Tolerance Eduaction Hospitality-Bretherton

7/28/2019 Tolerance Eduaction Hospitality-Bretherton

1/25

80 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN ETHICS

TOLERANCE, EDUCATION

AND HOSPITALITY:

A THEOLOGICAL PROPOSALLuke Bretherton

Abstract

This article gives a critique of the notion of tolerance and the promotionof tolerance in education as a means of fostering respect for the other. Inits place the theologically specied notion of hospitality is proposed. Inthe process of doing this, the article addresses three questions: is there aninherent contradiction between liberal philosophies of education and the

promotion of tolerance? Is tolerance the best way to enable genuine respectfor the other? And is tolerance something Christians should promote? Toaddress these question, rst, denitions of tolerance are assessed; second,the relationship between tolerance and autonomy is analysed; third, anaccount of how hospitality is conceived within the Christian tradition isset out; and lastly, hospitality and tolerance are contrasted in theory andpractice. The article ends by drawing some conclusions for the practiceof education.

1. Introduction

We live in a time when the problem of moral plurality is press-ing because disagreement over the nature and purpose of lifeis increasingly manifested in violent conict. Even in Britain bitterconicts abound between different groups who possess incom-mensurable visions of how society should be structured: examplesinclude debates over vivisection, abortion, fox hunting, and the useof genetically modied crops. In addition to moral plurality, whatmight be termed cultural plurality or a multicultural society has, inthe past twenty years, moved to the top of the political agenda andaffects many areas of public policy from education to employmentlaw to immigration. In short, negotiating the need for some form ofsocial harmony and the politics of diversity presents us with an acute


2/25

TOLERANCE, EDUCATION AND HOSPITALITY 81

In response to the fact of moral and cultural plurality the prevailingapproach in contemporary ethics and public policy is to take up thenotion of tolerance as the way in which incommensurable moraldisagreements and cultural differences are to be handled.1 Forexample, the strap-line of the Home Ofce is Building a safe, just and

tolerant society.2 However, a number of questions must be asked ofthis concept before it is accepted. These questions include: is tolerancethe best way to think about how to deal with strangers? What doesthe concept of tolerance mean? Are there alternative approaches todealing with difference and those with whom we disagree? If so, howdo these other approaches contrast with the notion of tolerance? Doestolerance really constitute a peaceable approach to moral and culturaldifferences that enables a degree of social harmony or, in Westernliberal democratic societies, does the emphasis on tolerance serve tomask oppressive and excluding practices?

One obvious arena in which to address these questions is that ofeducation. For example, the United Nations Declaration of Principleson Tolerance (issued as part of the UN Year for Tolerance in 1995)states: Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the richdiversity of our worlds cultures, our forms of expression and ways of

being human. It is fostered by knowledge, openness, communicationand freedom of thought, conscience and belief (1.1) and goes onto state that: Education is the most effective means of preventingintolerance (4.1). From the emphasis on tolerance education initiatives

such as the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, to the Ouseley andCantle reports relating to the riots in Bradford and elsewhere in July2001, to the promotion of tolerance in much citizenship education,this linkage between tolerance and education is constantly made.Education has become the primary means by which both NGOs,3

national governments, and inter-governmental organisations4 seek to

1 Issues around dealing with diversity have been especially pressing in America,where, after drawing on a range of sociological surveys, David Hollenbach notes:

Tolerance of difference . . . has become the highest social aspiration of Americanculture. David Hollenbach, The Common Good and Christian Ethics (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 24.2 http://www.homeofce.gov.uk (Date accessed: 30 Sept. 2003).3 For examples see http://tolerance.research.uj.edu.pl/en/m1.html.4 For example, the principles of tolerance, co-existence and harmonious relations

between majority and ethnic, religious, linguistic and other minority groups, to whichOrganisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) participating States arecommitted, were reafrmed by the OSCE States at the Bucharest Ministerial Councilin 2001. It was also highlighted during the consultative international conference onthe subject of tolerance and non-discrimination in relation to freedom of religious

belief in primary/elementary and secondary education held in Madrid in 2001.

Similarly, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) wasset up following a decision of the 1st Summit of Heads of State and Governmentof the Member States of the Council of Europe, held in Vienna in October 1993,


3/25


address ethical and cultural plurality through promoting tolerance andrespect for diversity.5 And in debates around political philosophy,the link between education, tolerance and dealing with moral andcultural plurality is frequently made.6 Yet, the question arises as towhether there is an inherent contradiction between any programme of

education (which necessarily involves the claim that a person needs tochange in some way, that they are not where they can or should be) andthe promotion of tolerance and respect for diversity (which involvesthe claim that we should refrain from seeking to change someonesmind or attitude). In short, how can education, especially liberalaccounts of education which are inherently perfectionist (they havedened notions of what the good person should be: i.e. autonomous,self-reexive, etc.), promote the notion of tolerance which is preciselythe renunciation of such perfectionism?

This article will seek to give a critique of the notion of tolerance andthe promotion of tolerance in education as a means of fostering respectfor the other. In its place the notion of hospitality will be proposed.In the process of doing this the article will address three questions:is there an inherent contradiction between liberal philosophies ofeducation and the promotion of tolerance? Is tolerance the best wayto enable genuine respect for the other? And is tolerance somethingChristians should promote? To address these question, rst, denitionsof tolerance will be assessed; second, the relationship between toleranceand autonomy will be analysed; third, an account of how hospitality

is conceived within the Christian tradition will be set out; and lastly,hospitality and tolerance will be contrasted in theory and practice.Before embarking on this intellectual journey it is important to

map the landscape this journey will traverse. There are a number ofimportant landmarks to take notice of in order to make sense of thesurrounding philosophical and political geography. The rst landmarkis what is referred to as the liberal-communitarian debate about thenature and shape of what it means to be human and how that relatesto the scope of political authority and the role of the state. The secondlandmark is the debate about the form citizenship and political identity

1997. ECRIs task is to combat racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance at thelevel of greater Europe and from the perspective of the protection of human rights.5 What is meant by diversity is rarely specied. However, the implications seemto be twofold: that diversity is a good in and of itself; and as Jeremy Waldron notes,Diversity is commonly used as a synonym for pluralism. Jeremy Waldron,Multiculturalism and mlange, in Public Education in a Multicultural Society: Policy,Theory, Critique, ed. Robert K. Fullinwider (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1996), pp. 90118 (99).6 See, for example, Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1999), pp. 304308; Eamonn Callan, Creating Citizens: PoliticalEducation and Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 8993; MeiraLevinson, The Demands of Liberal Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),


4/25


should take in liberal democratic polities with heterogeneous societies.The third landmark is the debate about multiculturalism and whetherthere is a conict between the maintenance and priorities of particularidentities and the need for social cohesion. The fourth landmark is theintricate and often tense relationship between the religions, the civic

sphere and political authority in liberal democratic societies. All theselandmarks form part of a single terrain that constitutes the ground inwhich education policy is worked out. This article will plot a particularpath around or through these different landmarks.

