From Fruit to Root: A Genealogy of "Radical Hospitality"

Chapter Six.

[Continued from Chapter Five.]

The Emergent Church

In tracing the origins of “radical hospitality,” we have seen that it found expression early on in the writings of theologians who misinterpreted Matt 25:31-46. This misinterpretation, in turn, was unofficially codified by Benedict of Nursia in his book The Rule of Benedict. It was made popular by Benedictine monks and their successors, and eventually was officially codified by the Council of Trent in its teaching on hospitality. Additionally, it has been shown that the popularization of “the Benedictine way” in later times came about primarily through the efforts of Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day (a Benedictine oblate). 

These individuals were greatly influenced and assisted by Roman Catholic Personalists and Communitarians Jacques Maritain (a Benedictine oblate) and Gabriel Marcel (who formulated and promoted very similar, if not identical, notions of hospitality via his concept of a “metaphysics of hospitality”). Moreover, we noted that these Roman Catholic thinkers, in conjunction with that of their personalist colleague Emmanuel Levinas, had a great influence on the thinking of arch-postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida and his notion of “radical hospitality.” We have likewise shown that the Roman Catholic misinterpretation of Matt 25:31-46 became woven into the fabric of evangelical thinking by means of theological and ethical compromise at the highest levels.

These all contributed to the concept of “radical hospitality” found in Rosaria Butterfield’s book The Gospel Comes With a House Key. Butterfield’s “radical hospitality,” however, can also be traced to evangelical dissidents in the late 1990s up until the mid 2000s. These dissidents comprised what has been called the “Emergent Church” movement.

The movement sought to make Christianity relevant to a postmodern culture, splitting off in two different, but related, directions. “Emergents” on the “right” tended to hold to traditionally orthodox Christian beliefs (e.g. the exclusivity of salvation through faith in the Gospel, the infallibility of the Bible, the doctrine of Hell), while they sought to modify church services and evangelization methods in ways that were friendly to the culture of their day. “Emergents”on the “left,” on the other hand, abandoned many traditionally orthodox Christiaan beliefs (e.g. the exclusivity of salvation through faith in the Gospel, the infallibility of the Bible, the doctrine of Hell), and accepted theological and liturgical practices of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox mystics and sacerdotalists, modifying them as they saw fit.

It is from the left wing of the Emergent movement that we saw the rise of what is known as New Monasticism. According to Gerald W. Schlabach —

The “New Monastics” took their name at a 2004 conference in Durham, North Carolina, that brought together members of a handful of fledgling households of young Christians, such as Philadelphia’s Simple Way and the host community Rutba House in Durham, with an older generation of “intentional communities,” such as Reba Place Fellowship in Evanston, Illinois, as well as still-older Bruderhof and Catholic Worker communities.¹

Rachel C. Schneider explains that the term “new monasticism” grew in popularity in the 2000s, and is 

…used to describe Christians who are experimenting with forms of community and subject formation that take as their inspiration earlier monastic or other Christian socialist/communitarian movements…For those living in the United States, there is a particular conviction that the American way of life—the American Dream—has produced forms of religion antithetical to the teachings of Jesus…Thus, many new monastics understand themselves as living in the midst of “Empire” and called to resist through the creation of alternate lifestyles that value the collective good over individualism as well as the sharing of resources over personal prosperity.

Predominantly white and educated, new monastics view mainline and evangelical Protestant Christian churches as isolating, homogenous, and impersonal; divorced from urgent social concerns; and crassly consumerist… By contrast, they strive to embody a more authentic spirituality that appeals to people who are, in the words of American leader Shane Claiborne, “smothered with Christianity, but thirsty for God […] disenchanted with church; yet still quite fascinated with Jesus of Galilee”…This Jesus is seen as one who identifies with the poor and who critiques religious elites for their callous indifference to social suffering; the Jesus of the Beatitudes who calls the poor blessed but condemns the rich…

New monastics believe that, throughout church history, in response to broader cultural crisis or conditions of oppression, groups of committed believers have fled centers of power in order to create alternate forms of life…They cite as inspiration the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the fourth century, Benedictine and Franciscan monastic movements, sixteenth century “radical reformers” such as the Anabaptists, and twentieth century movements such as the Catholic Workers Movement…What new monastics share with older forms of monasticism…is a desire to construct in the words of Alasdair MacIntyre “local forms of community” that provide alternatives to dominant social, political, economic, and religious systems…They often “intentionally establish themselves in places where social needs are evident,” immersing themselves in activities that address issues such as homelessness, addiction, incarceration, environmental degradation, and human trafficking…²

Among those promoting new monasticism, we find two key figures related to the subject of “radical hospitality” as it is found in postmodernism, Roman Catholic Social teaching, and The Gospel Comes With a House Key.

