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TOLERANCE, EDUCATION AND HOSPITALITY: A THEOLOGICAL PROPOSAL

Luke Bretherton

Abstract
This article gives a critique of the notion of tolerance and the promotion of tolerance in education as a means of fostering respect for the other. In its place the theologically specified notion of hospitality is proposed. In the process of doing this, the article addresses three questions: is there an inherent contradiction between liberal philosophies of education and the promotion of tolerance? Is tolerance the best way to enable genuine respect for the other? And is tolerance something Christians should promote? To address these question, first, definitions of tolerance are assessed; second, the relationship between tolerance and autonomy is analysed; third, an account of how hospitality is conceived within the Christian tradition is set out; and lastly, hospitality and tolerance are contrasted in theory and practice. The article ends by drawing some conclusions for the practice of education.

1. Introduction

e live in a time when the problem of moral plurality is pressing because disagreement over the nature and purpose of life is increasingly manifested in violent conflict. Even in Britain bitter conflicts abound between different groups who possess incommensurable visions of how society should be structured: examples include debates over vivisection, abortion, fox hunting, and the use of genetically modified crops. In addition to moral plurality, what might be termed cultural plurality or a multicultural society has, in the past twenty years, moved to the top of the political agenda and affects many areas of public policy from education to employment law to immigration. In short, negotiating the need for some form of social harmony and the politics of diversity presents us with an acute set of problems.
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In response to the fact of moral and cultural plurality the prevailing approach in contemporary ethics and public policy is to take up the notion of tolerance as the way in which incommensurable moral disagreements and cultural differences are to be handled.1 For example, the strap-line of the Home Office is Building a safe, just and tolerant society.2 However, a number of questions must be asked of this concept before it is accepted. These questions include: is tolerance the best way to think about how to deal with strangers? What does the concept of tolerance mean? Are there alternative approaches to dealing with difference and those with whom we disagree? If so, how do these other approaches contrast with the notion of tolerance? Does tolerance really constitute a peaceable approach to moral and cultural differences that enables a degree of social harmony or, in Western liberal democratic societies, does the emphasis on tolerance serve to mask oppressive and excluding practices? One obvious arena in which to address these questions is that of education. For example, the United Nations Declaration of Principles on Tolerance (issued as part of the UN Year for Tolerance in 1995) states: Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our worlds cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. It is fostered by knowledge, openness, communication and freedom of thought, conscience and belief (1.1) and goes on to state that: Education is the most effective means of preventing intolerance (4.1). From the emphasis on tolerance education initiatives such as the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, to the Ouseley and Cantle reports relating to the riots in Bradford and elsewhere in July 2001, 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
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 American culture. David Hollenbach, The Common Good and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 24. 2 http:/ /www.homeoffice.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 which Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) participating States are committed, were reaffirmed by the OSCE States at the Bucharest Ministerial Council in 2001. It was also highlighted during the consultative international conference on the 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) was set up following a decision of the 1st Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Member States of the Council of Europe, held in Vienna in October 1993, and strengthened by a decision of the 2nd Summit held in Strasbourg in October
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address ethical and cultural plurality through promoting tolerance and respect for diversity.5 And in debates around political philosophy, the link between education, tolerance and dealing with moral and cultural plurality is frequently made.6 Yet, the question arises as to whether there is an inherent contradiction between any programme of education (which necessarily involves the claim that a person needs to change in some way, that they are not where they can or should be) and the promotion of tolerance and respect for diversity (which involves the claim that we should refrain from seeking to change someones mind or attitude). In short, how can education, especially liberal accounts of education which are inherently perfectionist (they have defined notions of what the good person should be: i.e. autonomous, self-reflexive, etc.), promote the notion of tolerance which is precisely the renunciation of such perfectionism? This article will seek to give a critique of the notion of tolerance and the promotion of tolerance in education as a means of fostering respect for 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 of education and the promotion of tolerance? Is tolerance the best way to enable genuine respect for the other? And is tolerance something Christians should promote? To address these question, first, definitions of tolerance will be assessed; second, the relationship between tolerance and 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 of important landmarks to take notice of in order to make sense of the surrounding philosophical and political geography. The first landmark is what is referred to as the liberal-communitarian debate about the nature and shape of what it means to be human and how that relates to the scope of political authority and the role of the state. The second landmark is the debate about the form citizenship and political identity
1997. ECRIs task is to combat racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance at the level of greater Europe and from the perspective of the protection of human rights. 5 What is meant by diversity is rarely specified. However, the implications seem to 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: Political Education and Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 8993; Meira Levinson, The Demands of Liberal Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 45.
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should take in liberal democratic polities with heterogeneous societies. The third landmark is the debate about multiculturalism and whether there is a conflict between the maintenance and priorities of particular identities and the need for social cohesion. The fourth landmark is the intricate and often tense relationship between the religions, the civic sphere and political authority in liberal democratic societies. All these landmarks form part of a single terrain that constitutes the ground in which education policy is worked out. This article will plot a particular path around or through these different landmarks. 2. Tolerance: Definitions and Approaches In much contemporary debate, analysis of how to cope with the fact of plurality is framed in terms of tolerance, intolerance and freedom of expression and belief. A common assumption in the literature relating to tolerance and pluralism is that tolerance and the willingness to live with difference is a phenomenon that emerged in the West after the Enlightenment.7 However, the emphasis on the relative newness of tolerance as a concept can be over-stated.8 It was, however, with the Enlightenment and its search for a neutral arbiter between competing truth claims and a growing emphasis on individual autonomy that the notion of tolerance acquired increasing prominence.9 The emphasis on tolerance is seen also as a direct reaction against the allegedly religious wars of the post-Reformation era.10
7 One of the most influential accounts of the view that tolerance and acceptance of diversity are recent historical phenomena is that given by John Rawlss introduction to Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. xxiiixxvii. See also, John Horton, Toleration, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig, vol. 9 (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 42933. For a critique of Rawlss historical and conceptual reconstruction of toleration see William Kymlicka, Two Models of Pluralism 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 the principle 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 Modern Europe, ed. Cary Nederman and John Laursen (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. 116. Within the Christian tradition two thinkers who predate the Enlightenment and who discuss questions of tolerance and freedom of conscience are Aquinas (Summa Theologica 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 of Christian practice and belief in the post-Reformation context, the time when it came to the fore in the writings of Locke and others. However, as Susan Khin Zaw argues, it may be ill-suited to the depth of plurality experienced in Western cultures at present, a context in which there is no shared basis for a common (and thence neutral) rationality by which to decide 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 of Toleration: Philosophical Studies, ed. John Horton and Susan Mendus (London: Methuen, 1985), pp. 115 (12). However, Michael Howard argues that the wars of the sixteenth