2. Tolerance: Denitions and Approaches

In much contemporary debate, analysis of how to cope with the fact ofplurality is framed in terms of tolerance, intolerance and freedom ofexpression and belief. A common assumption in the literature relating

to tolerance and pluralism is that tolerance and the willingness to livewith difference is a phenomenon that emerged in the West after theEnlightenment.7 However, the emphasis on the relative newness oftolerance as a concept can be over-stated.8 It was, however, with theEnlightenment and its search for a neutral arbiter between competingtruth claims and a growing emphasis on individual autonomy thatthe notion of tolerance acquired increasing prominence.9 The emphasison tolerance is seen also as a direct reaction against the allegedlyreligious wars of the post-Reformation era.10

7 One of the most inuential accounts of the view that tolerance and acceptance ofdiversity are recent historical phenomena is that given by John Rawlss introductionto Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. xxiiixxvii.See also, John Horton, Toleration, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. EdwardCraig, vol. 9 (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 42933. For a critique of Rawlss historicaland conceptual reconstruction of toleration see William Kymlicka, Two Models ofPluralism and Tolerance, in Toleration: An Elusive Virtue, ed. David Heyd (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 81105.8 Cary Nederman and John Laursen argue that the conventional picture of how theprinciple of toleration emerged in the West has been challenged by a considerable

body of historical scholarship that demonstrates both the longevity and diversity of

approaches to tolerance. Cary Nederman and John Laursen, Difference and Dissent:Introduction, in Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early ModernEurope, ed. Cary Nederman and John Laursen (London: Rowman & Littleeld, 1996),pp. 116. Within the Christian tradition two thinkers who predate the Enlightenmentand who discuss questions of tolerance and freedom of conscience are Aquinas (SummaTheologica II-II, Qu. 1012) and Lactantius (The Divine Institutes V.1921).9 It may well be that the notion of tolerance was relevant to dealing with the diversity ofChristian practice and belief in the post-Reformation context, the time when it came to thefore in the writings of Locke and others. However, as Susan Khin Zaw argues, it may beill-suited to the depth of plurality experienced in Western cultures at present, a context inwhich there is no shared basis for a common (and thence neutral) rationality by which todecide what is just. Susan Khin Zaw, Locke and Multiculturalism: Toleration, Relativism,

and Reason, in Public Education in a Multicultural Society, pp. 12155.10 For example, see John Horton and Susan Mendus, Introduction, in Aspects ofToleration: Philosophical Studies, ed. John Horton and Susan Mendus (London: Methuen,


5/25


We can dene the term tolerance as involving the willingness toaccept differences (whether religious, moral, ethnic or economic)of which, at whatever level, one might, as an individual or as acommunity, disapprove.11 For a person or group to be tolerant, threeconditions must be met. First, there must be some conduct about

which one disapproves, even if only minimally or potentially. Second,although such a person or group has power to act coercively against, orinterfere to prevent, that of which they disapprove, they do not. Third,not interfering coercively must result from more than acquiescence,resignation, indifference or a balance of power. One does not toleratethat which one is not concerned about; nor is it tolerance simply toaccept what one cannot, or is not willing to, change (either because onelacks power to effect change or because, for whatever reason, one fearsto use ones power). John Horton notes that toleration is particularlyimportant and problematic when it involves a principled refusal toprohibit conduct believed to be wrong. He states: This gives rise tothe so-called paradox of toleration according to which tolerationrequires that it is right to permit that which is wrong.12

Most defences of tolerance theological or otherwise followthree basic arguments.13 The rst approach to tolerance centres onconcern about human fallibility and the limits to human knowledge.However, the concern about human fallibility should not be seen asa form of relativism. Indeed, as Jay Newman argues, a certain kindof relativist is actually opposed to the concept of tolerance.14 Neither

does a concern about human fallibility imply that the tolerant person iscompletely sceptical about the possibility of knowing the truth about aparticular question or issue. However, it can imply a limited scepticismthat maintains belief in an ultimate horizon of truth which differingpositions may shed light on. For example, Reinhold Niebuhr, forwhom complete scepticism represents the abyss of meaninglessness,15

century resulted from the breakdown of the established political order and theemergence of nation-states. Michael Howard, The Invention of Peace: Reections on War

and International Order (London: Prole Books, 2000), pp. 1419. William Cavanaughgoes further and sees these wars as arising directly from attempts to consolidatecentralised state control over and against ecclesial authorities. See A Fire StrongEnough to Consume the House: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State,ModernTheology 11.4 (1995), pp. 397420; idem, Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgyas a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism (London: T&T Clark, 2002), pp. 952.11 It is related to, but distinct from, notions of freedom of belief. Put simply, onlyto tolerate something falls short of and does not necessitate granting or advocatingfreedom of expression to the action or belief tolerated.12 John Horton, Toleration, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, p. 431.13 The tripartite division set out here is heuristic. In practice, the three kinds ofargument for tolerance frequently overlap.14

Jay Newman, Foundations of Religious Tolerance (Toronto: University of TorontoPress, 1982), p. 22.15 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Test of Tolerance, in Religious Pluralism in the West, ed.


6/25


contends, in relation to religious toleration, that while each religionshould seek to proclaim its highest insights, it should preserve ahumble and contrite recognition of the fact that all actual expressionsof religious faith are subject to historical contingency and relativity.16 Inhis view: Such a recognition creates a spirit of tolerance.17 Arguments

for tolerance on the grounds of human fallibility can take a varietyof forms.18 These include the view that neither party has completepossession of the truth, truth will benet from free investigation, andcertainty in questions of ultimate meaning is difcult to achieve.

A second way of approaching the issue of tolerance seeksprocedures that are tolerant. This is to say that arguments for limitsto intervention and coercion are invoked when someone has powerto change anothers behaviour of which they disapprove. Proceduralarguments are generally advocated in relation to the exercise of judicialand political authority.19 Bernard Williams calls this model of toleranceliberal pluralism and describes it thus:

On the one hand, there are deeply held and differing convictions aboutmoral or religious matters, held by various groups within society. Onthe other hand, there is a supposedly impartial state, which afrms therights of all citizens to equal consideration, including an equal right toform and express their convictions.20

However, as many have argued, the quest for neutral proceduresbased on reason has failed. The modern state is itself intolerant. As

Alasdair MacIntyre puts it: The modern state is never merely a neutralarbiter of conicts, but is always to some degree itself a party to socialconict, and . . . acts in the interests of particular and highly contestableconceptions of liberty and property.21 Thus, the foundation of, and

16 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (London: Nisbet& Co., 1945), p. 88.17 Ibid.18 An earlier justication of tolerance on the grounds of the fallibility of human

knowledge appears in Pierre Bayle, Treatise on Universal Tolerance (1686). For an accountof Bayles thought see Preston King, Toleration (London: Allen & Unwin, 1976), pp.9099.19 John Lockes An Essay on Toleration is an example of this approach. See JohnLocke, An Essay on Toleration, in Locke: Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 13459. For an assessment of Lockes account oftoleration see Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism (London: MacMillan,1989), pp. 2243.20 Bernard Williams, Toleration: An Impossible Virtue, in Toleration: An Elusive Virtue,p. 22. John Rawlss Political Liberalism is perhaps the most inuential modern exponentof this approach. Another recent theorist is William Galston. See, for example, WilliamGalston, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and

Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).21 Alasdair MacIntyre, Toleration and the Goods of Conflict, in The Politics ofToleration: Tolerance and Intolerance in Modern Life, ed. Susan Mendus (Edinburgh:


7/25


procedures for, securing modern notions of tolerance has proved, inMacIntyres view at least, self-defeating.22

The third approach seeks to argue for tolerance as a substantivegood.23 However, framing analyses of how one should live withdifference in terms of tolerance as a substantive good, as distinct from

a merely instrumental one, is conceptually problematic. As Williamscomments: The difculty with toleration is that it seems to be at oncenecessary and impossible.24 He points out that there is a difference

between pragmatic tolerance and tolerance as a substantive value.Tolerance as a substantive value is based on a particular conceptionof the good: that is, the good of individual autonomy. This leads tothe following problem: The practice of toleration cannot be basedon a value such as that of individual autonomy, and also hope toescape from substantive disagreements about the good.25 Those whodisagree with the liberal conception of the good will necessarily rejectliberal conceptions of toleration and, as MacIntyre has argued, theywill reject liberal conceptions of rationality on which the particulargood of toleration is based. There is a further conceptual problem witharguments for tolerance as a substantive good based on notions ofhuman autonomy; it is a problem that lies at the heart of the so-calledliberal-communitarian debate. As Susan Mendus puts it: We need tounderstand how people are interdependent as well as independent.We need to explain how autonomy is formed, not solely from theinternal nature of individuals, but also from the nature of the society

in which they nd themselves.26

To ground arguments for toleranceon individual autonomy is to devalue the ways in which an individualis embedded within a wider community of relations and how thatcommunity of relations is constitutive of an individuals ability tomake good choices.

3. Tolerance, Education and Autonomy

The above assessment of tolerance as a substantive good answersthe question about whether liberal philosophies of education areincompatible with the promotion of tolerance. It seems there is adirect relation between the promotion of tolerance as a substantivegood and liberal philosophical accounts of the good life. Tolerance asa substantive good involves a commitment to individual autonomy

22 For an assessment of the ve dominant regimes of tolerance and what they donot tolerate and exclude, see Michael Walzer, On Toleration (New Haven, CN: YaleUniversity Press, 1997), pp. 1436.23 The arguments for tolerance in On Liberty by John Stuart Mill are an example ofthis approach.24 Bernard Williams, Tolerating the Intolerable, in The Politics of Toleration, pp. 6575

(65).25 Ibid., p. 73. Cf. Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1991), pp. 15468.


8/25


and detachment from ones own particular community and itsconception of the good life. Such an approach to the good of autonomyand its relationship to tolerance is true both of what Rawls callscomprehensive and political liberals. As Meira Levinson argues:

In the end political liberalism is no more successful thancomprehensive liberalism at unifying liberalisms three commitmentswith an non-autonomy-valuing theory of justication. Autonomy, Iconclude, is a necessary component of contemporary liberal theory.27

Liberal philosophers who write on education see autonomy and acertain detachment from religious and cultural commitments as centralto developing tolerance. For example, Amy Gutmann argues that inorder to maintain the liberal democratic polity children must be taughttolerance, mutual respect and rational deliberation among ways oflife. Where this is in conict with the wishes of parents or religiouscommunities the state is compelled to step in and ensure children havea rational choice. Gutmann states:

The same principle that requires a state to grant adults personalpolitical freedom also commits it to assuring children an educationthat makes those freedoms both possible and meaningful in the future.A state makes choice possible by teaching its future citizens respect foropposing points of view and ways of life. It makes choice meaningfulby equipping children with the intellectual skills necessary to evaluateways of life different from that of their parents.28

Similarly, Eamon Callan argues that the only effective way of securingthe necessary degree of individual autonomy for freedom of choiceto be meaningful will be through a form of schooling that providesnot only exposure to ethical diversity but takes some active measuresto enable independent critical reection on diversity.29 And MeiraLevinson calls for an environment distanced from the commitmentspromoted by childrens home communities and families so that pupilscan develop what she calls an appropriate sense of detachment.30

However, it is questionable whether religious commitments are

necessarily an obstacle to fostering a degree of individual autonomyand independence of mind. Elmer Theissen argues that there is noinherent or intrinsic conict between religious commitment and thenurture of autonomy as long as autonomy is not conceived in idealised,voluntaristic liberal terms. After assessing the relationship betweenautonomy and Christianity and whether faith-based educationconstitutes indoctrination, he concludes:

27 Levinson, Demands of Liberal Education, p. 21.28 Gutmann, Democratic Education, pp. 3031. It must be said that Gutmann is very

aware of the problematic nature of this line of argument but thinks it justied ondemocratic grounds and in the interests of sustaining a democratic polity (pp. 3941).29 See also Callan, Creating Citizens, p. 190.


9/25


In fact, nurture within . . . a stable and coherent primary culture, whetherthat be Christian, Buddhist or atheistic, is a prerequisite to normaldevelopment toward autonomy. It is thus a mistake to associate theprovision of a relatively closed environment of Christian homes andprimary schools with indoctrination. It is also a mistake to assume thatparents who seek to provide a stable and coherent Christian primaryculture for their children cannot at the same time intend that theirchildren become autonomous . . . It is possible to aim at autonomy viafaith.31

MacIntyre gives a broader, philosophical warrant for Theissenspoint. He argues that: In order to ourish, we need both thosevirtues that enable us to function as independent and accountablepractical reasoners and those virtues that enable us to acknowledgethe nature and extent of our dependence on others.32 For MacIntyre,the acquisition and exercise of these virtues is possible only in so far

as we participate in the kind of society whose common good takesaccount of human vulnerability and inter-dependence. Whetherone accepts MacIntyre and Theissens analysis or not, what theirrespective arguments point to is the mistake liberal philosophy makesin seeing a necessary link between the autonomous life, dened involuntaristic terms, and the life of human ourishing. Yet while ameasure of autonomy may well be necessary to inhabit the full extentof what it means to be human as an individual, autonomy, physicalor otherwise, is not necessary in order to lead a good and ourishing

human life.What has become clear is that in the conceptions of liberal educationoutlined above the promotion of tolerance requires all children to standapart from their own traditions in order that they can, on the onehand, stand in equal relation to each other as autonomous individualsdivorced from particular commitments, and on the other, sceptically

31 Elmer Thiessen, Teaching for Commitment: Liberal Education, Indoctrination andChristian Nurture (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1993), p.

