The Truth About Christian Hospitality

The world has changed and the ground has shifted under us. All that is solid melts into air, in a new age defined by what Zygmunt Bauman called “liquid modernity.” Globalization is not new, but in the past two decades it has crossed a novel threshold. The tremendous interconnectedness of trade has been joined by a global system of communication and computing, one that has now become accessible to most of the developing world, along with cheap commercial air travel.

Though this development has drawn the world together into a single economic unit, it has also loosened the bonds among individuals. Technology bypasses human connection and communication in favor of instantaneous, low-effort transactions, revolutionizing both work and consumption. In this brave new world, entry to globalized labor markets requires only a smartphone and a willingness to work. There is software for everything: an app for the gig economy, an app to send remittances home, an app for translation, an app for dating within your ethnic or religious community. The pervasiveness of apps applies not only to migrants, but also to an increasingly mobile and casualized native workforce. From shopping to work to relationships, it is becoming more and more possible to navigate the modern world without face-to-face interactions. This is the “frictionless” world delivered by Silicon Valley, in which the gap between desire and attainment is narrowed to almost nothing. A few clicks and swipes are all that stand between you and a new TV, a vacation, a date, a handyman, or groceries delivered to your door.

In a time when you can communicate with anyone instantaneously, and in a world that can be traversed by anyone in under a day, our old ethical and political assumptions appear hopelessly disrupted. When Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?,” he told the parable of the Good Samaritan. Our neighbor is the one who supports us in our need rather than “passing by on the other side.” But all this occurs on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, and the need of the man lying wounded by the road is encountered in person and by happenstance. For most of human history, this is how we have encountered and answered human need. Today, the road from Jericho stretches around the entire circumference of the globe, and all of suffering humanity is arrayed along it, visible and crying out for our help. We are one phone call, one video chat, one click away from our potential neighbors, and we could assuage their suffering with equal ease. It was straightforward to show charity to the poor of the parish or the stranger we encountered on the road. But how can we possibly direct our efforts when faced with the agony of the entire human race?

Nor is this vast collective cry a passive process. The global poor are increasingly mobile, and the buffering effects of geography, which sustained distinctive nations and cultures, have eroded. During the commemorations of the Dunkirk evacuations, a flotilla had to be diverted to allow the U.K. Border Force and the French navy to escort a boat full of migrants across the channel. The land that Shakespeare described as

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands

is no longer a “fortress,” but a global destination. We are exposed to every force—from migration, to finance, to disease. 

The migrant is the herald of this new age, a moral battleground between left and right. For progressives, the migrant is not only a needy supplicant, but also an aggrieved victim of global exploitation, a bearer of the gifts of diversity and economic dynamism. For nationalists, he is an alien invader, who will exploit the West’s generosity without sharing its ideals, fatally undermining the cultural unity of the host nation.

Ethical systems based on traditional bonds of reciprocal duty and obligation are fast fading in this new reality. Many look to utilitarianism, as embodied in the “effective altruism” movement, which calculates the utility of charitable giving, weighing the lives saved and quality of life improved by every dollar. Perhaps unsurprisingly, effective altruism broke down at the human level: Its great champion, Sam Bankman-Fried, ended up in prison for fraud, and its organizations have been mired in controversy. At a fateful lunch between the philosopher William MacAskill and Bankman-Fried, MacAskill told the budding entrepreneur not to bother volunteering his time to good causes, and instead to maximize his earnings and donate his excess wealth. You can see why an ethical system that valorizes profit-maximization and NGOs would appeal to the emerging Western elite and Silicon Valley, but it fostered a moral vision dangerously unmoored from human relationships and the cultivation of virtue.

If attempts to develop a rationalized global morality have fallen short, religious leaders, and Christians in particular, often seem to have been co-opted by sentimental universalism. Pope ­Francis’s suggestion that migration could not be deterred “through more restrictive laws, nor through the militarization of borders, nor through rejections,” and his condemnation of such attempts as a “grave sin,” was taken by many as giving ethical sanction to a policy of open borders.

It is far from clear that mere openness will solve the problems of our charitable duties in an age of globalization. Merkel’s “Wir schaffen das!” approach saw more than a million Middle Eastern asylum seekers arrive in Germany, a process accompanied by multiple terrorist attacks, a considerable increase in crime, and mass sexual violence, with more than five hundred women reporting ­sexual assault and harassment on a single New Year’s Eve in Cologne. This and other mass migrations have fueled populism across Europe, and political discourse is increasingly violent and divisive. Massive, disruptive, and often morally corrosive social change can surely not be seen as an ethical triumph. Nor has this exodus of the global poor to the rich West ultimately challenged global injustice and inequality. Indeed, through human trafficking, the funding of corruption, and the draining of talent, migration has often degraded and distorted the development of poorer nations.

