Hospitality and the Political

How should Christians think about mass immigration?

The unknown traveler shows up storm-tossed, naked and hungry. He is bathed and clothed, the best wine skins are brought, a meal is laid. Beautifully depicted in Homer, hospitality is a kind of grace—a good bestowed on another outside the realm of exchange and without regard to his merit.

In due time, when every comfort has been provided, he is asked, “Where are you from, and who are your parents?” The question of the guest’s origins—what city, what clan, what far-off barbarian people, perhaps—has until this point been suspended. He is received first as one human being by others, into a household.

The traveler’s qualities are ascertained. Is he of noble mien and courteous bearing? A simple but honest rustic? Does the favor of the gods shine upon his shoulders, or does he have the ways of a scoundrel? Does he carry himself like a free-born citizen, or like a slave?

Implicit in hospitality is the (rebuttable) presumption that one’s guest is not an opportunist. That is, he participates in a shared moral economy and feels a debt. Gratitude and hospitality are two expressions of the same relation, the one that obtains between members of—let’s call it the community of the gracious, which transcends political and class divisions. Such a guest would offer hospitality of his own if the circumstances were reversed.

Also, guests eventually leave. (Penelope’s suitors needed a firm reminder on this point.)

When the Argives entered Troy in a wooden horse, the Trojans were under no obligation of hospitality. War is a relation of enmity between two polities, not an encounter between a household and an individual. The polity is the locus of “the political,” and the mark of the political is the distinction between us and them, friend and foe.

To some Christian readers, that last sentence will seem shocking. Isn’t Christian politics defined by transcending such a distinction? Jesus taught, “Love your enemies.”

When Socrates asks Polemarchus to give his definition of justice at the beginning of the Republic, he gives the naïve or pre-philosophic answer that justice consists of helping friends and harming enemies. Though primitive, this answer captures something native to politics as such (however enlightened we may be). The question then arises, what is the status of “the political” among Christians? What ought it to be? It is a question forced upon us by mass immigration.

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