143. It must be noted that some strands of liberal philosophy increasingly recognisethat the development of autonomy necessarily involves initiation into a primaryculture and a particular conception of the good. See for example, William KymlickaLiberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); idem,MulticulturalCitizenship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); and Joseph Raz, Multiculturalism: ALiberal Perspective, in Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law andPolitics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 15576. However, the claim Theissen ismaking is not that a primary culture is necessary for autonomy (as Kymlicka does) butthat it is not antithetical to developing what he calls normal autonomy. Moreover,as Waldron argues, the concern among the likes of Kymlicka and Raz is not for theimportance of community per se, but for a Rawlsian conception of how individualscome to have freedom of choice. Communities and primary cultures are simply a

means to the end of autonomy and choice and not to be valued in and of themselves.Waldron, Multiculturalism and mlange, pp. 101105.32 Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues


10/25


reect both on their own commitments and those of others.33 The fruitof this dual process is supposedly the chimera of neutrality. However,the implication of this strategy is that far from promoting neutralityand respect for other conceptions of the good life, the promotionof tolerance intrinsically involves the nurture of autonomous, self-

reexive subjects or what Michael Sandel calls unencumberedselves.34 Thus, at heart, the notion of tolerance does not necessarilylead to respect for, or understanding of, the other; neither can it besaid to better enable pupils to deal with cultural and moral diversitythan any alternative approach to plurality that precludes the use ofcoercion. However, if we reject tolerance, the recommendations madein something like the recent Cantle Report on community cohesion,which calls for the promotion of cross cultural contact betweendifferent communities and the need to foster understanding andrespect for a diversity of traditions, still have to be met.35

Yet just as it is possible to aim at autonomy via faith it is possiblealso to foster understanding and respect for others via specicallyreligious commitments. Furthermore, tolerance may well be worsethan other approaches at enabling both the concrete and generalrespect that is essential for proper attention to both particularity andsameness or how we are simultaneously different and equal. And yetit is this dual kind of respect for the other that seems to be the telostolerance seeks.36 Drawing on the work of Seyla Behabib, Benjamin

33 Not all liberal theorists of education subscribe to such a view. William Galston,dening toleration as a principled refusal to use coercive state power to impose onesown views on others, states: Liberal pluralism requires a parsimonious but vigoroussystem of civic education that teaches tolerance, so understood, and helps equipindividuals with the virtues and competencies they will need to perform as membersof a liberal pluralist economy, society and polity. It is hard to believe that tolerance, sounderstood, can be cultivated without at least minimal awareness of the existence andnature of ways of life other than those of ones family and community. The state mayestablish educational guidelines pursuant to this compelling interest. What it may notdo is prescribe curricula or pedagogic practices that aim to make students sceptical orcritical of their own ways of life. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, pp. 12627.34

Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1982).35 Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team Chaired by Ted Cantle(London: Home Office, December 2001), p. 11. Following the disturbances andriots in Burnley, Oldham and Bradford in the summer of 2001, a series of reportswere published. These revealed various problems, including deeply polarised andfragmented communities living parallel lives. The government identied communitycohesion as being vital to promoting greater knowledge, respect and contact betweenvarious cultures and to establishing a greater sense of citizenship in the UK. The CantleReport subsequently addressed the broad issues relating to community cohesion andin doing so, the report identied as crucially important the role of schools in buildingcohesion within the community.

36 For example, Gutmann states: Teaching mutual respect is a crucial aim of demo-cratic education. Mutual respect is a public good as a well as a private good in ademocratic society. It expresses the equal standing of every person as an individual


11/25


Endres notes that seeing the other as a rational being with the samerights and duties that we would want to ascribe to ourselves (i.e.,some version of the golden rule) involves both an abstracted generalrespect for all people and a concrete respect that takes account of thehistory, identity and needs of another, particular person.37 Intrinsic to

concrete respect is the recognition that the other is not the same asme, they possess an irreducible otherness. Tolerance is ill-suited topromoting such recognition since it involves seeing everyone as thesame: autonomous self-reexive subjects. And while tolerance aims atequality of treatment and a generalised respect, in practice it can oftenresult in discrimination. As Endres notes in relation to education (butit is an insight that is not just restricted to the classroom):

Treating all students the same will not allow teachers to see differencesbetween the cultural and linguistic norms of the students and their own

. . . In such cases, the effort to treat all students equally in principle,disregards an educationally relevant cultural difference, which resultsin the unequal treatment of the students in practice. Here, generalisedrespect for students seems to undermine its own intent.38

Endres goes onto conclude that general respect is only realised whenwe can consider a concrete perspective, different from our own, inan open and reective way.39 However, the problematic nature ofgeneralised respect does not just afict the attempt to see everyoneas the same. It affects also the attempt to take account of cultural

differences: to treat someone as simply the same as others in theircultural group, as a representative of a particular group say IrishCatholics or African Americans and not attend to the ways in whichthey are both like those from other cultures, and different to othermembers of their own culture, is to deny them concrete (or particular)respect. There is the additional problem that in a multicultural societyno culture is an island unto itself and so each individual, while havinga strong primary culture, will also be inuenced, to a greater or lesserextent, by a myriad of other cultural inuences.40 Within a multiculturalcontext, in contrast to tolerance, religious commitments are well placed

in a productive way, rst by understanding one anothers perspectives and then bytrying to nd fair ways of resolving their disagreements. Amy Gutmann, Challengesof Multiculturalism in Democratic Education, in Public Education in a MulticulturalSociety, pp. 15679 (160).37 Benjamin Endres, Transcending and Attending to Difference in the MulticulturalClassroom,Journal of Philosophy of Education 36.2 (2002), pp. 17185 (174).38 Ibid., p. 175.39 Ibid., p. 178.40 On the necessity of taking the multicultural context of each individual into account

in order to afford them respect see Waldron, Multiculturalism and mlange, pp. 11214. However, Waldron fails to take sufcient account of how primary cultures bethey birth cultures or religious ones shape individual identity, albeit in a way that is


12/25


to foster true respect, respect that encompasses both the generaland the particular aspects of respecting the other.41 Religiouslycommitted, tradition-specic ways of framing respectful relationsallows for both the afrmation of ones own particular tradition oridentity and the otherness of the other, while still fostering respect

for traditions different to ones own, and attention to how differenttraditions overlap and may be mutually constitutive. I will argue thatwithin the Christian tradition the practice of hospitality represents

just such an approach, and while tolerance and hospitality are notdirect equivalents, hospitality, like tolerance, is a way of addressingthe problem of how to relate to the other. However, the action andpolitics that ow out of hospitality are very different to that whichtolerance gives rise to.

4. Hospitality A Christian Account of Dealing with DifferenceContrary to rst impressions, hospitality is not an essentially domesticand apolitical kind of action. A number of philosophers have conceivedof hospitality as a political practice, among them is Immanuel Kant.Kant accorded hospitality a central signicance in his account of howpeople from different cultures can enter into mutual relations whichmay eventually be regulated by public laws, thus bringing the humanrace nearer and nearer to a cosmopolitan constitution.42 MacIntyre, atrenchant critic of Kant and the Enlightenment, also places hospitality

at the centre of his account of what constitutes the good society.43

Both thinkers realise that, for a society to avoid being engulfed bydeadly conict, hospitality of strangers is required in order for asociety to be maintained and humans to ourish. Other philosophicaltreatments of hospitality can be found in Emmanuel Lvinas44 and

41 As noted in relation to the UN Declaration on Tolerance and other statements,there is a tendency to elide the differences between respect and tolerance. Yet whatrespect requires is attention and availability in a way that tolerance does not. Moreover,as Simone Weil suggests, the nurture of attention and availability should be a central

feature of all schooling and the fruit and fullment of learning to be attentive is the loveof God and neighbour. As she puts it: Not only does the love of God have attention forits substance; the love of our neighbour, which we know to be the same love, is made ofthis same substance . . . So it comes about that, paradoxical as it may seem, a Latin proseor a geometry problem, even though they are done wrong, may be of great service oneday, provided we devote the right kind of effort to them. Should the occasion arise, theycan one day make us better able to give someone in afiction exactly the help requiredto save him, at the supreme moment of need. Simone Weil, Reection on the RightUse of School Studies with a View to the Love of God, in Waiting on God, trans. EmmaCraufurd (London: Fontana, 1959), pp. 7576.42 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, trans. H. B. Nisbet, inKant: Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1991), p. 106.43 MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals, pp. 12228.44 For example, Emmanuel Lvinas, Responsibility for the Other, in Ethics and