Shane Claiborne

Shane Claiborne is one of the leading figures in new monasticism whose thinking and activism was shaped by Mother Teresa (with whom he worked in India) and Dorothy Day, among others. In the midst of new monasticism’s rise, Claiborne published his best-selling book The Irresistible Revolution: Living As an Ordinary Radical. The book sets out to correct what Claiborne views as a truncated form of Christianity that focuses on individual salvation at the expense of cultural engagement. As he explains — 

I came to realize that preachers were telling me to lay my life at the foot of the cross and weren’t giving me anything to pick up. A lot of us  were hearing “don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t sleep  around” and naturally started asking, “Okay, well, that  was pretty much my life, so what do I do now?” Where were the do’s? And nobody seemed to have much to offer us. Handing out tracts at the mall just didn’t seem like the fullness of Christian discipleship, not to mention it just wasn’t as fun as making out at the movies. 

I was just another believer. I believed all the right stuff—that Jesus is the Son of God, died and rose again. I had become a “believer,” but I had no idea what it means to be a follower. People had taught me what Christians believe, but no one had told me how Christians live.³

In his search for an answer to the question of how a Christian should live, Claiborne came across several thinkers which challenged him to “truly” follow Jesus. He writes —

I knew we were not going to win the masses to Chris­tian­ity until we began to live it. So I went on a  quest. I went looking for a Chris­tian. I looked around  hoping to find someone else who might be asking, What if Jesus meant the stuff he said? And I kept coming across dead people—the desert fathers and mothers of the fifth century, Francis and Clare of Assisi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., Oscar Romero (and it was hard to miss that these dead people might have lived a little longer had it not been for reading this little Book). And then there was Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa, sassy contemporary radicals.⁴

Claiborne was greatly influenced by Day, and personally spent time with Teresa in India. And it was his time in India that inspired him to establish houses of hospitality so that he could “live out the gospel.” Like his mentors, Claiborne misinterpreted Matt 25:31-46 and, subsequently, built his social justice mission around this misunderstanding. He writes —

…I could not help but wonder with 

Dorothy Day, “Have we even begun to be Chris­tians?” I read Scriptures like Matthew 25:31–46, where Jesus tells us that ultimately we will be separated into two groups of people, sheep and goats, and the criteria will be how we cared for the poor, hungry, imprisoned, naked masses. I could not help but ask, When all is said and done and the thousands of Chris­tians I was with are gathered before the throne, will we all be with the sheep?⁵

Claiborne — like Butterfield, Mains, Day, Maurin, and Teresa — believes that engaging in the kind of communitarian social justice projects he instituted is equivalent to taking “the gospel way of life seriously.” Like the others mentioned, he too believes that a person’s membership in the kingdom of God is directly linked to these kinds of communitarian, hospitality projects/actions. As he explains —

…belief is only the beginning. What really matters is how we live, how what we believe gets fleshed out, so we also have a statement of orthopraxis (meaning “right living, right practices”). And this is where most belief-oriented faith communities fall short. They tell us only what they believe, but they do not tell us how their beliefs affect their lifestyles.

In creating a new culture, we are now a part of what we’ve come to call a community of communities, a web of relationships between grassroots organizations, intentional communities, and hospitality houses across the country.⁶

Claiborne is calling professing Christians to live as “ordinary radicals,” a call which includes their engaging in “hospitality” toward “the least of these,” including refugees and illegal immigrants. He writes —

During the war in Afghanistan, folks in my community here at the Simple Way organized an all-night vigil and sleep-out at Love Park in Philadelphia to remember the refugees and the cost of war. Shortly afterward, we went out to grab a pizza at a fabulous hole-in-the-wall pizza joint where the grease makes the paper plates transparent. We had become close friends with the owner, who is from Afghanistan. He told us with tears in his eyes that he had seen us on the news and was deeply grateful. His family had become refugees, and he did not know what would happen to them. He said that what we were doing was beautiful but then added, “But we are only little people. We are like roaches, and they can crush us with their big feet.” I said to him, “But there are many of us, and enough roaches can run an owner out of the house!” We all laughed. We are a modest revolution of roaches that can run money-changers out of temples or politicians out of office. And we can invite them to join us in creating another world.