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We can define the term tolerance as involving the willingness to accept differences (whether religious, moral, ethnic or economic) of which, at whatever level, one might, as an individual or as a community, disapprove.11 For a person or group to be tolerant, three conditions 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, or interfere 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 tolerate that which one is not concerned about; nor is it tolerance simply to accept what one cannot, or is not willing to, change (either because one lacks power to effect change or because, for whatever reason, one fears to use ones power). John Horton notes that toleration is particularly important and problematic when it involves a principled refusal to prohibit conduct believed to be wrong. He states: This gives rise to the so-called paradox of toleration according to which toleration requires that it is right to permit that which is wrong.12 Most defences of tolerance theological or otherwise follow three basic arguments.13 The first approach to tolerance centres on concern about human fallibility and the limits to human knowledge. However, the concern about human fallibility should not be seen as a form of relativism. Indeed, as Jay Newman argues, a certain kind of relativist is actually opposed to the concept of tolerance.14 Neither does a concern about human fallibility imply that the tolerant person is completely sceptical about the possibility of knowing the truth about a particular question or issue. However, it can imply a limited scepticism that maintains belief in an ultimate horizon of truth which differing positions may shed light on. For example, Reinhold Niebuhr, for whom complete scepticism represents the abyss of meaninglessness,15
century resulted from the breakdown of the established political order and the emergence of nation-states. Michael Howard, The Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and International Order (London: Profile Books, 2000), pp. 1419. William Cavanaugh goes further and sees these wars as arising directly from attempts to consolidate centralised state control over and against ecclesial authorities. See A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State, Modern Theology 11.4 (1995), pp. 397420; idem, Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as 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, only to tolerate something falls short of and does not necessitate granting or advocating freedom 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 of argument for tolerance frequently overlap. 14 Jay Newman, Foundations of Religious Tolerance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), p. 22. 15 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Test of Tolerance, in Religious Pluralism in the West, ed. David Mullan (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 28196 (293).
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contends, in relation to religious toleration, that while each religion should seek to proclaim its highest insights, it should preserve a humble and contrite recognition of the fact that all actual expressions of religious faith are subject to historical contingency and relativity.16 In his view: Such a recognition creates a spirit of tolerance.17 Arguments for tolerance on the grounds of human fallibility can take a variety of forms.18 These include the view that neither party has complete possession of the truth, truth will benefit from free investigation, and certainty in questions of ultimate meaning is difficult to achieve. A second way of approaching the issue of tolerance seeks procedures that are tolerant. This is to say that arguments for limits to intervention and coercion are invoked when someone has power to change anothers behaviour of which they disapprove. Procedural arguments are generally advocated in relation to the exercise of judicial and political authority.19 Bernard Williams calls this model of tolerance liberal pluralism and describes it thus:
On the one hand, there are deeply held and differing convictions about moral or religious matters, held by various groups within society. On the other hand, there is a supposedly impartial state, which affirms the rights of all citizens to equal consideration, including an equal right to form and express their convictions.20