13/25


Jacques Derrida,45both of whom emphasise the relationship betweenhospitality and identity. However, Kant, MacIntye, Lvinas andDerrida all give very different accounts of the nature and shapeof hospitality. What transpires by comparing and contrasting theirdifferent accounts is that while hospitality can be seen as a generic

term, clearly it does not have a universal denition.What these differences point to is that, while the practice ofhospitality has been central to many cultures and philosophies, itcan only be understood within a particular tradition. Moreover,different traditions will have different forms of hospitality.46 Thus,living with those who are different, and framing relations with thosewho are different in terms of hospitality (rather than tolerance) entailsunderstanding hospitality in the light of one particular tradition.This article will now assess the conception of hospitality within theChristian tradition and then see how this conception of hospitality mayshape relations between Christians and the other.

4.1. Hospitality in the Scriptural Witness

Throughout the Gospels the images of feasting and hospitality areabundant and vivid.47 Among many there are: the wedding at Cana,Dives feasting while Lazarus starves at his gate, the joyous mealat Jericho with Zacchaeus, the woman washing Jesus feet, Jesuswashing his disciples feet, the Last Supper, and the meals enjoyed

with the risen Jesus. At various points Jesus hospitality, which hasas its focal point actual feasting and table fellowship, is presented aschallenging the religious, political, economic and social authoritiesof his day.

There is both continuity and departure from the pattern of hospitalityestablished in the Old Testament. The elements of continuity are verystrong. God commanded his people to provide hospitality to strangers:The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen amongyou; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the landof Egypt: I am the Lord your God (Lev. 19:3334). The command in

Leviticus 19 was echoed in a range of other legislation. The tithe, forinstance, is fundamentally a command to be hospitable on a lavishscale (Deut. 12:1719). Again, the commands concerning harvestingare demands that hospitality be observed: one who harvests a eld

45 For example, Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality, trans.Rachel Bowlby (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000).46 For an account of hospitality that contrasts with the Christian account given here,see Mariasusai Dhavamony, Hindu Hospitality and Tolerance: Hindu Attitudes to

Foreigners, Strangers and Immigrants, Studia Missionalia 39 (1990), pp. 30320.47 For a treatment of the theme of hospitality in LukeActs see John Koenig, NewTestament Hospitality: Partnership with Strangers as Promise and Mission (Philadelphia,


14/25


must not seek to maximise his harvest, but must leave the gleanings forthose who are in need (Deut. 24:1922). Stories of hospitality constitutea leitmotif throughout the Old Testament; for example, Abraham andSarah entertaining angels,48 Abigail placating David, and the widowof Zarephath caring for Elijah.49 At times this hospitality is not only

offered but also demanded, as when Lot insists the Angels spend thenight with him (Gen. 19:13).50 At other times it is extended to enemiesas a sign of the reconciling work of God, as when Isaac made a feastfor Abimelech (Gen. 26:2631), or Elisha mediated a peace between theArameans and the Israelites (2 Kgs 6:823). It is linked with the renewalof creation (Eccles. 10:1617), and ultimately it comes to include allcreation and all the nations at the messianic banquet, as depictedand anticipated in the prophets.51Jesus ministry can be seen to drawtogether all these elements, intensify their application, and inauguratetheir fullment.

Alongside this continuity, there is discontinuity.52 There is much inthe Old Testament that emphasises how Israel is not to entertain itsneighbours or have contact with those who are unclean. There are thenumerous purity rituals set out in the Torah,53 and most signicantly,we cannot ignore all the material relating to the conquest of thosealready living in Canaan in Joshua and elsewhere. There is also theconnection between being faithless to God and marrying foreignwomen expressed in both Nehemiah and Ezra.54 It seems Israel isconstantly in danger of being overwhelmed by pollution and sin and

must constantly protect itself in order to maintain itself as holy anddistinct among the nations.

48 For an exegesis of Genesis 18 that draws out the theological implications of thehospitality motif in the story of Abraham and Sarah receiving the angels, see GavinDCosta, Sexing the Trinity: Gender, Culture and the Divine (London: SCM Press, 2000),pp. 15761.49 Gen. 18; 1 Sam. 25; 1 Kgs 17:1824.50 For an exegesis of this passage in relation to hospitality see Eugene Rogers,Sexuality and the Christian Body (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 25760. Rogers contraststhe hospitality of Lot with the violent inhospitality of the Sodomites.51 Texts relating to the messianic banquet include: Isaiah 25, 54; Ezekiel 39; and

Joel 23. For an analysis of Israels relationship to the land see Walter Brueggemann,The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith, 2nd edn (Minneapolis,MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2002); and for an assessment of the prophetic texts inrelation to the messianic hope, see idem, Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986).52 For a study of the diversity of views on the issue of the treatment of strangers inthe Old Testament, see Daniel Smith-Christopher, Between Ezra and Isaiah: Exclusion,Transformation, and Inclusion of the Foreigner in Post-Exilic Biblical Theology, inEthnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark Brett (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 11742.53

For an assessment of the relationship between Israels holiness, the Temple cult andIsraels distinctive identity in relation to other nations, see Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus116, 3 vols, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1991), III.


15/25


Jesus is not presented as resolving the tension between hospitalityand holiness in the Old Testament, but as relating these two imperativesin a particular way. Jesus relates hospitality and holiness by invertingtheir relations: hospitality becomes the means of holiness. Instead ofhaving to be set apart from or exclude pagans in order to maintain

holiness, it is in Jesus hospitality of pagans, the unclean, and sinnersthat his own holiness is shown forth. Instead of sin and impurityinfecting him, it seems Jesus purity and righteousness somehowinfects the impure, sinners and the Gentiles. As Marcus Borg putsit: In the teaching [and practice] of Jesus, holiness, not uncleannesswas understood to be contagious.55 For example, the haemorrhagingwoman has only to touch Jesus and she is healed and made clean.56

Instead of Jesus having to undergo purity rituals because of contactwith the woman, as any other rabbi would, it is the woman who iscleansed by contact with him.57 There is a similar dynamic when Jesustouches lepers, the dead, the blind, the deaf and dumb, or partakes ofa meal with a tax-collector.

Jesus speech and action announces a form of hospitality that, tosome of his contemporaries, is shocking in relation to certain OldTestament precedents. Thus, his hospitality brings him into conictwith the custodians of Israels purity, both self-appointed (thePharisees, Zealot-types, etc.) and actual (the Temple authorities). Borgcontends that this conict between Jesus and his contemporaries isabout the shape and purpose of the people of God which is itself part

of a wider debate about the response of Judaism to Roman politicalpower and the encroachment of Hellenistic culture.58 Through hishospitality Jesus rejected, and presented an alternative to, everyother post-exilic programme for Israels internal reform and questfor holiness. For all of these were based on the exclusion of sinners,separation from the world (that is, Gentile uncleanness and rule),and solidarity formed by dening Israels identity through oppositionto sinners and Gentiles.59 Jesus rejected also co-option by, andassimilation to, the pagan hegemony, and capitulation to sin. Rather,he advocated participation in the kingdom of God as enacted in his

table fellowship.

