From Fruit to Root: A Genealogy of "Radical" Hospitality
Chapter Five.
[Continued from Chapter Four.]
Ecumenism & Hospitality
Prior to and during the rise of French Catholic Personalist and Existentialist philosophy, the ideas of which were spread via the publication of The Catholic Worker newspaper and the establishment of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin’s houses of hospitality, there was a growing ecumenical movement which sought to unite all professedly Christian denominations together with the church of Rome. The ecumenical movement, however, did not begin in the 1930s. Indeed, by the early 1900s famed Dutch nominal Protestant statesman Abraham Kuyper argued that, given the state of the world in his time, Protestants would be foolish to not accept the help of Roman Catholics in the culture war, stating —
A so-called orthodox Protestant need only mark in his confession and catechism such doctrines of religion and morals as are not subject to controversy between Rome and ourselves, to perceive immediately that what we have in common with Rome, such concerns that are precisely those fundamentals of our Christian creed, now most fiercely assaulted by the modern spirit. In this conflict [that is of worldviews in conflict a century ago, just as they are today], Rome is not an antagonist but stands on our side, inasmuch as she also recognizes and then maintains the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, the Cross as an atoning sacrifice, the Scriptures as the Word of God, and the Ten Commandments as a divinely imposed rule of life. Therefore, let me ask, If Roman Catholic theologians take up the sword to do valiant and skillful battle against the same tendency that we ourselves mean to fight to the death, is it not the part of wisdom to accept their valuable help[?]1
Kuyper’s ecumenical engagement with the Roman Church extended beyond the spiritual and into the social, economic, and political. He writes —
We must admit, to our shame, that the Roman Catholics are far ahead of us in their study of the social problem. Indeed, very far ahead. The action of the Roman Catholics should spur us to show more dynamism. The encyclical Rerum novarum of Leo XIII states the principles that are common to all Christians, and which we share with our Roman Catholic compatriots.2
His agreement with the Roman Church, including their incorrect interpretation of Matt 25:31-46,3 is so great that some have gone so far as to place Kuyper together with Day and Teresa in the category of Christian social justice advocates.4
As Kuyper’s case shows, ecumenism was already beginning to make headway during the late 1800s and into the early 1900s. As Thomas E. Fitzgerald writes —
Most observers date the beginning of this process [of ecumenicalization] from the early decades of the twentieth century. The World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910 opened the eyes of many to the tragedy of disunity and competition among many churches. The establishment of the Faith and Order movement and the Life and Work movement in the 1920s began to bring Anglican, Protestant, Old Catholic, and Orthodox theologians into contact with each other. These early organizations eventually contributed to the establishment of the World Council of Churches in 1948.5
Bastiaan Bouwman further elaborates on this, explaining that the formation of the World Council of Churches occurred “a few months before the United Nations promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,”6 a declaration which was significantly influenced by the personalist, communitarian, Catholic philosophy of Benedictine oblate Jacques Maritain.7 Thus, Bouwman further writes —
According to Terence Renaud, ecumenical Christians around this time saw in human rights ‘a universalist commitment to defending individual human beings and a global institutional framework for enacting that commitment’. …the ecumenical conception of individual freedom differed from a secular liberal viewpoint, in that it was embedded in a religious conception of community: ‘The freedom to which the Christian was delivered was a freedom that was envisioned within the framework and in relation to a life in a community (instituted by Jesus).’8
In other words, the popular utilization of “radical hospitality” as a means of converting individuals to Roman Catholicism, and doing so in order to change the structure of society, was intimately connected to the ecumenical goals of the Roman Catholic church, as well as nominal protestant churches at that time.
And by means of these radical hospitality ideas and practices, as well as by means of the propagation of denomination-blurring practices and teachings, the ecumenical movement would grow exponentially over time. The boundaries/walls between protestant denominations, as well as between protestants and Roman Catholics entered an advanced state of decay with the Second Vatican Council, about a decade prior to Mains’ publication of Open Heart, Open Home.9 This decay was exacerbated by the Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal movements, as John W. Robbins explains —
From 1900 to 1960, the Pentecostal movement continued to grow outside the mainstream of Protestantism. Yet by1960 it had attained a worldwide membership of about eight million. At that time, men like Henry Van Dusen began to call the movement the “third force” in Christendom.