However, as many have argued, the quest for neutral procedures based on reason has failed. The modern state is itself intolerant. As Alasdair MacIntyre puts it: The modern state is never merely a neutral arbiter of conflicts, but is always to some degree itself a party to social conflict, and . . . acts in the interests of particular and highly contestable conceptions of liberty and property.21 Thus, the foundation of, and
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (London: Nisbet & Co., 1945), p. 88. 17 Ibid. 18 An earlier justification of tolerance on the grounds of the fallibility of human knowledge appears in Pierre Bayle, Treatise on Universal Tolerance (1686). For an account of 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 John Locke, An Essay on Toleration, in Locke: Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 13459. For an assessment of Lockes account of toleration 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 influential modern exponent of this approach. Another recent theorist is William Galston. See, for example, William Galston, 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 of Toleration: Tolerance and Intolerance in Modern Life, ed. Susan Mendus (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), pp. 13839.
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procedures for, securing modern notions of tolerance has proved, in MacIntyres view at least, self-defeating.22 The third approach seeks to argue for tolerance as a substantive good.23 However, framing analyses of how one should live with difference in terms of tolerance as a substantive good, as distinct from a merely instrumental one, is conceptually problematic. As Williams comments: The difficulty with toleration is that it seems to be at once necessary 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 conception of the good: that is, the good of individual autonomy. This leads to the following problem: The practice of toleration cannot be based on a value such as that of individual autonomy, and also hope to escape from substantive disagreements about the good.25 Those who disagree with the liberal conception of the good will necessarily reject liberal conceptions of toleration and, as MacIntyre has argued, they will reject liberal conceptions of rationality on which the particular good of toleration is based. There is a further conceptual problem with arguments for tolerance as a substantive good based on notions of human autonomy; it is a problem that lies at the heart of the so-called liberal-communitarian debate. As Susan Mendus puts it: We need to understand how people are interdependent as well as independent. We need to explain how autonomy is formed, not solely from the internal nature of individuals, but also from the nature of the society in which they find themselves.26 To ground arguments for tolerance on individual autonomy is to devalue the ways in which an individual is embedded within a wider community of relations and how that community of relations is constitutive of an individuals ability to make good choices. 3. Tolerance, Education and Autonomy The above assessment of tolerance as a substantive good answers the question about whether liberal philosophies of education are incompatible with the promotion of tolerance. It seems there is a direct relation between the promotion of tolerance as a substantive good and liberal philosophical accounts of the good life. Tolerance as a substantive good involves a commitment to individual autonomy
22 For an assessment of the five dominant regimes of tolerance and what they do not tolerate and exclude, see Michael Walzer, On Toleration (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 1436. 23 The arguments for tolerance in On Liberty by John Stuart Mill are an example of this 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 University Press, 1991), pp. 15468. 26 Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism, pp. 6768.