But we live in a world that has lost its appreciation for small things. We live in a world that wants things bigger and bigger. We want to supersize our fries, sodas, and church buildings. But amid all the supersizing, many of us feel God doing something new, something small and subtle. This thing Jesus called the kingdom of God is emerging across the globe in the most unexpected places, a gentle whisper amid the chaos. Little people with big dreams are reimagining the world. Little movements of communities of ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love.⁷

Claiborne’s thinking here is in agreement with what Butterfield expresses throughout TGH, which is not surprising given that they share the same theological influences (e.g. Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, Mother Teresa, etc). It is also not surprising given that one of the influences on Butterfield’s TGH is Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a friend, co-author, and co-activist alongside Shane Claiborne.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Among her recommended books for Christians desiring to practice “radically ordinary hospitality” (i.e. radical hospitality), Rosaria Butterfield includes Strangers at My Door: A True Story of Finding Jesus in Unexpected Guests by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. Hartgrove’s thinking and activism are, like Butterfield, deeply rooted in his incorrect interpretation of Matt 25:31-46. So deeply rooted, in fact, that he, along with many other social justice advocates, supported the “Matthew 25 Pledge,” a pledge created in 2017, during the presidency of Donald Trump, “to protect and defend vulnerable people in the name of Jesus.”⁸ The supporters believe that the Matt 25 pledge

…roots us in a biblical response to protecting vulnerable people instead of a political one. We are facing distinct threats to individual human rights and religious liberties in this country. We cannot remain silent. We have all devoted our lives’ work for faith and justice to prepare for such a time as this. It is important that people across this country see that the church is unified against racist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and Islamaphobic policies.⁹

Ironically, however, they also clearly state that they created the pledge because they believed that “three groups of people [were] especially at risk under a Trump administration.”¹⁰ These people were 

…undocumented immigrants threatened with mass deportation; and…refugees who are being banned from coming to America.

…African Americans and other people of color threatened by racial policing.

…Muslims…threatened with “banning,” monitoring, and even registration.¹¹

Hartgrove, along with Claiborne, is also a co-author with, and friend of, Christine D. Pohl, whose work on hospitality, by her admission, is largely dependent on the work of Dorothy Day, and serves as one of the underlying influences of TGH.

The emphasis on “ordinary” “radical” hospitality should not be overlooked, as it is the same emphasis we find in TGH throughout. The kingdom of God is comprised of individuals who go “beyond” “mere words,” who show “radical hospitality” through ordinary/small acts of social justice oriented kindness. In particular, we find an emphasis on the poor, the socially outcast, and immigrants and refugees. The basis for this is, once again, a popular misinterpretation of Matt 25:31-46 which was unofficially canonized by the monastics, beginning with Benedict of Nursia, in addition to Benedict’s Rule as a whole.¹²

In Becoming The Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals,¹³ which he co-authored with Shane Claiborne, Hartgove writes — 

I (Jonathan) love to visit some monks I’ve gotten to know at a Benedictine monastery in rural Minnesota. For 1,500 years Benedictines have been praying the liturgy of the hours, taking care of one another, practicing hospitality, and trying to know God better. As an order, Benedictines have stocked up some spiritual wisdom.¹⁴

Matt 25:31-46 also serves as the basis for the doctrine of “radical hospitality” taught in School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of New Monasticism,¹⁵ to which Hartgrove contributes, and edited by his “community of hospitality” called the Rutba House, which repeatedly cites and alludes to Benedict’s Rule.¹⁶

The Farther-Left Emergent Church’s Emphasis on “Radical Hospitality”

The emphasis on “radical hospitality” among Emergents is not limited to the new monastics. I decided to look at the teaching and practices of Claiborne and Hartgrove for two main reasons. Firstly, these two teachers have had a direct and indirect influence on The Gospel Comes With a House Key, seeing as they share a point of origin, namely Roman Catholic social teaching on radical hospitality rooted in their shared misinterpretation of Matt 25:31-46. Secondly, these teachers are theological liberals, but their teaching is couched in evangelical language which makes it palatable to readers who would be put off by Emergents who are more direct about their departure from orthodoxy.

