Your piece sings in three registers at once—story, theology, and ritual—and the harmony is strong. The Macon churches’ slow-motion reconciliation, down to the “potato salad diplomacy,” makes hospitality feel tangible rather than aspirational.
The way you move from that concrete narrative to the biblical pattern—Abraham’s visitors, Rahab’s spies, Emmaus’s stranger-turned-host—lets the reader feel the scriptural current running beneath civic practice. Your claim that covenant is impossible without prior table-fellowship is persuasive and refreshingly un-abstract.
Visually, the curation is pitch-perfect. Hiroshige’s moonlit travelers, Collins’s hungry pilgrims, Roerich’s watchful guardian, and Daumier’s exhausted beggars widen the lens from Georgia to the world; each canvas underlines your thesis that the stranger is always already on our doorstep.
On the other hand, the essay’s strongest provocation—hospitality as “political upgrade” over toleration—deserves one more turn of the screw. You note that genuine hospitality “refuses the fantasy of neutral ground” and therefore begins in inequality. Might that very asymmetry risk re-inscribing the power gaps the practice hopes to heal? In other words: when does hospitality slide into paternalism, and how might a liturgy guard against that?
A related question: the piece brilliantly shows how hosts are transformed, sometimes painfully, by guests. Yet the liturgy’s petitions still center the host’s agency (“Help us prepare…”). Would a reciprocal stanza—inviting the guest’s blessing or critique—further embody the mutuality you praise?
Finally, your toleration-versus-hospitality contrast is sharp, but it leans heavily on Bretherton. An aside engaging liberal defenders of toleration (say, Rawls or Martha Nussbaum) could sharpen the edge and reassure skeptical secular readers that hospitality isn’t merely a sectarian luxury.
These are trims, not overhauls. As it stands, the essay offers liturgical language sturdy enough for Sunday yet supple enough for city hall. Thank you for gifting us both a theology we can chew on and a table prayer we can pray.
William, thank you for your generous comment! I'm glad you found the theology well grounded in the Macon churches' narrative. I hope to write later about what I think is an even more remarkable example of hospitality--the almost-universal reception of Jews among the citizens of the French town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during the Holocaust.
I think as a society we've reduced the historical conception of hospitality by practicing only what Jesus suggests to his host that he no longer practice.
Great suggestions all! I've added a paragraph on the origins of toleration in an effort to associate toleration more firmly with hospitality as approaches with premodern origins. It's not quite the vehicle for our nonsectarian friends' assurance that you pointed to, but I hope it does the job. The new paragraph begins with "Toleration needn’t be state-centric, either, of course."
Finally, I've added lines in the liturgy about soliciting and receiving our guests' critique and blessing. I think the liturgy is much richer with the addition. I'll retain this language in the liturgy--"Keep us from congratulating ourselves, / from indoctrinating our guests, / and from participating in our society’s project / of alienating our guests from themselves"--language that I think addresses our human tendency to take advantage of the host-guest power disparity. (James C. Scott would have a lot to say about that!)
I love the alliteration (sibilance!) and meter in this sweet feedback: "liturgical language sturdy enough for Sunday yet supple enough for city hall."
Always a pleasure for me to consider possible revisions--and to revise--when you have the time and inclination to suggest. Thanks again.
Thank you for another of your thoughtful replies. The additions you’ve made, from the paragraph on toleration’s origins to the liturgical lines about critique and blessing, deepen the piece beautifully. And yes, I’d be eager to read your thoughts on Le Chambon. That story, too, enlarges our sense of what welcome can mean.
In your liturgy, those were exactly the words that I liked best:""Keep us from congratulating ourselves, / from indoctrinating our guests, / and from participating in our society’s project / of alienating our guests from themselves." One important concept after another.
In one of those odd convergences, I was thinking about what to write next about the devastating political moment in which we find ourselves, and "hospitality" seemed to rise to the top of my consciousness. Then I opened Substack and found this piece of yours. I appreciate so much what you say here and the argument you develop. Of particular relevance to what I hope to write, myself, is the point about toleration being quite distinct from hospitality. For many, including a lot of liberal Democrats, toleration is the easy way to say and believe they're "doing it" when actually they aren't moving their own hearts very far, aren't risking their own comfort, and -- even more importantly -- aren't actively doing things that can bring either "the Kingdom of God" or "a more perfect Union" closer. We must first open ourselves to an I-Thou encounter, and then both model and open paths for our families, institutions, and communities to follow. Thanks very much for writing this, and I hope it would be OK to quote a few bits from your essay when I write something.
Beth, thank you. It does seem like toleration, which you and I both value deeply, hasn't done much to heal past wounds or to close present divides. Hospitality--in the ancient sense of seeing to strangers--seems more promising. It's certainly more corporeal.
Your Substack (earlier, your blog) has always struck me as being the most hospitable place on the internet. I would be honored if anything from this post makes its way into your writing, and I look forward to reading anything you have to say about hospitality.