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and detachment from ones own particular community and its conception of the good life. Such an approach to the good of autonomy and its relationship to tolerance is true both of what Rawls calls comprehensive and political liberals. As Meira Levinson argues:
In the end political liberalism is no more successful than comprehensive liberalism at unifying liberalisms three commitments with an non-autonomy-valuing theory of justification. Autonomy, I conclude, is a necessary component of contemporary liberal theory.27

Liberal philosophers who write on education see autonomy and a certain detachment from religious and cultural commitments as central to developing tolerance. For example, Amy Gutmann argues that in order to maintain the liberal democratic polity children must be taught tolerance, mutual respect and rational deliberation among ways of life. Where this is in conflict with the wishes of parents or religious communities the state is compelled to step in and ensure children have a rational choice. Gutmann states:
The same principle that requires a state to grant adults personal political freedom also commits it to assuring children an education that makes those freedoms both possible and meaningful in the future. A state makes choice possible by teaching its future citizens respect for opposing points of view and ways of life. It makes choice meaningful by equipping children with the intellectual skills necessary to evaluate ways of life different from that of their parents.28

Similarly, Eamon Callan argues that the only effective way of securing the necessary degree of individual autonomy for freedom of choice to be meaningful will be through a form of schooling that provides not only exposure to ethical diversity but takes some active measures to enable independent critical reflection on diversity.29 And Meira Levinson calls for an environment distanced from the commitments promoted by childrens home communities and families so that pupils can 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 autonomy and independence of mind. Elmer Theissen argues that there is no inherent or intrinsic conflict between religious commitment and the nurture of autonomy as long as autonomy is not conceived in idealised, voluntaristic liberal terms. After assessing the relationship between autonomy and Christianity and whether faith-based education constitutes indoctrination, he concludes:
Levinson, Demands of Liberal Education, p. 21. 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 justified on democratic grounds and in the interests of sustaining a democratic polity (pp. 3941). 29 See also Callan, Creating Citizens, p. 190. 30 Levinson, Demands of Liberal Education, p. 114.
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STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN ETHICS In fact, nurture within . . . a stable and coherent primary culture, whether that be Christian, Buddhist or atheistic, is a prerequisite to normal development toward autonomy. It is thus a mistake to associate the provision of a relatively closed environment of Christian homes and primary schools with indoctrination. It is also a mistake to assume that parents who seek to provide a stable and coherent Christian primary culture for their children cannot at the same time intend that their children become autonomous . . . It is possible to aim at autonomy via faith.31

MacIntyre gives a broader, philosophical warrant for Theissens point. He argues that: In order to flourish, we need both those virtues that enable us to function as independent and accountable practical reasoners and those virtues that enable us to acknowledge the 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 takes account of human vulnerability and inter-dependence. Whether one accepts MacIntyre and Theissens analysis or not, what their respective arguments point to is the mistake liberal philosophy makes in seeing a necessary link between the autonomous life, defined in voluntaristic terms, and the life of human flourishing. Yet while a measure of autonomy may well be necessary to inhabit the full extent of what it means to be human as an individual, autonomy, physical or otherwise, is not necessary in order to lead a good and flourishing human life. What has become clear is that in the conceptions of liberal education outlined above the promotion of tolerance requires all children to stand apart from their own traditions in order that they can, on the one hand, stand in equal relation to each other as autonomous individuals divorced from particular commitments, and on the other, sceptically
Elmer Thiessen, Teaching for Commitment: Liberal Education, Indoctrination and Christian Nurture (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1993), p. 143. It must be noted that some strands of liberal philosophy increasingly recognise that the development of autonomy necessarily involves initiation into a primary culture and a particular conception of the good. See for example, William Kymlicka Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); idem, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); and Joseph Raz, Multiculturalism: A Liberal Perspective, in Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 15576. However, the claim Theissen is making is not that a primary culture is necessary for autonomy (as Kymlicka does) but that 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 the importance of community per se, but for a Rawlsian conception of how individuals come 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 (London: Duckworth, 1999), pp. 15556.
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reflect both on their own commitments and those of others.33 The fruit of this dual process is supposedly the chimera of neutrality. However, the implication of this strategy is that far from promoting neutrality and respect for other conceptions of the good life, the promotion of tolerance intrinsically involves the nurture of autonomous, selfreflexive subjects or what Michael Sandel calls unencumbered selves.34 Thus, at heart, the notion of tolerance does not necessarily lead to respect for, or understanding of, the other; neither can it be said to better enable pupils to deal with cultural and moral diversity than any alternative approach to plurality that precludes the use of coercion. However, if we reject tolerance, the recommendations made in something like the recent Cantle Report on community cohesion, which calls for the promotion of cross cultural contact between different communities and the need to foster understanding and respect 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 possible also to foster understanding and respect for others via specifically religious commitments. Furthermore, tolerance may well be worse than other approaches at enabling both the concrete and general respect that is essential for proper attention to both particularity and sameness or how we are simultaneously different and equal. And yet it is this dual kind of respect for the other that seems to be the telos tolerance seeks.36 Drawing on the work of Seyla Behabib, Benjamin
Not all liberal theorists of education subscribe to such a view. William Galston, defining toleration as a principled refusal to use coercive state power to impose ones own views on others, states: Liberal pluralism requires a parsimonious but vigorous system of civic education that teaches tolerance, so understood, and helps equip individuals with the virtues and competencies they will need to perform as members of a liberal pluralist economy, society and polity. It is hard to believe that tolerance, so understood, can be cultivated without at least minimal awareness of the existence and nature of ways of life other than those of ones family and community. The state may establish educational guidelines pursuant to this compelling interest. What it may not do is prescribe curricula or pedagogic practices that aim to make students sceptical or critical of their own ways of life. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, pp. 12627. 34 Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University 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 and riots in Burnley, Oldham and Bradford in the summer of 2001, a series of reports were published. These revealed various problems, including deeply polarised and fragmented communities living parallel lives. The government identified community cohesion as being vital to promoting greater knowledge, respect and contact between various cultures and to establishing a greater sense of citizenship in the UK. The Cantle Report subsequently addressed the broad issues relating to community cohesion and in doing so, the report identified as crucially important the role of schools in building cohesion within the community. 36 For example, Gutmann states: Teaching mutual respect is a crucial aim of democratic education. Mutual respect is a public good as a well as a private good in a democratic society. It expresses the equal standing of every person as an individual and citizen, and it also enables democratic citizens to discuss their political differences
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Endres notes that seeing the other as a rational being with the same rights and duties that we would want to ascribe to ourselves (i.e., some version of the golden rule) involves both an abstracted general respect for all people and a concrete respect that takes account of the history, identity and needs of another, particular person.37 Intrinsic to concrete respect is the recognition that the other is not the same as me, they possess an irreducible otherness. Tolerance is ill-suited to promoting such recognition since it involves seeing everyone as the same: autonomous self-reflexive subjects. And while tolerance aims at equality of treatment and a generalised respect, in practice it can often result in discrimination. As Endres notes in relation to education (but it is an insight that is not just restricted to the classroom):
Treating all students the same will not allow teachers to see differences between 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 results in the unequal treatment of the students in practice. Here, generalised respect for students seems to undermine its own intent.38