Then about 1960 a remarkable change took place. Pentecostalism began to jump the denominational boundary lines and to penetrate the mainline Protestant churches. As John Sherrill says in his book, They Speak With Other Tongues, “the walls came tumbling down.” Soon there were thousands, and then millions, of Episcopalian, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and other Protestant Pentecostals. This interdenominational phase of the movement became known as the neo-Pentecostal, or charismatic, movement. It was no longer a separate denomination but an experience that transcended all denominational boundary lines. Those sharing the experience in different denominations saw themselves as having more in common with each other than with non-charismatics of the same church.10
Distinctions between Roman Catholic teaching and evangelical (i.e. putatively Protestant) teaching continued to be blurred through the late 1960s and into the 1970s, leading Robbins to characterize the 1970s as an “ecumenical phase of revivalism and the charismatic movement.”11
Thus, prior to the publication of Open Heart, Open Home, the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on hospitality had significantly impacted the world through the teachings and practices of French Roman Catholic Existentialists, Personalists, and Communitarians who directly taught and influenced Peter Maurin who, in turn, taught and influenced Dorothy Day, who would then go on to establish “houses of hospitality” and pass on Maurin’s ideas in her writing and public speaking engagements. These ideas and practices were held in common with Mother Teresa, whose fame and praise among evangelicals we have already touched upon.
Additionally, Jerry Falwell’s formation of the Moral Majority in 1979 furthered the spiritual compromise taking place by creating a socio-political alliance between Roman Catholics and evangelicals that would be exacerbated through the 1980s. As Neil J. Young explains —
As the 1980s opened, evangelicals found further encouragement in the example of Catholic charismatics, members of a small but vibrant movement in the church that stressed the gifts of the Holy Spirit in their worship experiences and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, not unlike their Protestant charismatic counterparts. …“Nothing separated us from our Roman Catholic charismatic brothers as we sat together sharing the good things of Christ,” one Christianity Today editorial enthused, praising these Catholics for their adherence to the Bible and their claim that faith in Jesus Christ provided their salvation.
With these “Roman Catholic believers in Christ,” evangelicals experienced the same unity they had with other true Christians. “Unity in the gospel surmounts all other problems,” Christianity Today explained, echoing arguments it had made during the heyday of mid-century ecumenism, “and is basic for a truly ecumenical fellowship.”
…That evangelicals might relate to the 25 percent of Catholics who claimed to be “born again” in 1981 was hardly surprising, nor was it difficult for evangelicals to feel close to the one quarter of Catholics who had cited the Bible, rather than the church, as their first source for answering their religious questions. …admiration for Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa demonstrated how far evangelicals had come in understanding individual Catholics, even the highest-ranking one, as distinct from the Catholic Church.
Mother Teresa’s selfless service in the slums of Calcutta was hard to dismiss; only the most heartless—or impolitic—evangelical would view such a life as a works-based bid for salvation, as evangelicals had often characterized Christian social reformers.12
Significantly, the residing Pope at this time was John Paul II, in whose ministry, according to Avery Dulles, “the personalist theme shows up almost everywhere”13 and “undergirds [his] theology of ecumenism and interreligious relations.”14 Thus, from the 1930s to the 1980s, there is an unbroken chain of Roman Catholic public figures utilizing personalism and its attendant emphasis on “radical hospitality” — in the writings and actions of Maritain, Marcel, and Day — to convert men to Roman Catholicism in order to fundamentally change the structure of society.
The desire to fundamentally change the structure of society, moreover, was shared by many Roman Catholic thinkers as well. In 1993, the University of Notre Dame Press published Catholic Social Thought and the New World Order: Building on One Hundred Years, a collection of essays advancing critiques of individualism and capitalism, as well as promoting communitarianism as an alternative political structure for society in the coming age. In it, authors Oliver F. Williams and John W. Houck explain that
From its earliest origins the Catholic Church has tried to influence society, and society has, to varying degrees, shaped the church. Recently, with the demise of the Marxist alternative to capitalism, Catholic social teaching has assumed the role of the major international challenging free enterprise to be more humane.15
This vision of a new and more human free enterprise is identified by them as communitarianism. Williams develops this further in his opening essay, explaining how the doctrine of communitarianism undergirds Roman Catholic Social teaching and, consequently, the personalist pope John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus, published in 1991.16
This notwithstanding, however, just a year after the publication of Catholic Social Thought and the New World Order, Roman Catholics and nominal protestants joined forces to create and sign the document titled Evangelicals and Catholics Together. What had been primarily a moral focus for the Moral Majority that retained distinctions between the religious ideas held to by its members had now become tinged by religious ecumenism as well. In the document, Evangelicals and Roman Catholics are presented as being in agreement on such foundational doctrines as the Lordship of Jesus Christ, justification by grace through faith in Christ alone, the infallibility of the Scriptures, and “Christian” social, political, economic, and ethical ideals.
