Stranger Danger - Part 1

In a society that seems increasingly fearful, how does the concept of showing hospitality to strangers sit with the Christian church? asks Coralie Bridle. Part 1 of 3.

Growing up, my siblings and I usually walked to school. Being dropped off or taking the bus were rare occurrences. As a result, I became well acquainted with the importance of quality shoe leather. But 40 years later, I fear for the producers of quality school shoes, as it seems that fewer and fewer New Zealand children walk to school.

The reasons for this phenomenon will be multifarious, but one reason carries more weight than is appropriate: the notion of ‘Stranger Danger’, which is firmly embedded in the New Zealand sub-conscious. Driving past my local primary school attests to this phenomenon. I seldom encounter children arriving at the gate unaccompanied by an adult. Most children arrive and depart in the protective bubble of a car.

This perception of ‘danger’ attached to the term ‘stranger’ carries wider ramifications than just the traffic jams around our local schools. As Henri Nouwen observed, ‘Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive, aggressive people anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion, always expecting an enemy to appear, intrude and do harm.’

This nuanced perception of danger as something associated with strangers sits in uncomfortable tension with the broadly Christian imperative to extend welcome to the stranger (see Genesis 18:1-22, Leviticus 19:33-34 and Matthew 25:31-46, for examples).

Is it possible that the underlying assumption of ‘stranger danger’ formed in the school car park can flow into the church, and in turn marginalise, belittle, demonise or ostracise the strangers in our midst? Churches employ numerous strategies to project a sense of welcome toward the strangers who come amongst them, but are some ‘protective bubbles,’ in effect, still operational?

In my own church setting, it is my observation that we do the initial tasks of welcome in a gracious and inclusive manner. But then we appear to retreat and wait for the stranger to show his or her hand.

So, what does it mean to welcome the stranger?

To help us examine this question, we’re going to engage with three voices. The first is that of philosopher Richard Kearney. As a post-modern, continental philosopher, Kearney provides a critique of the manner in which the West has traditionally dealt with strangers, foreigners and notions of alterity (‘otherness’), and suggests philosophy as a helpful voice.

Secondly, to understand the biblical foundations for welcoming the stranger, I will draw primarily on the work of Christian ethicist Christine Pohl in her seminal book, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality in the Christian Tradition.

The third voice is that of my eldest son, Samuel Bridle. To me, Samuel expands our understanding of the terms ‘welcome’ and ‘stranger.’ As a young adult with spastic quadriplegia, cortical blindness, epilepsy and global developmental delay, Samuel also provides a unique window into the notion of ‘stranger danger’.

‘Where do you speak from?’

As a student of French philosopher Paul Ricouer, Richard Kearney notes the question with which Ricoeur would commence his seminars: ‘Where do you speak from?’ This is a useful question because no encounter is neutral.

In light of this question, then, I speak from three places. The first is as novice—I am not au fait with the discipline of philosophy. I am a nurse by profession and have been raised in The Salvation Army, a fairly conservative evangelical church. And so philosophy has appeared to me as a journey into the abstract dark in which nothing appears certain, safely defined or neatly categorised. As such, philosophy has previously appeared to me as an inhospitable place. Yet, Richard Kearney has made the space more hospitable.

Secondly, I speak from a place of ecclesial unease. The path of welcome into the church is sometimes defined more narrowly than I think the community of the Trinity intends. At times, I suspect we hold the stranger hostage to our welcome. The unspoken narrative belies a preference for those who think as we do.

Thirdly, I speak from a path of personal experience. ‘Stranger Danger’ is not an abstract entity for me. As I have hinted at, my eldest son remains a stranger to much of the world. He deconstructs ‘cosy’ understandings of welcoming the stranger. And so, as I pursue the path of reflection, it is in the full understanding that my head and my heart hold each other in a sometimes gentle, and at other times tempestuous, embrace.

Who is the stranger?

In seeking to articulate a more comprehensive understanding of what it means to welcome the stranger, the work of Richard Kearney adds useful perspectives to our understanding because it reflects a spirit of dialogue and conversation, which calls for the gift of a hospitable mind.

Kearney describes himself as a seeker of love and justice. His work investigates how phenomenology, or the study of consciousness and experience, might be employed in an interpretive or hermeneutical sense to help us fully listen to the story of ‘the other’. As Kearney says, ‘Hermeneutics is a lesson in humility (we all speak from finite situations) as well as imagination (we fill the gaps between available and ulterior meanings).’ Kearney articulates a sense of ‘double belonging’ as part of his own narrative. With Protestant and Irish Catholic heritage, his exposure to the literature of both these traditions birthed an awareness of how Catholic and Protestant poets were seeking to ‘reimagine the stories of the “other side”.’ In the swapping of stories, he notes that it was possible to feel what the enemy felt. This understanding, tethered to his education with Benedictine monks at Glenstal, Protestant mentors such as Paul Ricouer, and a widening reception to Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist and Hindu confessional circles, positions him as a concrete example of openness to inter-religious discourse. confessional circles, positions him as a concrete example of openness to inter-religious discourse.

Kearney contends that ‘narrative imagination’ functions as an opportunity to welcome the stranger. The ‘story of the other’ potentially provides a setting in which the stranger is welcomed and and not demonised or destroyed. Kearney’s work calls attention to the notion of the ‘self’ in relation to the ‘other’. He speaks to the deep recesses of the human psyche where we build our identity by situating our own ‘strangeness’ well outside of ourselves. Our penchant for stories about aliens, monsters and gods attests to people’s propensity to place things we don’t understand, like or accept about ourselves ‘out there’ onto the stranger. 

