Hospitality and Immigration Policy

Interesting that my last blog post somehow got onto the second page of hits if you search for "the hope that we confess" on Google...but that's not what I want to write about.

Having some out-of-town friends over at our apartment has gotten me thinking about the concept of hospitality again. I've blogged about it before, but as I continue thinking and reading about hospitality, I do think that hospitality may be one of the most basic pictures of the gospel message. Henri Nouwen defined hospitality as “creation of free space where a stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy." Isn't that effectively what God did for us through Christ?

If we accept true hospitality as an important way to communicate the gospel, I would argue that the American Christian community needs to rethink its view on how it ought to treat immigrants. The general arguments for harsh treatment of immigrants on a policy level and an individual level are that the rule of law is threatened by illegals and the costs of caring for non-US citizens will burden US citizens. I have reservations about Christians blindly accepting those rationales. Certainly there are costs, but as Christians, we cannot be motivated solely by costs. In fact, we are promised that following Christ will cost of everything.

I'm still developing my thoughts on the topic, but I'll just leave you with a passage by Francis Schaeffer on hospitality from "The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century." It'll make more sense if you know a little something about L'abri.

"Don't start with a big program. Don't suddenly think you can add to your church budget and begin. Start personally and start in your home. I dare you. I dare you in the name of Jesus Christ. Do what I am going to suggest. Begin by opening your home for community…

How many times in the past year have you risked having a drunk vomit on your carpeted floor? How in the world, then, can you talk about compassion and about community - about the church's job in the inner city?

L'Abri is costly. If you think what God has done here is easy, you don't understand. It's a costly business to have a sense of community. L'Abri cannot be explained merely by the clear doctrine that is preached; it cannot be explained by the fact that God has here been giving intellectual answers to intellectual questions. I think those two things are important, but L'Abri cannot be explained if you remove the third. And that is there has been some community here. And it has been costly.

In about the first three years of L'Abri all our wedding presents were wiped out. Our sheets were torn. Holes were burned in our rugs. Indeed once a whole curtain almost burned up from somebody smoking in our living room. Blacks came to our table. Orientals came to our table. Everybody came to our table. It couldn't happen any other way. Drugs came to our place. People vomited in our rooms, in the rooms of Chalet Les Melezes which was our home, and now in the rest of the chalets of L'Abri.

How many times has this happened to you? You see, you don't need a big program. You don't have to convince your session or board. All you have to do is open your home and begin. And there is no place in God's world where there are no people who will come and share a home as long as it is a real home."

Hospitality: Part Deux

I wonder if hospitality is an area that the Church should consider reclaiming. While we're at it, maybe we should carefully reexamine our understanding of hospitality. Here's a thought provoking passage on the subject

"In past centuries,...[w]elcoming strangers into a home and offering them food, shelter, and protection were the key components in the practice of hospitality...For the most part, the term "hospitality" has lost its moral dimension and, in the process, most Christians have lost touch with the amazing rich and complex tradition of hospitality. Today when we think of hospitality, we don't think first of welcoming strangers. We picture having family and friends over for a pleasant meal. Or we think of the "hospitality industry," of hotels and restaurants which are open to strangers as long as they have money or credit cards...In an case, today most understandings of hospitality have a minimal moral component--hospitality is a nice extra if we have the time or the resources, but we rarely view it as a spiritual obligation or as a dynamic expression of vibrant Christianity."

~Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine Pohl

Do we have room at the inn (or guestroom)?

Christmas is right around the corner, so here's a quick little read that might make you wonder if the common outdoor nativity scene has it wrong. Some scholars suggest that in Luke's account what is traditionally referred to as an "inn" is better translated as "guestroom."

"[W]e should probably envision Mary and Joseph staying in the home of relatives or friends, a home which was crowded due to the census being taken, a home where Luke tells us there was no longer any room in “ the guest room." Consequently, Mary gave birth to her child perhaps in the family room and placed the baby in the stone manger."

Maybe one of the most notoriously inhospitable hosts wasn't so inhospitable afterall...

Relatedly, Andrew Sandoval-Strausz, whose book Hotel: An American History was just released, has a little slideshow essay over at Slate here.

"The American hotel system was revolutionary because it offered hospitality that was indeed institutional. Hotel-keepers were more interested in serving a relatively broad clientele than in currying favor with prominent patrons. The contrast with Europe was ably expressed by an English writer who warned in 1860 that visitors to the United States 'must not look for the obsequious attentions which greet a new arrival at an English hotel.'"

It sounds like the American contribution to the hotel industry was to promote impersonal hospitality (seems a little bit oxymoronic). How did the US become so uniquely inhospitable that it created the modern hotel industry? While Sandoval-Strausz attributes the spread of hotels around the United States to interstate commerce, the fact remains that at some point, Americans gave up their responsibility for acts of hospitality and left it to commercial enterprise to handle.