Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers (The Christian Practice of Everyday Life)
What passes for hospitality in contemporary life—being "nice," reaching out to consumers, and practicing multiculturalism for its sake—is a distortion of real hospitality, according to Newman, a professor of theology and ethics at Baptist Theological Seminary. In our political, economic and ethical common life, as well as within our Christian congregations, we have domesticated hospitality. True hospitality is learned in worship, which, at its best, teaches people to receive from God, as well as to give everything back. Rather than motivating us to be hospitable, Newman explains, worship transforms us so that no other choice is possible. Newman explores how corporate worship (singing, praying and so on) can help people overcome the individualism of contemporary culture, which works against Christian understandings, and begin to see their lives as gifts from God. Particularly in the Eucharist, people learn to be both guest and host, and "become people capable of recognizing and receiving Christ," able to see God in others, no matter how strange or challenging they appear. This scholarly study of how North American culture understands, and has marginalized, true hospitality will be of interest primarily to academics, clergy and students.(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.