Endres goes onto conclude that general respect is only realised when we can consider a concrete perspective, different from our own, in an open and reflective way.39 However, the problematic nature of generalised respect does not just afflict the attempt to see everyone as the same. It affects also the attempt to take account of cultural differences: to treat someone as simply the same as others in their cultural group, as a representative of a particular group say Irish Catholics or African Americans and not attend to the ways in which they are both like those from other cultures, and different to other members of their own culture, is to deny them concrete (or particular) respect. There is the additional problem that in a multicultural society no culture is an island unto itself and so each individual, while having a strong primary culture, will also be influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, by a myriad of other cultural influences.40 Within a multicultural context, in contrast to tolerance, religious commitments are well placed
in a productive way, first by understanding one anothers perspectives and then by trying to find fair ways of resolving their disagreements. Amy Gutmann, Challenges of Multiculturalism in Democratic Education, in Public Education in a Multicultural Society, pp. 15679 (160). 37 Benjamin Endres, Transcending and Attending to Difference in the Multicultural Classroom, 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. 112 14. However, Waldron fails to take sufficient account of how primary cultures be they birth cultures or religious ones shape individual identity, albeit in a way that is constitutively constructed in relation to other cultural and historical influences.
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to foster true respect, respect that encompasses both the general and the particular aspects of respecting the other.41 Religiously committed, tradition-specific ways of framing respectful relations allows for both the affirmation of ones own particular tradition or identity and the otherness of the other, while still fostering respect for traditions different to ones own, and attention to how different traditions overlap and may be mutually constitutive. I will argue that within the Christian tradition the practice of hospitality represents just such an approach, and while tolerance and hospitality are not direct equivalents, hospitality, like tolerance, is a way of addressing the problem of how to relate to the other. However, the action and politics that flow out of hospitality are very different to that which tolerance gives rise to. 4. Hospitality A Christian Account of Dealing with Difference Contrary to first impressions, hospitality is not an essentially domestic and apolitical kind of action. A number of philosophers have conceived of hospitality as a political practice, among them is Immanuel Kant. Kant accorded hospitality a central significance in his account of how people from different cultures can enter into mutual relations which may eventually be regulated by public laws, thus bringing the human race nearer and nearer to a cosmopolitan constitution.42 MacIntyre, a trenchant 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 by deadly conflict, hospitality of strangers is required in order for a society to be maintained and humans to flourish. Other philosophical treatments of hospitality can be found in Emmanuel Lvinas44 and
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 what respect 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 fulfilment of learning to be attentive is the love of God and neighbour. As she puts it: Not only does the love of God have attention for its substance; the love of our neighbour, which we know to be the same love, is made of this same substance . . . So it comes about that, paradoxical as it may seem, a Latin prose or a geometry problem, even though they are done wrong, may be of great service one day, provided we devote the right kind of effort to them. Should the occasion arise, they can one day make us better able to give someone in affliction exactly the help required to save him, at the supreme moment of need. Simone Weil, Reflection on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God, in Waiting on God, trans. Emma Craufurd (London: Fontana, 1959), pp. 7576. 42 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, trans. H. B. Nisbet, in Kant: 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 Infinity, trans. Richard Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1985).
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Jacques Derrida,45 both of whom emphasise the relationship between hospitality and identity. However, Kant, MacIntye, Lvinas and Derrida all give very different accounts of the nature and shape of hospitality. What transpires by comparing and contrasting their different accounts is that while hospitality can be seen as a generic term, clearly it does not have a universal definition. What these differences point to is that, while the practice of hospitality has been central to many cultures and philosophies, it can 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 those who are different in terms of hospitality (rather than tolerance) entails understanding hospitality in the light of one particular tradition. This article will now assess the conception of hospitality within the Christian tradition and then see how this conception of hospitality may shape relations between Christians and the other. 4.1. Hospitality in the Scriptural Witness Throughout the Gospels the images of feasting and hospitality are abundant and vivid.47 Among many there are: the wedding at Cana, Dives feasting while Lazarus starves at his gate, the joyous meal at Jericho with Zacchaeus, the woman washing Jesus feet, Jesus washing his disciples feet, the Last Supper, and the meals enjoyed with the risen Jesus. At various points Jesus hospitality, which has as its focal point actual feasting and table fellowship, is presented as challenging the religious, political, economic and social authorities of his day. There is both continuity and departure from the pattern of hospitality established in the Old Testament. The elements of continuity are very strong. God commanded his people to provide hospitality to strangers: The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of 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, for instance, is fundamentally a command to be hospitable on a lavish scale (Deut. 12:1719). Again, the commands concerning harvesting are demands that hospitality be observed: one who harvests a field
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, New Testament Hospitality: Partnership with Strangers as Promise and Mission (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1985), pp. 85123.