55 Marcus J. Borg, Conict, Holiness and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus (Lampeter:Edwin Mellen Press, 1972), p. 135.56 Mk 5:2534; Lk. 8:4348.57 Borg, Conict, Holiness and Politics, pp. 13536.58 Ibid., pp. 24.59 A parallel may be drawn between such programmes of exclusion and some con-temporary expressions of Protestant fundamentalism whose denition of faithfulpractice and belief requires that the identity of believers be dened over and against

non-believers. See Robert Wuthnow and Matthew P. Lawson, Sources of ChristianFundamentalism in the United States, in Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The DynamicCharacter of Movements, eds Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago, CA:


16/25


4.2. Hospitality in the Christian Tradition

The paradigm of hospitality set out in Jesus ministry has informedthe thinking and practice of the church throughout its history. Fromits earliest writings, right through to contemporary Christian practice,we see evidence for the centrality of hospitality as the practice thatdetermines how Christians relate to strangers.

The Didache is an early example of both the exhortation tohospitality as an important Christian discipline and the tensionswithin the practice of hospitality. In an echo of Matt. 5:2, the Didacheadmonishes Christians to Give to anyone that asks you, and demandno return; the Father wants His own bounties to be shared withall.60 The document calls on Christians to be open-handed in theirhospitality, especially towards the poor.61 However, it tempers theexhortation to generosity with discernment by setting out a number

of ways in which those who would abuse Christian hospitality, andthose who threatened the life together of the community (for example,by their false teaching), can be discouraged.62 The Didache representsan attempt to control abuses of hospitality while simultaneouslyencouraging its practice.63 We see in the Didache a tension within theChristian tradition of hospitality that surfaces time and again; thatis, the tension between recognising Jesus in every stranger and theprudential consideration of discriminating between deserving andundeserving strangers.64 However, the very existence of documentsthat attempt to address the problem of the abuse of hospitality points

to how, in the early church at least, hospitality was considered anormative and necessary practice.

Fears about the abuse of hospitality were not just focused on howguests might take advantage of it. There is also a strong emphasisin the tradition on admonishing hosts not to use hospitality to gainadvantage. The Church Fathers constantly emphasise that Christianswere deliberately to welcome those from whom little prestige could

be gained. For example John Chrysostom wrote:

Wherefore God bade us call to our suppers and our feasts the lame,

and the maimed, and those who cannot repay us; for these are most

60 Didache 1.3.61 Didache 4.5.62 Simon Tugwell, The Apostolic Fathers (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1989), pp. 15,89.63 Christine Pohl,Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (GrandRapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 147.64 Cf. The Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, trans.William Fletcher, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 10 vols (Edinburgh:

T&T Clark, 1994), VII, pp. 384508 (p. 397); Benedict, The Rule of St Benedict, trans.Timothy Fry et al. (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), ch. 53; and see Pohl,Making Room,pp. 9394, for comments by Luther and Calvin on the problem of discriminating


17/25


of all properly called good deeds which are done for Gods sake.Whereas if thou entertain some great and distinguished man, it isnot such pure mercy, what thou doest: but some portion many timesis assigned to thyself also, both by vain-glory, and by the return ofthe favor, and by thy rising in many mens estimation on account ofthy guest.65

Within the Christian tradition the stranger to be welcomed isconsistently dened as someone who lacks any resources to supportthemselves. The stranger is someone who lacks a place in society

because they are detached or excluded from the basic means ofsupporting and sustaining life family, work, polity, land and soon and are thus vulnerable. Christine Pohl states: Through mostof its history, the Christian hospitality tradition has expressed anormative concern for strangers who could not provide for or defendthemselves.66 In other words, following the parable of the GoodSamaritan, the answer given to the question: who is my neighbour?(Lk. 10:29) has been that the neighbour to be welcomed is the friendlessstranger. Hence, what constitutes the abuse of hospitality by hosts isdened in terms of whether their hospitality ignores the vulnerableand friendless stranger.

The emphasis on welcoming the vulnerable stranger points to howChristian hospitality is often not simply a question of entertaining astranger. To entertain a stranger implies the life of the host is relativelyunaffected by the encounter. However, to accommodate (in the sense

of adapt to and make space and time for) or host (in the sense ofsacricially offer oneself for) the stranger carries the implication thatmaking room for the stranger requires the host to change their pattern oflife. An emphasis on the readiness to change ones life in order that thevulnerable stranger may be accommodated is a constant theme in thetradition. Perhaps the most radical example of changing ones patternof life in order that the vulnerable stranger might be accommodated isThe Rule of St Benedict. Benedicts rule, and the forms of monasticism itinspired, sought a form of life in which humility and obedience werethe means by which love of God and neighbour were accomplished.Benedict wrote: Renounce yourself in order to follow Christ.67 Therenunciation he calls for is in order that the monk may relieve the lotof the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick and bury the dead.68 ForBenedict, hospitality of vulnerable strangers was directly linked to areadiness to change ones self-willed and pride-lled pattern of life inorder that worship of God, and love of ones neighbour, might come

65 John Chrysostom, Homily XX on 1 Cor. viii.I, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,trans. Talbot Chambers, ed. Philip Schaff, First Series, 14 vols (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,

1989), XII, pp. 11118 (117).66 Pohl,Making Room, p. 87.67 Benedict, The Rule, ch. 4, p. 12.


18/25


rst. To do this required training in a school for the Lords serviceand could not be achieved alone.69 However, hospitality of vulnerablestrangers was not simply the response of individual monks resultingfrom their training in the monastery. It was also part of the witnessof the whole community. Echoing Matt. 25:35 Benedict writes: All

guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for hehimself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Properhonour must be shown to all, especially to those who share ourfaith and to pilgrims.70 Special provision for accommodating guestswas made and this provision was central to the common life of themonastery which was, as Michael Banner argues, designed to bearwitness to the true peace of the City of God characterised by loverather than enmity.71

The practice of hospitality has continued to be a mark of Christianwitness right up to the present day (even if it has not always beenas forthcoming as it should have been). For example, while manyChristians singularly failed to respond to the racist and violentpersecution of the Jews by the Nazis, the response of those thatdid act faithfully was characterised by the practice of hospitality. Astriking example is the story of the Protestant village of Le Chambonwhose members, in their homes, and at great personal cost, protectedthousands of Jews, and ensured their escape from the death camps.72

Another example is the work of Dorothy Day and the Catholic WorkerMovement whose solidarity with the poor took the concrete shape

and character of hospitality. In a very different area of activity, thework of Jean Vanier and the care given to those with severe learningdisabilities in the LArche communities is another example of howhospitality shapes the response of Christians to vulnerable strangersin relation to social and moral problems or crises.73 Likewise, theHospice movement founded by Dame Cicely Saunders offershospitality to the suffering dying who are vulnerable to neglect,over-treatment or euthanasia.