We seem to be caught in a no-win situation. Our choices appear to be either a punitive nationalism indifferent to global suffering, or a dehumanizing cosmopolitanism in which we lose our cultural particularity and are rendered mere consumers, whose only relationship to shared institutions is contractual and transactional.

But the Christian theological tradition offers a third choice, and has a far more complex and critical approach to this issue than is generally allowed by its representatives. Although our globalized world presents unique challenges, they can be met if we tear ourselves out of the web of abstracted pseudo-relationships and build meaningful human-level institutions. We should, as the new pope said in his first public sermon, seek to “achieve that unity which does not cancel out differences but values the personal history of each person and the social and religious culture of every people.”

Christian universalism is, as the parable of the Good Samaritan shows, realized in particular circumstances. It requires not an abstract utilitarian humanitarianism like the “telescopic philanthropy” of Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House, in which we care more for the suffering of distant continents than for the welfare of our own children and neighbors, but the ancient ethic of hospitality.

This tradition is older than Christianity itself, and it certainly places grave moral obligations on us to help the needy stranger. The Greek concept of xenia suggested that the beggar at the gate should be treated as a god in disguise. Aeschylus’s play The Suppliants presents a moral dilemma in which women fleeing forced marriage in Egypt seek shelter in Argos. If the city takes in these refugees, it risks war—the matter is put to a vote, and the people are persuaded to show compassion, no matter the risks, in the name of the sacred duty of hospitality. The Mosaic Law puts the matter even more starkly: “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” In the New Testament, Christ strengthens this imperative yet further. Crimes against the stranger are crimes against God incarnate: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

This potent tradition is invoked, often cynically, by secular liberals to justify open borders. But does the age-old ethical commandment to offer hospitality to the stranger not extend to the natives of a country who are being replaced by migrants? Does the duty to strangers extend to refusing to deport individuals who commit crimes?

In fact the classical, Mosaic, and Christian accounts of hospitality all make strong provisions for such circumstances—an aspect of the tradition entirely ignored by both religious and secular liberals who otherwise so freely invoke it.

In the first instance, Greek xenia consists not of an open-ended obligation of host to guest, but rather a complex reciprocal relationship carrying obligations on both sides. Hosts must offer food and shelter without question to the weary traveler, but guests are obliged to be courteous and grateful, to offer no threat to their host, and not to allow their presence to become a burden. The classic example of bad guests is the suitors who descend upon the home of Odysseus to court his (supposedly) widowed wife Penelope. They breach hospitality both implicitly and explicitly—arriving in numbers so large, and remaining for so long, that they place an intolerable burden on the household.

Likewise, they offend by seducing the maidservants, behaving rowdily, failing to contribute to the household, sexually menacing Penelope, physically intimidating Odysseus’s young son, and plotting his murder. Odysseus is strictly upholding xenia when he kills every one of the suitors without warning or mercy. The Suppliants likewise has more complex lessons than may first appear. The refugees, who are under imminent threat from pursuing soldiers, first take sanctuary in a shrine, then make a formal claim for long-term refuge on the basis of their ­Argive ancestry—they are returning to their ancestral homeland. Even then, refuge is granted only with the consent of the Argive people.

So much for the Greek tradition. What about the strong demands made by the Bible? In fact, there is a great deal in common between Biblical hospitality and Greek xenia, both of which are rooted in natural as well as divine law. The biblical requirement to welcome the stranger is very specifically interpersonal and does not involve admitting vast numbers of settlers into an existing homeland. At the level of the political community, as we see in ­Leviticus and Exodus, it involves equality before the law and severe penalties for seeking to rob, enslave, or abuse foreigners. It does not suggest an equal political status, a fact that the Hebrew term gër, often rendered as “sojourner,” implies. The Greeks had a parallel category, that of metics, non-citizen residents who had the protection of the law but lacked the rights of full citizens. They were often skilled artisans, and as we see in Plato, residence was generally temporary and could be withdrawn.