Bryce,
Your piece sings in three registers at once—story, theology, and ritual—and the harmony is strong. The Macon churches’ slow-motion reconciliation, down to the “potato salad diplomacy,” makes hospitality feel tangible rather than aspirational.
The way you move from that concrete narrative to the biblical pattern—Abraham’s visitors, Rahab’s spies, Emmaus’s stranger-turned-host—lets the reader feel the scriptural current running beneath civic practice. Your claim that covenant is impossible without prior table-fellowship is persuasive and refreshingly un-abstract.
Visually, the curation is pitch-perfect. Hiroshige’s moonlit travelers, Collins’s hungry pilgrims, Roerich’s watchful guardian, and Daumier’s exhausted beggars widen the lens from Georgia to the world; each canvas underlines your thesis that the stranger is always already on our doorstep.
On the other hand, the essay’s strongest provocation—hospitality as “political upgrade” over toleration—deserves one more turn of the screw. You note that genuine hospitality “refuses the fantasy of neutral ground” and therefore begins in inequality. Might that very asymmetry risk re-inscribing the power gaps the practice hopes to heal? In other words: when does hospitality slide into paternalism, and how might a liturgy guard against that?
A related question: the piece brilliantly shows how hosts are transformed, sometimes painfully, by guests. Yet the liturgy’s petitions still center the host’s agency (“Help us prepare…”). Would a reciprocal stanza—inviting the guest’s blessing or critique—further embody the mutuality you praise?
Finally, your toleration-versus-hospitality contrast is sharp, but it leans heavily on Bretherton. An aside engaging liberal defenders of toleration (say, Rawls or Martha Nussbaum) could sharpen the edge and reassure skeptical secular readers that hospitality isn’t merely a sectarian luxury.
These are trims, not overhauls. As it stands, the essay offers liturgical language sturdy enough for Sunday yet supple enough for city hall. Thank you for gifting us both a theology we can chew on and a table prayer we can pray.
William, thank you for your generous comment! I'm glad you found the theology well grounded in the Macon churches' narrative. I hope to write later about what I think is an even more remarkable example of hospitality--the almost-universal reception of Jews among the citizens of the French town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during the Holocaust.
I think as a society we've reduced the historical conception of hospitality by practicing only what Jesus suggests to his host that he no longer practice.
Great suggestions all! I've added a paragraph on the origins of toleration in an effort to associate toleration more firmly with hospitality as approaches with premodern origins. It's not quite the vehicle for our nonsectarian friends' assurance that you pointed to, but I hope it does the job. The new paragraph begins with "Toleration needn’t be state-centric, either, of course."
Finally, I've added lines in the liturgy about soliciting and receiving our guests' critique and blessing. I think the liturgy is much richer with the addition. I'll retain this language in the liturgy--"Keep us from congratulating ourselves, / from indoctrinating our guests, / and from participating in our society’s project / of alienating our guests from themselves"--language that I think addresses our human tendency to take advantage of the host-guest power disparity. (James C. Scott would have a lot to say about that!)
I love the alliteration (sibilance!) and meter in this sweet feedback: "liturgical language sturdy enough for Sunday yet supple enough for city hall."
Always a pleasure for me to consider possible revisions--and to revise--when you have the time and inclination to suggest. Thanks again.
Thank you for another of your thoughtful replies. The additions you’ve made, from the paragraph on toleration’s origins to the liturgical lines about critique and blessing, deepen the piece beautifully. And yes, I’d be eager to read your thoughts on Le Chambon. That story, too, enlarges our sense of what welcome can mean.
In your liturgy, those were exactly the words that I liked best:""Keep us from congratulating ourselves, / from indoctrinating our guests, / and from participating in our society’s project / of alienating our guests from themselves." One important concept after another.
I’m thinking there were no raisins in that potato salad, speaking of toleration.
Joking aside, beautifully done.
Thank you, Cort!
In one of those odd convergences, I was thinking about what to write next about the devastating political moment in which we find ourselves, and "hospitality" seemed to rise to the top of my consciousness. Then I opened Substack and found this piece of yours. I appreciate so much what you say here and the argument you develop. Of particular relevance to what I hope to write, myself, is the point about toleration being quite distinct from hospitality. For many, including a lot of liberal Democrats, toleration is the easy way to say and believe they're "doing it" when actually they aren't moving their own hearts very far, aren't risking their own comfort, and -- even more importantly -- aren't actively doing things that can bring either "the Kingdom of God" or "a more perfect Union" closer. We must first open ourselves to an I-Thou encounter, and then both model and open paths for our families, institutions, and communities to follow. Thanks very much for writing this, and I hope it would be OK to quote a few bits from your essay when I write something.
Beth, thank you. It does seem like toleration, which you and I both value deeply, hasn't done much to heal past wounds or to close present divides. Hospitality--in the ancient sense of seeing to strangers--seems more promising. It's certainly more corporeal.
Your Substack (earlier, your blog) has always struck me as being the most hospitable place on the internet. I would be honored if anything from this post makes its way into your writing, and I look forward to reading anything you have to say about hospitality.