69

Michael Banner notes how Benedict, in contrast to the Desert Fathers, resolvesthe tension between communal and eremitic forms of monasticism in favour of thecommunal. Michael Banner, Who are my Mother and my Brothers?: Marx, Bonhoefferand Benedict and the Redemption of the Family, in Christian Ethics and Contemporary

Moral Problems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 22551 (23538).70 Benedict, The Rule, ch. 53, p. 51.71 Banner, Who are my Mother and my Brothers?, pp. 24144.72 For an account of what happened in Le Chambon, see Philip Hallie, Lest InnocentBlood Be Shed (New York: Harper & Row, 1979). A more contemporary example of thesame practice of hospitality in response to racially motivated persecution were theactions of Fr Sava and the Serbian Orthodox monks of the Decani monastery during theconict over Kosovo in 1999. They sheltered Albanians from Serbian military forces and

then, as NATO began taking control of the region, they sheltered Roma, Slav Muslims,and Serbs from Albanian militias.73 For an account of the LArche communities see Jean Vanier, An Ark for the Poor: The


19/25


This brief review of ways in which hospitality has been conceived andpractised emphasises the centrality of hospitality within Christianity.The above historical review also helps clarify how hospitality mayshape relations between Christians and their neighbours. Theneighbour is properly understood, within the Christian tradition, to

be a stranger; moreover, the stranger is not simply someone who isdifferent instead, there is a consistent and special concern for thevulnerable stranger, for example, the poor, the sick, and the refugee.Moreover, as the witness of the village of Le Chambon demonstrates,the focus on the vulnerable stranger will, on occasion, mean the churchnds itself actively opposed by those who would be, by Christiancriteria of evaluation, inhospitable to the vulnerable stranger. A patternof hospitality that bears witness to Jesus Christ will meet with a varietyof responses, some of which will be very hostile. Conversely, becauseof its particular understanding of what hospitality requires, the churchis not uncritically welcoming of everyone: a proper evaluation must

be made of who, in any particular instance, is the vulnerable strangerto be welcomed. Thus, hospitality is not the renunciation of justice butthe instantiation of what justice requires in concrete terms.74

Care for the vulnerable stranger is not without its problems. Anumber of tensions have emerged within the practice of hospitality.There is the tension between greeting every stranger as Christ anddiscerning who would genuinely benet from care; the tension ofestablishing institutional and corporate forms of hospitality and the

need for hospitality to be personal, particular and practised by everyChristian; and nally, the tension between provision and the capacityto provide wherein the integrity and resources of the community can

be overwhelmed by the abuse of, or extensive need for, hospitality.Despite these tensions, the practice of hospitality is a recurring andconsistent activity throughout the Christian tradition and it is anactivity shaped by response to the words and actions of Jesus Christ,given in Scripture, as Christians seek to bear faithful witness to Godshospitality of both them and their neighbours.75

5. Hospitality and Tolerance Contrasted

It is instructive to draw a contrast between Christian hospitalityand the conception of tolerance outlined earlier. There is no clearlyidentiable concrete social practice with which tolerance can be

74 It is this thick vision of Christian hospitality as having limits and ends (care of thevulnerable stranger) that is what distinguishes it most from the somewhat passive andundifferentiated vision of hospitality found in both Lvinas and Derrida.75 For a fuller treatment of hospitality and its theological basis in Christianity, see

Luke Bretherton, A Proposal for How Christians and Non-Christians Should Relateto Each Other with Regard to Ethical Disputes in the Light of Alasdair MacIntyre,Germain Grisez and Oliver ODonovans Work (unpublished doctoral dissertation,


20/25


identied. Ian Markham argues that America itself constitutes anembodiment of tolerance derived from Christian commitments.76 Hestates: The American democratic experiment can take much of thecredit for showing the world that it is possible to be committed to

both truth and plurality. Tolerance is an American virtue afrmed in

the First Amendment and celebrated in its cities.77 However, DavidHollenbachs critique of the impact of tolerance on social policy,especially urban social policy in America, stands as a stark rebuttalof Markhams claim.78 Hollenbach states: Acceptance or toleranceof difference will certainly not knit up the tears in the esh of theAmerican body politic today. When acceptance of difference becomesacquiescence in deep social disparities and human misery it becomespart of the problem, not part of the solution.79 For Hollenbach:Tolerance as acceptance of differences is a psychological stance entirelyinadequate for the development of a creative response to urban povertytoday.80 What the American experience demonstrates is how difcult itis to translate a commitment to tolerance as either a pragmatic policy,or a substantive value, into concrete social practices. For example,the problems surrounding afrmative action policies, wherein tocounter intolerance (that of racism) an intrinsically intolerant policyis employed (one which causes reverse discrimination), illustrates howdifcult it is actually to establish tolerance in practical ways.

It seems tolerance acts as a break to any constructive action.Hollenbach notes that any form of genuine human action adds to or

tries to change the direction of what is happening.81

Yet, tolerance,understood as never challenging opinions others hold, reduces us tosilence and inactivity, because to add to and seek to change what othersthink is by denition intolerant. As Hollenbach notes, it is obviouslya reductio ad absurdum to imply that a public philosophy built aroundtolerance aims to get people to stop talking and acting. However, thisis the effect it has. The impact of tolerance on social policy has been todiminish the arena of public or social action. It has done this because,as Hollenbach points out, modern conceptions of tolerance formulatethe ideal of respect by only focusing on its importance for individuals

regarded one at a time.82We have already noted that when tolerance is a substantive value

it is based on a particular conception of the good: that is, the good of

76 Ian Markham, Plurality and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1995), pp. 83126.77 Ibid., p. 188.78 Hollenbach, Common Good and Christian Ethics, pp. 3242. It should be noted thatHollenbach sees a re-invigorated notion of the common good, rather than hospitality,as the best response to the problem of ethical diversity.79

Ibid., p. 41.80 Ibid., p. 40.81 Ibid., p. 70.


21/25


individual autonomy. The good of individual autonomy necessarilyplaces the good of the individual before that of other persons andprovides little warrant for moving beyond the individual goodand seeking either the common good or taking account of a widercontext. Markham recognises that a commitment to tolerance can only

guarantee a minimal level of social peace. He states: We need to movebeyond tolerance, to active engagement and concern in the life ofothers, to dialogue, to collaborative truth-seeking and the enrichmentof life through the insights of others.83 Yet the way in whichtolerance frames relations between persons acts precisely as a blockto such movement. By contrast, inherent within the Christocentricperformance of hospitality is the call both to enter into relationshipwith, and accommodate, those who are different, and to take accountof a wider context by identifying who is the vulnerable stranger.

The move beyond mere acceptance of a strangers existence is notsimply a move actively to welcome a stranger, but is a move activelyto welcome those with the least status. The imperative to welcome theweak and the vulnerable serves as a constant reminder to see and hearthose members of society who are most easily marginalised, oppressedand rendered invisible. For example, in relation to disputes aroundthe practice of euthanasia, the sufferingdying are a good example ofthose who are likely to be neglected or oppressed because they lackthe means to protect themselves. Thus, it is the sufferingdying whoshould be the focus of Christian hospitality. Tolerance involves no

equivalent imperative to attend to and actively help those withouta place or a voice in society; indeed, a tolerant society can be deeplyoppressive for many of its members. By contrast, while the Christiancommitment to hospitality has often been ignored, it has also beenconsistently invoked and acted upon in relation to the treatment ofthe socially excluded and, moreover, the diverse and wide-ranginglegacy of its practice (for example, in hospitals, the provision of asylumfor refugees, and the work of groups such as the Salvation Army)demonstrates how hospitality has inspired a wide variety of concretesocial practices.