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must not seek to maximise his harvest, but must leave the gleanings for those who are in need (Deut. 24:1922). Stories of hospitality constitute a leitmotif throughout the Old Testament; for example, Abraham and Sarah entertaining angels,48 Abigail placating David, and the widow of Zarephath caring for Elijah.49 At times this hospitality is not only offered but also demanded, as when Lot insists the Angels spend the night with him (Gen. 19:13).50 At other times it is extended to enemies as a sign of the reconciling work of God, as when Isaac made a feast for Abimelech (Gen. 26:2631), or Elisha mediated a peace between the Arameans and the Israelites (2 Kgs 6:823). It is linked with the renewal of creation (Eccles. 10:1617), and ultimately it comes to include all creation and all the nations at the messianic banquet, as depicted and anticipated in the prophets.51 Jesus ministry can be seen to draw together all these elements, intensify their application, and inaugurate their fulfilment. Alongside this continuity, there is discontinuity.52 There is much in the Old Testament that emphasises how Israel is not to entertain its neighbours or have contact with those who are unclean. There are the numerous purity rituals set out in the Torah,53 and most significantly, we cannot ignore all the material relating to the conquest of those already living in Canaan in Joshua and elsewhere. There is also the connection between being faithless to God and marrying foreign women expressed in both Nehemiah and Ezra.54 It seems Israel is constantly in danger of being overwhelmed by pollution and sin and must constantly protect itself in order to maintain itself as holy and distinct among the nations.