Prominent evangelical and signatory of the document, J.I. Packer explains that the goal of the document extended beyond merely creating a voice for the “silent majority” whose moral ideals were being attacked by an increasingly secular society. Rather, the goal of Evangelicals and Catholics Together was
…to formulate a justification ‘at the level of principle’…for a commitment of evangelicals and believing Roman Catholics to one another. The purposes to be achieved by such commitment include friendship and, more important, ‘the common task of evangelizing the nonbelieving world’…, ‘the aim [was] to proclaim Christ the Saviour together’…17
Even the child in Christ knows that such a task is impossible given that the church of Rome teaches a damnable false gospel. Yet Packer, along with many other prominent evangelicals, signed the document and, thereby, dealt a further blow to the walls of doctrinal division between Protestants and Roman Catholics. And the decay continued throughout the 1990s into the early 2000s with the publication of yet another document falsely claiming Protestant unity with the Roman Catholic Church on foundational doctrines, as well as socio-economic and political teaching.
The Manhattan Declaration
In 2009, prominent Evangelicals and Catholics once more openly joined forces together to supposedly fight against the tide of secularization, and published The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience. Young argues that this document was not primarily political in nature, but spiritual, stating that
Most observers, and likely many of those who provided their signatures of support, saw the Manhattan Declaration as a political statement and the latest battle cry of the Religious Right. Yet its creators, and, importantly, its critics in evangelical circles, understood the document as a religious statement—a text more concerned with outlining biblical truth, Christian morality, and the sovereignty of God than in mobilizing political action. A few days after the Manhattan Declaration’s public release, Chuck Colson took to his blog to emphasize its religious meaning, calling the document “a form of catechism for the foundational truths of the faith.” Colson also celebrated the ecumenical group that had introduced it to the public at Washington, D.C.’s National Press Club. “It was a foretaste of what we’re all going to see in heaven,” Colson described the interfaith assembly, “when those of us who can truly trust the Bible, who love Christ with all our hearts, minds, and souls, are re-united in the presence of our gracious and loving God.”18
The ecumenical nature of the document, however, also covers socio-political and cultural issues.
As Richard Bennett explains —
The Website of the Manhattan Declaration states that the purpose of the document is “simply to speak with one voice on the most pressing moral issues of our day…[the Manhattan Declaration is] simply a statement of solidarity about only the social issues it addresses.”
And the document itself may not appear to have any objective other than quoted. However, under the Website section entitled, “Message to all signers of the Manhattan Declaration,” the clearly stated purpose is a call for a political movement. This shows that, in fact, the Manhattan Declaration is only the latest step in the downgrade into implementing Catholic social doctrine. There is yet another purpose; one primarily stated in Vatican Council II and postVatican Council II documents.
Through the use of social issues, the Roman Catholic Church seeks to draw true Evangelical Bible-believers into itself so that there can be no opposition by them on the fundamental issues of the authority of the Bible alone and the Gospel.
In order to soften up the Evangelicals in their separation from the Catholics on Biblical doctrinal issues, particularly the authority of the Bible alone and the Gospel, the Catholic modus operandi calls for using social issues on which both Evangelicals and Catholics agree as preliminary common ground.
