Radical Welcome. Stephanie Spellers

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СКАЧАТЬ and hospitality with a clear awareness of power¹ and patterns of inclusion and exclusion.

      Just look at the words. Radical. Welcome. Both terms are rich with meaning. Welcome says come in, sit down, stay a while; we are honored to have you. It also says the door is open, a bit like, “You’re welcome to whatever is in the fridge.” And it indicates an openness of spirit, that what we do is a pleasure. When someone thanks you for a gift or kind gesture, your “You’re welcome” communicates graciousness and ease and allows the other person to receive with equal ease and grace.

      Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf explores yet another avenue for understanding welcome: the concept of embrace. In his book Exclusion and Embrace, Volf traces the four movements that compose mutual embrace²:

      • Act One: Opening the arms. This move telegraphs the desire to reach beyond yourself in order to connect with the other,³ to be part of the other and to have the other be part of you. The act of opening your arms also creates space for the other to come in—boundaries are down, the self is open. Finally, he says, open arms are an invitation. “Like a door left opened for an expected friend, they are a call to come in.”⁴

      • Act Two: Waiting. You cannot force the other to come inside. You cannot reach out and grasp and coerce. You must wait at the boundary of the other, wait for him to open to you, hope that the power of your vulnerability and desire for the other will prove compelling, even transforming.

      • Act Three: Closing. After the other steps into the embrace, there is closing. This is mutual indwelling, holding the other within the bounds of yourself and finding yourself received in kind. Such indwelling shouldn’t be confused with disappearing, melting into each other or merging into undifferentiated beings. “In an embrace, the identity of the self is both preserved and transformed, and the alterity (difference) of the other is both affirmed as alterity and partly received into the ever changing identity of the self.”⁵ Nor do you have perfect understanding of each other; the goal is not to master the other, but to receive the other on her own terms and continue to seek relationship.

      • Act Four: Opening the arms. Because the two have not melted into one, you may once again open your arms. Now you have the chance to look at yourself and rediscover your own identity, “enriched by the traces that the presence of the other has left.”⁶ And you look again at the other, the one whose identity will continue to change, the one who will continue to be both friend and mystery. The one you may embrace again with your now open arms.

      This is the drama of reconciling, mutual welcome. Think of the times you have been embraced, welcomed, received. We all know how good it is to come home like that, even if the territory is new. When someone carefully, lovingly sets a table for us; when someone thinks of us and our needs and hopes; when someone listens with full attention to our story and then offers their own, without seeking to master or coopt; when someone sets aside their own preferences in order to joyfully, humbly defer to ours. When we are welcomed like this, we can experience the state of freedom and love I believe God wills for all people. It is a joy to receive this welcome. It is also a joy to offer this welcome, to say to another person: “May I know you better?”

      But there is more to radical welcome, as the word radical signifies. Radical, in this instance, should not connote the unreasonable, undisciplined action some people associate with the term. Instead, radical amplifies the welcome, broadening and deepening and launching it to the next level. It also indicates a deep, fierce, urgent commitment to some core ideal. That’s not just any ideal, but one at the root of a tradition, a movement, and, in our case, a faith. As Bill Tully, rector of St. Bartholomew’s in New York, told me: “Radical is Jesus. Radical is getting down to the roots.”

      If welcome is the drama of embrace, then a radical welcome is the embrace that is hardest of all, requiring the broadest extension and opening of self, even as it draws us back to our core values. It is the embrace of the marginalized, silenced, oppressed Stranger. “Here is the core of hospitality,” according to Father Daniel Homan, OSB, and Lonni Collins Pratt. “May I know you better? Will you come closer, please? No, it will not be easy, but make no mistake about it, your life depends on this saving stranger coming to you and stretching your tight little heart.”⁷

      Who is this “saving stranger,” The Other, who is at once a full, complex, individual human being with a unique story and perspective and a member of a larger group that exists within the social hierarchy, as we all do? It’s best to take on this question in two chunks. Let’s begin closer to home. Depending on who the dominant, empowered groups are in your parish, The Others are the ones you have the power to systemically marginalize and/or oppress. They are, to borrow the language of the Visions Group, the targets of oppression, while those who hold certain privileges and power are non-targets.⁸ It matters not what you as an individual feel you have done to The Other, or even whether there are particular ways you as a congregation have consciously hurt another group. Identifying The Other requires only the recognition that, within the social system in which we all function, some groups have been given social, economic and political power over other groups.

      Now, we can widen the circle. Every church is a social institution, woven into a complex cultural and historical tapestry that operates beyond but has great implications for the individual congregation. So we all have to ask, “Who are The Others in relation to our tradition or denomination—the groups whose voices and gifts have not been part of shaping our collective identity, the ones who have not held much power or been welcomed with open arms?”

      This level of discernment is crucial, if a little tougher to grasp. Suppose your church has lots of working class members; do you need to think about whether you’re sending exclusive, classist signals? What if you’re a largely black church in a multicultural neighborhood: why would you need to worry about radically welcoming blacks and other people of color? Why? Because when people who have been marginalized see the sign hanging on your door—Episcopal, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, Lutheran, Methodist, you name it—they may automatically leap to a number of assumptions about who you are, who is welcome to fully share your common life and who is not. Despite your diverse membership, you may still be participating in many of the exclusive patterns of your tradition: music that is culturally limited, leadership structures that reflect the expectations of European, privileged, older, or straight communities, and so on. It takes extra vigilance and care to reverse the effect of the exclusive stereotypes and patterns your tradition has laid on you. It takes understanding who your congregation and your tradition have pushed to the margins. It takes a recognition of who is The Other and why.

      Those are hard words for most of us to hear and process. If you’re in a non-target group, you may feel the guilt and resistance creeping in: “I see where this is going. I’m now the enemy. Same old story.” If you identify strongly with a target group, you may feel yourself somewhat objectified: “Surely I’m more than my group, more than my victim or oppressed status.”

      I can only promise you that this is not about guilt trips or victim complexes, but a statement regarding reality. We cannot transform systems without naming them. We cannot work for freedom and embrace unless we acknowledge what forces keep us from the reconciliation and compassion we know God is holding out for all of us. Part of what makes radical welcome radical is that it goes into the roots under relationships and systems, clearing debris and maybe even rewiring the motherboard so that we can live and welcome in new ways.

      Radical Welcome Is . . .

      How do all those elements finally come together at the congregational level? When I describe a church as “radically welcoming,” it means the community seeks to welcome the voices, presence and power of many groups—especially those who have been defined as The Other, pushed to the margins, СКАЧАТЬ