Beyond these two thinkers, the Emergent Church movement as a whole placed a great deal of emphasis on the notion of “radical hospitality.” Leaders of the more “radical” wing of the movement, moreover, also directed their followers to Benedict of Nursia and his successors as models of how the Gospel should be “lived out.” For instance, “in May of 2007 a two-day conference, Church for the 21st Century, was held at the Washington National Cathedral.”¹⁷ The conference featured several highly influential Emergent thinkers who also promoted monastic authors, including Benedict of Nursia, (e.g. Tony Jones,¹⁸ Phyllis Tickle¹⁹), as well as various “congregational leaders who offered workshops on…practices such as hospitality, testimony, discernment, and theological reflection.”²⁰

Unlike the new monastics whose “radical hospitality” is ecumenical in nature, however, the farther-left Emergents took “radical hospitality” to its postmodern conclusion — religious syncretism. Here we encounter yet another Roman Catholic advocate of “radical hospitality” via the “ordinary” actions of Christians that influenced the Emergents’, as well as Butterfield’s, thinking on this matter — Henri J.M. Nouwen. Butterfield approvingly cites Nouwen in TGH, and recommends his book Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life.

This is significant given what is occurring at the moment, as the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset agenda pushes forward in its fight against the same doctrines against which all Emergents fought (e.g. individualism, capitalism, nationalism). This warrants another book of its own, and can only be touched upon here and in the closing chapter of this book.

The ecumenical movement of the early 1900s, if you recall from earlier chapters, sought to utilize “radical hospitality” to fundamentally transform people and, consequently, the structure of society itself. For these ecumenicists, the underlying problems in the West were due to the supposedly negative influence the Enlightenment had on man’s understanding of himself, his relation to God and others, and his relation to the state. 

The remedy was to be found in re-emphasizing man’s interdependence on others within society for his ontological, epistemological, and ethical identity. In order to counter the Enlightenment, in other words, it was necessary for men to deny individualism. The denial of individualism is a denial of individual autonomy, which entails rational egoism (i.e. the belief “that I ought to perform some action if and only if, and because, performing that action maximizes my self-interest”²¹), necessarily leading to the rejection of capitalism and, consequently, political liberalism (or classical liberalism).

This line of thinking among Romanists makes the more specific claim that it was the Protestant Reformation which is to blame for the destruction of the West. One of the key Roman Catholic thinkers promoting this view is Charles Taylor, whose writings — especially A Secular Age, in which his “secularization thesis” appears — have been widely influential on contemporary nominal Protestants.²²

[Continued in Chapter Seven.]

1. “Call No Movement New until It Is Old: ‘New Monasticism’ and the Practice of Stability”, in Pro Ecclesia Vol. 21, No. 3 (2012), 248.

2. “‘A Web of Subversive Friends’: New Monasticism in the United States and South Africa”, in Religions Vol. 9, Iss. 6 (2018), https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/6/184/htm. (emphasis added)

3. The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 39.

4. ibid., 72. (emphasis added)

5. ibid., 102. (emphasis added) [N.B. — Claiborne also notes that Matt 25:31-46 (which is to say, his wrong understanding and application of that passage) played a significant role in the formation of what he and his colleagues called the “YACHT Club (Youth Against Complacency and Homelessness Today)”. See The Irresistible Revolution, 56-62.]

6. ibid., 147-148. (emphasis added)

7. ibid., 24-25. (emphasis added)

8. “NYTS Joins Faith Leaders in Taking the Matthew 25 Pledge”, New York Theological Seminary, https://www.nyts.edu/news/nyts-joins-faith-leaders-taking-matthew-25-pledge/.

9. ibid.

10. ibid.

11. ibid.

12. See Pohl, Christine D.; Stock, John R.; Otto, Tim; and Wilson-Hartgrove, Jonathan. Inhabiting the Church: Biblical Wisdom for a New Monasticism, (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2007), 27-56. [The book is steeped in Benedictine doctrine, as the authors acknowledge (ix).]

13. Note again the connection between radicality and ordinary activities.

14. Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 96. (emphasis added)

15. Wilson-Hartgrove, Jonathan; Claiborne, Shane; et al. School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of New Monasticism (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2005), 39-54.

16. cf. ibid., 9, 85-92, 120, & 170.

17. “Becoming a Holy and Healing Church”, Alban at Duke University, Nov 1, 2007, https://alban.org/archive/becoming-a-holy-and-healing-church/.

18. See Jones, Tony. The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 49-50 & 190-191.

19. See McQuiston II, John. Always We Begin Again: The Benedictine Way of Life, 15th ed. (New York: Morehouse Publishing, 1996, 2011), xv-xviii.

20. Becoming a Holy and Healing Church.

21. Shaver, Robert. “Egoism”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Jan 15, 2019, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism/.

22. Several such nominal protestants include Carl R. Trueman, Timothy Keller, James K.A. Smith.