The difference between offering hospitality—ensuring the stranger comes to no harm, giving him temporary shelter, medicine, and food, and helping him on his journey—and giving members of an alien culture permanent residence or citizenship in your homeland, is obvious. If we look to the very earliest literature of Christian communities, the difference is immediately evident. In the ­Didache, one of the oldest Christian documents, the practical implementation of Christ’s commandment of hospitality is clear: “He who comes is a wayfarer, assist him as far as you are able; but he shall not remain with you, except for two or three days, if need be.” For those who wish to stay permanently, strict requirements must be met: “But if he wills to abide with you, being an artisan, let him work and eat; but if he has no trade, according to your understanding see to it that, as a Christian, he shall not live with you idle. But if he wills not to do, he is a Christ-monger. Watch that you keep aloof from such.” In other words, welfare dependence is not an aspect of Christian charity, reflecting St. Paul’s stark command “that if any would not work, neither should he eat.”

The Rule of Saint Benedict is perhaps the best embodiment of what those radically committed to the Christian life must practice in relation to hospitality. Christ’s command that the stranger be received like Christ himself is taken seriously and literally. “In the salutation of all guests, whether arriving or departing, let all humility be shown. Let the head be bowed or the whole body prostrated on the ground in adoration of Christ, who indeed is received in their persons.” Yet Benedict commands that guests sleep and take their meals separately, and that brothers refrain from excessive contact with them. And for those who wish to live permanently in the abbey, he writes:

When anyone is newly come for the reformation of his life, let him not be granted an easy entrance; but, as the Apostle says, “Test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” If the newcomer, therefore, perseveres in his knocking, and if it is seen after four or five days that he bears patiently the harsh treatment offered him and the difficulty of admission, and that he persists in his petition, then let entrance be granted him, and let him stay in the guest house for a few days.

Notice the very strong distinction made between the stranger or sojourner, who is definitionally a temporary resident, and the individual seeking to become a full member of the community and remain indefinitely. The former is treated with great honor and dignity, but is not suffered to participate in the full life of the community or to remain too long. The latter may be allowed to join the community, but only after meeting extensive requirements. When he is finally admitted, he is expected to abide by the same laws and customs, and not to become a burden on the community.

Once a new member has been admitted, meeting strict requirements and spending a long time in a state of probation, he is granted the full status of a member of the community. But that status can be lost. A series of progressively stronger methods are employed against those who do not conform to the rules of the community: 

But if he still does not reform or perhaps (which God forbid) even rises up in pride and wants to defend his conduct, then let the Abbot do what a wise physician would do. Having used applications, the ointments of exhortation, the medicines of the Holy Scriptures, finally the cautery of excommunication and of the strokes of the rod, if he sees that his efforts are of no avail, let him apply a still greater remedy, his own prayers and those of all the brethren, that the Lord, who can do all things, may restore health to the sick brother.

But if he is not healed even in this way, then let the Abbot use the knife of amputation, according to the Apostle’s words, “Expel the evil one from your midst” (1 Cor. 5:13), and again, “If the faithless one departs, let him depart” (1 Cor. 7:15), lest one diseased sheep contaminate the whole flock.

The tradition of hospitality gives us a powerful model for navigating questions of citizenship, belonging, migration, and refugees. We have an ethical obligation to help the poor in our communities, and the stranger who arrives on our shore. But that obligation can be met without the offer of permanent residence, and still less does it require that unruly, let alone criminal, behavior be tolerated. Refugees facing imminent danger, or who have a historic link to the host country, have the strongest claims to our charity and to potential residence. But even here, the tradition offers wide latitude. Consent of the general public is vital, and requirements that residents conform to native laws and customs, and work to support themselves, are not only permissible, but are in many respects required by the ethic of hospitality.

Nor does hospitality require that those given refuge be made citizens or allowed to remain indefinitely. Even once refuge is offered, it is reasonable to repatriate refugees when the threat is ended, and to bar them from full citizenship. When those who have been admitted as residents, or even full citizens, breach the ethic of hospitality by refusing to work, offending against local customs, or breaking local laws, we are completely justified in applying penalties, all the way up to “the knife of ­amputation”—exiling or removing an individual from the moral community whose laws and norms he flouts.

Accepting that cultural unity and demographic stability are valid ethical ends does not mean sanctioning immoral means in their pursuit. Neither side of the moral equation—whether native citizens or migrants—can be left out of our accounting. Though refusing residence is not an immoral act, we still have obligations to the citizens of other lands. The uprooting of humanity, whether by the winds of global finance or the disasters of human conflict and hatred, is a shared tragedy and requires a universal moral answer.

The ethic of hospitality harmonizes universal and particular, and it takes a prudential approach reflecting classical ideas of virtue and distributive justice. It provides no easy answers but demands that we consider the particular person physically before us. However hard and demanding the path, we must place our feet upon it. Christians must fight against the tide of liquid modernity and build a world in which our human identity is not erased by impersonal forces. We must welcome the stranger, but there can be no hospitality ­without a home.