The implication is that in trying to distinguish ourselves this way we delegitimise ourselves and perpetuate a crisis of identity. As Kearney states, ‘In an age crippled by crises of identity and legitimisation, it would seem particularly urgent to challenge the polarisation between Us and Them.’

Such reflection provides and prompts a helpful reorientation toward self-examination and existential honesty. In the beginning, we are enigmas to ourselves. And so the ‘other’—the ‘stranger’ to whom we might off er hospitality—will prove too. If we cannot recognise ourselves, we will not recognise the stranger, and we will close ourselves off to what is not ourselves. Which leaves the stranger forever outside our frame of reference.

Scapegoating and purity

One of Kearney’s observations is that the prospect of welcoming or refusing the stranger is often a matter of war and peace. History is full of testimonies to this pitiful truth. From stories of conquest, crusades and ethnic cleansing, through to atrocities such as the Holocaust, the human propensity for violence toward the other and the implementation of ‘scapegoating’ is fearfully catalogued. Most cultures hold to notions of isolating, eliminating and scapegoating the stranger who is perceived to threaten the tribe. As Kearney comments, ‘[So] the price to be paid for the construction of the happy tribe is often the ostracizing of some outsider: the immolation of the “other” on the altar of the “alien”.’

Kearney argues—convincingly, I think—that the notion of scapegoating and sacrifice in Judaeo-Christian thinking has taken on problematic manifestations in the history of the church. The notion of ‘purity’ sits at the heart of this issue. For instance, a formative Old Testament reference in Leviticus 16:20-22 describes this notion of the people being made clean by the sending of the scapegoat out of the community, taking with it all expressions of impurity. The scapegoat is relegated to a place of desolation. Although Kearney acknowledges that this Leviticus passage can be construed as a movement away from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice, the role of the scapegoat remains: ‘… it is invested with the internal malice of the community and then expelled into the wilderness, eradicating all peril of contagion’.

Kearney’s critical contention is that although the biblical tradition transferred the mechanism of scapegoating to an atonement offered in the sacrifice of the animal, rather than the human, the history of humankind in general (and the church in particular) has seen repeated reversals of this pattern. Many people groups, be they Jews, heretic, infidel, witches or savages have been turned into human scapegoats.

Coupled with this history of reversal is the impact of an apocalyptic fear of retribution if the holiness and purity of the church was not jealously and systematically guarded from enemies within and without. As Kearney says, ‘In sum, for saints to remain saintly, strangers had to be scapegoated.’

Kearney notes that myths of alienation are not confined to ancient times. Rivalry for resources is only one arena in which the identity of a common enemy might be espoused to the advantage of the one who names the scapegoat.

He concludes that in Christ, ‘the sacrifice to end all sacrifice’,we see the exposure of the sacrificial lie. The victim is innocent. Cultivation of desire, and fear of strangers, binds us to a never-ending spiral of scapegoating that denies the dawn of real peace,creates innocent victims and denies the opportunity for genuine relationship between stranger and host. Kearney says one of the best ways to dealienate the other is ‘… to recognise (a) oneself as another and (b) the other as (in part) another self’.

Paying attention to the stranger

In his latest book, Anatheism: Returning to God After God, Kearney broadly seeks to navigate a space for a return to God after ‘the death of God’, articulated by Nietzsche, Marx and Freud, and in the face of current critical secularists such as Dennett, Dawkins and Hitchens. These critics see monotheism as synonymous with intolerance and war. Kearney argues that it is possible to retrieve a liberating message from the scriptures of the Abrahamic tradition. Th is message ‘… fosters a radical attentiveness to the stranger as a portal to the sacred’.

The Annunciation in Luke 1:26-38, is one such portal. When the stranger appears, Mary is initially frightened. Note also that she ‘… tried to discern …’ (verse 29) As she pauses in her consideration, Mary responds to the whisper that says, ‘Do not be afraid…’(verse 30). Kearney highlights that Mary opens herself to the stranger, choosing grace over fear, and dares to imagine the impossible as possible. Although I think that Kearney may push the boundaries of the narrative, his sentiment regarding the ‘foreign’ and the ‘familiar’ helps our understanding of what it means to welcome the stranger. The same occurs when Jesus walks as a stranger on the road to Emmaus and is then recognised in the breaking of bread (Luke 24:13-32)—here again, the stranger becomes a ‘portal to the sacred’.

Finally, Kearney debunks theorising or abstract ideas when he pursues a reconnection between the sacred and secular. A welcome is afforded when a cup of water is given to the thirsty stranger. Kearney presents John Vanier, Dorothy Day and Mahatma Gandhi as examples of such sacramental action. Vanier’s L’Arche communities open their doors to the vulnerable and estranged. In such a setting, Vanier claims that host and guest grow by accepting the wounds of both the other and the self. Notions of sovereignty give way to acts of service. The desire for power gives way to a desire to dwell in community where there is a life-giving space for everyone.

For Kearney, such sacred spaces ‘epitomise the transfiguring of fear into care’.

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by Coralie Bridle (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 11 July 2015, pp12-13.
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