A good illustration of the contrast between tolerance and hospitalityin relation to protecting and aiding the vulnerable is the issue ofimmigration. In an analysis of the debate surrounding Enoch PowellsRivers of Blood speech in 1968, Markham notes that the response ofthe churches called for integration, but failed to take account of anynotion of tolerance. Markham states that tolerance does not requirecomplete integration and acceptance, which is why many Christiansare unhappy with it.84 He goes on to say:

83 Markham, Plurality and Christian Ethics, p. 188. Markham provides no justicationfor why there is a need to move beyond tolerance.


22/25


But toleration accommodates Powells realism . . . Tolerance is a callfor different communities to live together in peaceful coexistence. It istrue that these communities will disagree about religion; and there arenumerous differences in terms of history and custom; but these differentcommunities need to discover tolerance as the half-way house betweenwhole-hearted acceptance and outright hostility.85

Markham is not alone in advocating tolerance as the principlegoverning the reception of immigrants. John Locke, on the basis of aneconomic rationale, similarly appeals for the tolerance of refugees.86

However, in the light of our theological account of hospitality, neitherMarkhams nor Lockes advocacy of tolerance as a half-way housewill sufce. The church has no place accommodating Powellsrealism. As the story of the encounter between Peter and Corneliusillustrates, and Paul constantly emphasises, Christ breaks down the

barriers between different races and nations. The Church has nostake in preserving the kind of unity Powell advocated, one based onlanguage or race. Instead, the unity the Church seeks to bear witnessto is the eschatological unity given by the Spirit at Pentecost.87 Neithershould the churches have adopted tolerance as the principle governingtheir response to refugees and immigrants as Markham and Lockesuggest. Christs demand is for hospitality toward the stranger andnot, as the principle of toleration allows, mere acceptance or peacefulcoexistence.88 Christian hospitality requires the active welcome andmaking a place for immigrants (whether these immigrants accept

Christianity or not) and this hospitality includes the support ofpublic policies that echo Christs imperative to make a place for thestranger.89

Christians are not only commanded to welcome the vulnerablestranger, but to see the vulnerable stranger as representing Christ. Thefoundation for welcoming strangers is the life, death and resurrectionof Jesus Christ. To warrant hospitality the stranger neither has to be

85 Ibid.86

John Locke, For a General Naturalisation, in Locke: Political Essays, pp. 32226.87 Michael Welker, God the Spirit, trans. John F. Hoffmeyer (Minneapolis, MN: FortressPress, 1992), pp. 23233.88 Maurice Cranston counts it as a merit that Locke appealed for tolerance ofHuguenot refugees. However, while it is to the credit of Locke that he did not sharethe xenophobia of his peers, his essentially utilitarian arguments still constitute asingular failure of Christian vision. See Maurice Cranston, John Locke and the Casefor Toleration, in On Toleration, ed. Susan Mendus and David Edwards (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 11415.89 The tragedy is that most churches singularly failed to live in accord with the realismof the Gospel and followed a false account of reality as exemplied by Enoch Powell.For example, see the account of the racially motivated rejection of Afro-Caribbean

Anglican immigrants in Anglican churches in London in Clifford Hill, West IndianMigrants and the London Churches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963); and GlynneGordon-Carter, An Amazing Journey: The Church of Englands Response to Institutional


23/25


deserving in some way, nor do they have to earn the right to it, normust they possess some innate capacity that renders them worthy ofacceptance among the human community, nor is welcome dependenton a well-meaning humanitarian impulse on the part of the giver.To be a recipient of Christian hospitality one does not have to do or

be anything; ones status as a guest is received as a freely given giftfrom Christ. Conversely, hospitality of the stranger constitutes partof the churchs witness to the Christ-event, especially the hospitalityeach sinner has received from God in and through Christ. Thecall to welcome strangers as if they were Christ contrasts with thecommitment to tolerance as a substantive good, founded as it is on acommitment to the good of individual autonomy.90 As can be seen inrelation to the issue of euthanasia, placing a value on human autonomyin no way guarantees the acceptance of the vulnerable stranger. Inmany instances it can lead to the neglect and oppression of those whoare not autonomous. Thus tolerance, unlike hospitality, involves noimperative to protect and care for the innocent and the weak.

6. Conclusion

This article has given a critique of the notion of tolerance and itspromotion in education as a means of fostering respect for theother. In its place a theologically dened account of hospitality wassuggested as a better way of framing relations with and between

strangers. Along the way, the three questions initially posed havebeen answered. It has transpired that there is an intrinsic link betweenmost liberal philosophies of education and the notion of tolerance, thelink deriving from the relationship between tolerance and the goodof autonomy. Yet, despite the claim to promote respect for the other ,subsequent analysis suggests that promoting tolerance might well becounter-productive to such a goal. What is clear is that tolerance, asconceived within the terms of liberal philosophy, is not somethingChristians should promote. Rather, the tradition-specic practice ofhospitality, with its emphasis on welcoming the vulnerable stranger,

should be recommended both as part of what it means to be a Christianand what it means to be a good citizen actively seeking the welfare of

90 It could be argued that the virtue of tolerance, based as it is on a commitment tothe good of individual autonomy, is the mark, not of the Christian host, but of theAristotelian ideal of the self-sufcient magnanimous man. See Aristotle, NicomacheanEthics, trans. Roger Crisp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 70 (1124b).For a critique of Aristotles conception of the magnanimous man, see John Milbank,Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp.35152. MacIntyres critique of Nietzsche also applies in this respect. As MacIntyre

points out, to cut oneself off from shared activities and isolate oneself from a widercommunity of shared practices is to condemn oneself to that moral solipsism whichconstitutes Nietzschean greatness. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral


24/25


the earthly city. For hospitality fosters both the general and concreterespect necessary to allow the validity of ones own tradition to standwhile at the same time attending to the otherness of the other and theways in which the other is the same as me.

In relation to education the implication is that so-called faith

schools do not, of necessity, inculcate intolerance and hostility to theother. Indeed, contrary to contemporary expectations, it could be thatthe reverse is true: religiously constituted schools Christian, Muslimor otherwise may well have tradition-specic resources availableto them that are better able to foster real respect for the other, thekind of respect that the current promotion of tolerance by liberalphilosophies of education seems to undermine. For those involvedin specically Christian schools and programmes of education, thepractice of hospitality outlined here should serve as a vital resourcein the preparation of students to lead lives of human ourishing, livesthat genuinely contribute to the ourishing of everyone who inhabitsthe often rocky terrain of a liberal, democratic, multicultural, andmorally plural polity.


25/25

Tolerance Eduaction Hospitality-Bretherton

Documents

Transcript of Tolerance Eduaction Hospitality-Bretherton