[…]
As Evangelicals are drawn together with Catholics on social issues – like the social issues mentioned in this document – the ensuing ecumenical dialogue “serves to transform modes of thought and behavior and the daily life of their [Evangelical] communities [churches]. In this way, it [ecumenical dialogue] aims at preparing the way for their unity of faith in the bosom of a Church one and visible: thus ‘little by little’…all Christians will be gathered” into the Roman Catholic Church-State with its dual authority base, false gospel, and accompanying far left agenda.19
The Manhattan Declaration sought to spiritually and politically unify Roman Catholics and Protestants; and it sought to do this by touching upon social issues commonly faced by both professedly Christian groups. For instance, the document declares that
…Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good.20
This effectively identifies the Gospel with the protection of the intrinsic dignity of the human person, and with taking a stand for “the common good.” Stated another way, the “Gospel” it presents is the “five-finger gospel” of the Roman Catholics, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, and their successors. Christians are called by the document to engage in social justice for the oppressed in all societies (i.e. the least among us, globally considered) with these words —
A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination.21
[…]
The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak.22
[…]
Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life…23
Note that, like Rosaria Butterfield, the Manhattan Declaration views justice as “a command of God to defend the poor and the needy.”24 Moreover, communitarianism — living communally according to “the Law of the Gospel”25 — is viewed as part of the Gospel. This is a view which Butterfield also expresses in an interview with Amber Cullum on the Grace Enough podcast. To the question “How did previous models of hospitality help shape your families current model?”, Butterfield answers —
“What we were practicing the Bible wouldn’t necessarily call hospitality because that has a particular Christian grounding to it. What we were practicing was a kind of liberal communitarianism. We wanted to create a community that was bound by certain values and was willing to show up in hard places. The gospel is more than that. The gospel is that. But if the gospel isn’t more than that, then it’s not the gospel. Because what hospitality is, is it’s welcoming a stranger to be part of your neighbor connection and then by God’s grace, watching neighbors, come to Christ and become part of your family….there’s a there’s a difference between liberal communitarianism and hospitality.”26
Thus, prior to Butterfield’s publication of TGH, the ecumenical relations of Evangelicals and Catholics together, as well as the Manhattan Declaration, were instrumental in propagating the Roman Catholic notions of personalism, communitarianism, and radical hospitality as the means of converting men to a form of Christianity and, consequently, changing social institutions. In fact, Butterfield was preceded by other notable voices on the “Christian” left, to whom we turn next.
[Continued in Chapter Six]
Quoted in Ballor, Jordan J. “Abraham Kuyper on ECT”, Acton Institute Blog, March 12, 2015, https://blog.acton.org/archives/76664-abraham-kuyper-on-ect.html.
ibid.
Kuyper interprets Matt 25:31-46 as having reference to all men, but, strangely, makes sure to differentiate between the Imago Dei and the Imago Christi. See Kuyper, Abraham. “Forget Not Hospitality”, The Standard Bearer, Feb 1, 2007, Vol 83 Issue 09, https://sb.rfpa.org/forget-not-hospitality/.
See Muow, Richard. “Abraham Kuyper and Dorothy Day”, The Banner, May 20, 2016, https://www.thebanner.org/features/2016/05/abraham-kuyper-and-dorothy-day; Wagenman, Michael. “Abraham Kuyper: Cancel or Celebrate?”, The Banner, Sept 13, 2021, https://www.thebanner.org/features/2021/09/abraham-kuyper-cancel-or-celebrate.
The Ecumenical Movement: An Introductory History (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2004), 2.
“From Religious Freedom to Social Justice: The Human Rights EngagementOf the Ecumenical Movement of the 1940s to the 1970s”, in Journal of Global History, 13 (2018), 253.
See Aqualina, Mike. “How a Catholic thinker made human rights universal”, Angelus, Jan 23, 2019, https://angelusnews.com/voices/how-a-catholic-thinker-made-human-rights-universal/.
Bouwman, From Religious Freedom, 253. (emphasis added)
1962-1965.
“Evangelicalism, the Charismatic Movement, and the Race Back to Rome”, in The Trinity Review (Nov-Dec, 1986), 5. (emphasis added)
ibid., 6.
We Gather Together, 186-187. (excluding publication titles, emphasis added)
“John Paul II and The Mystery of The Human Person”, America: The Jesuit Review, Feb 02, 2004, https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/469/article/john-paul-ii-and-mystery-human-person.
ibid.
Catholic Social Thought and the New World Order, xi.
ibid., 1-28.
Quoted in Murray, Iain. “Evangelicals and Catholics Together - A Movement of Watershed Significance?”, Christian Library, https://www.christianstudylibrary.org/article/evangelicals-and-catholics-together-movement-watershed-significance.
We Gather Together, 275. (emphasis added)
“The Roman Catholic Agenda Embedded in the Manhattan Declaration”, in The Trinity Review No. 294 (May-June: 2010), https://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=270.
“Manhattan Declaration: A Call to Christian Conscience,” Nov 20, 2009,
https://www.manhattandeclaration.org/.
ibid. (emphasis added)
ibid.
ibid. (emphasis added)
“Intersectionality and the Church”, TableTalk Magazine, (April: 2020), https://tabletalkmagazine.com/article/2020/04/intersectionality-and-the-church/.
See Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pt. 3, §I., Ch. 3, Art. 1, https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P6W.HTM.
“76: Rosaria Butterfield | Radical Hospitality, Part 1”, Grace Enough Podcast, July 14, 2020, https://www.graceenoughpodcast.com/76-rosaria-butterfield-radical-hospitality-part-1/. (emphasis added)