about enforcement or policy so much as our moral imagination. I’m talking about faith and values. What is the imagination by which we think about the migrant and the immigrant,” Tiemeier said.
According to a 2025 Pew Research Center study nearly seven out of 10 Catholics agreed with the statement: America’s openness to people from all over the world is essential to who we are as a nation. Despite this, 41% said that a growing population of immigrants has been a change for the worse. The study found that Christians in general are twice as likely as Americans of either no religion or different religions to say that a growing population of immigrants has been a change for the worse.
Tiemeier said the Catholic Church is deeply divided on immigration, and that many Catholics and Christians approach the issue through a political lens rather than a religious one. She plans to draw on the Christian tradition of faith-driven travel — including missionary journeys and voluntary migration across borders — to challenge what she sees as a modern dismissiveness toward those who cross borders today.
About the Flannery Series
Kevin McCruden, is the Flannery chair and professor of religious studies at Gonzaga. The Flannery chair is responsible for spearheading the planning, logistics and selection of the lecturer. McCruden said the department starts planning a year in advance. The process starts with brainstorming topics, before finding three to four scholars that align. Then the department votes. McCruden said Tiemeier’s name was floated by faculty who were familiar with her research.
“Given what’s happening in the last year or so with issues surrounding immigration, this seemed like a really timely topic. I think the people who talked about Tracy said this was very much in her wheelhouse,” McCruden said.
The Flannery Lecture in Catholic Theology was endowed and instituted in honor of Maud and Milo Flannery. The series started in 1973 and in its current form hosts two lecturers a year. Faculty who oversee the series intentionally look for speakers who can connect Catholic theology to public issues.
A family history with ‘Not Like Us’
Tiemeier, who has been a Catholic for her entire life, said her interest in religion dates back to her youth. Her mother, a Japanese American, was raised with a mixed faith background that included families that were Christian, Buddhist and nonreligious. During visits to see her mother’s side of the family, Tiemeier was exposed to differing faith backgrounds and found herself fascinated with the traditions.
“Some of the people that I grew up with would tell me that my Buddhist family wasn’t going to heaven, or that the right way to be Christian was really the white way to be Christian. I read the Bible cover to cover. I was always asking, Why? Why do people say that? Why do you have to believe that? Who says so? That really inspired my interest, not just in religion, but also in inter-religious questions,” Tiemeier said.
Tiemeier studied theology and philosophy during her undergraduate degree before going on to inter-religious theology with a focus on the religions of India in relation to Christianity. During her education she was also interested in East Asian theology. After graduating in 2006, Tiemeier was hired to teach Asian and Asian American theology and comparative theology at LMU.
Tiemeier said despite feeling satisfied overall with Catholic messaging around immigration, a disconnect for her is their rhetorical strategy. She said the focus is on the idea that no matter our legal status we are essentially the same.
“They [Catholic messaging] appeal to a kind of a shared background and shared religious values. I understand why they do that, but my concern is that when they highlight that, then they set up the stage for people to say, well, if they’re not like us, then we don’t have to treat them with respect,” Tiemeier said.
Tiemeier’s Japanese American family uniquely understands the impact of a ‘not like us’ sentiment. Her grandparents met while interned at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center during World War II. Leading up to the 2016 election Tiemeier had extended conversations with her grandmother as her health declined.
“If she didn’t make it, she wanted me to cast her vote for Trump. We had a lot of conversations about her experience as a Japanese American citizen. She was born in the U.S., but she was still interned, and some of my concerns with the Muslim ban, how Muslims are being treated, and there were important rights that I thought needed to be protected. She kept saying over and over again, they’re not like us. She would say other things about the history of the internment and the way in which Democrats were involved, all of which is true,” Tiemeier said.
Tiemeier’s grandmother died in 2016, and she’s not sure if her mind would’ve changed. But she said she has hope it would have, “because my concern is less about who is president than it is how we talk to each other and how we imagine strangers among us. We can engage with faith in a way that embraces difference, and we don’t have to be afraid of it. They don’t have to look like us, they don’t have to pray like us, to be treated with respect.”
The lecture is open to the public and will be held on campus at the John J. Hemmingson Center (HEMM) Ballroom. Doors will open around 4 p.m. and the lecture will begin at 4:30 p.m.
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