For an exegesis of Genesis 18 that draws out the theological implications of the hospitality motif in the story of Abraham and Sarah receiving the angels, see Gavin DCosta, 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 contrasts the 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 in relation 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 in the Old Testament, see Daniel Smith-Christopher, Between Ezra and Isaiah: Exclusion, Transformation, and Inclusion of the Foreigner in Post-Exilic Biblical Theology, in Ethnicity 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 and Israels distinctive identity in relation to other nations, see Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 3 vols, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1991), III. 54 Josh. 23:1113; Ezek. 10:24; 10:10; Neh. 13:2627.
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Jesus is not presented as resolving the tension between hospitality and holiness in the Old Testament, but as relating these two imperatives in a particular way. Jesus relates hospitality and holiness by inverting their relations: hospitality becomes the means of holiness. Instead of having to be set apart from or exclude pagans in order to maintain holiness, it is in Jesus hospitality of pagans, the unclean, and sinners that his own holiness is shown forth. Instead of sin and impurity infecting him, it seems Jesus purity and righteousness somehow infects the impure, sinners and the Gentiles. As Marcus Borg puts it: In the teaching [and practice] of Jesus, holiness, not uncleanness was understood to be contagious.55 For example, the haemorrhaging woman has only to touch Jesus and she is healed and made clean.56 Instead of Jesus having to undergo purity rituals because of contact with the woman, as any other rabbi would, it is the woman who is cleansed by contact with him.57 There is a similar dynamic when Jesus touches lepers, the dead, the blind, the deaf and dumb, or partakes of a meal with a tax-collector. Jesus speech and action announces a form of hospitality that, to some of his contemporaries, is shocking in relation to certain Old Testament precedents. Thus, his hospitality brings him into conflict with the custodians of Israels purity, both self-appointed (the Pharisees, Zealot-types, etc.) and actual (the Temple authorities). Borg contends that this conflict between Jesus and his contemporaries is about the shape and purpose of the people of God which is itself part of a wider debate about the response of Judaism to Roman political power and the encroachment of Hellenistic culture.58 Through his hospitality Jesus rejected, and presented an alternative to, every other post-exilic programme for Israels internal reform and quest for 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 defining Israels identity through opposition to sinners and Gentiles.59 Jesus rejected also co-option by, and assimilation 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, Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1972), p. 135. 56 Mk 5:2534; Lk. 8:4348. 57 Borg, Conflict, Holiness and Politics, pp. 13536. 58 Ibid., pp. 24. 59 A parallel may be drawn between such programmes of exclusion and some contemporary expressions of Protestant fundamentalism whose definition of faithful practice and belief requires that the identity of believers be defined over and against non-believers. See Robert Wuthnow and Matthew P. Lawson, Sources of Christian Fundamentalism in the United States, in Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements, eds Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago, CA: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 3943.

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4.2. Hospitality in the Christian Tradition The paradigm of hospitality set out in Jesus ministry has informed the thinking and practice of the church throughout its history. From its earliest writings, right through to contemporary Christian practice, we see evidence for the centrality of hospitality as the practice that determines how Christians relate to strangers. The Didache is an early example of both the exhortation to hospitality as an important Christian discipline and the tensions within the practice of hospitality. In an echo of Matt. 5:2, the Didache admonishes Christians to Give to anyone that asks you, and demand no return; the Father wants His own bounties to be shared with all.60 The document calls on Christians to be open-handed in their hospitality, especially towards the poor.61 However, it tempers the exhortation to generosity with discernment by setting out a number of ways in which those who would abuse Christian hospitality, and those who threatened the life together of the community (for example, by their false teaching), can be discouraged.62 The Didache represents an attempt to control abuses of hospitality while simultaneously encouraging its practice.63 We see in the Didache a tension within the Christian tradition of hospitality that surfaces time and again; that is, the tension between recognising Jesus in every stranger and the prudential consideration of discriminating between deserving and undeserving strangers.64 However, the very existence of documents that attempt to address the problem of the abuse of hospitality points to how, in the early church at least, hospitality was considered a normative and necessary practice. Fears about the abuse of hospitality were not just focused on how guests might take advantage of it. There is also a strong emphasis in the tradition on admonishing hosts not to use hospitality to gain advantage. The Church Fathers constantly emphasise that Christians were 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
Didache 1.3. 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 (Grand Rapids, 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 between deserving and undeserving strangers.
60 61

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STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN ETHICS of all properly called good deeds which are done for Gods sake. Whereas if thou entertain some great and distinguished man, it is not such pure mercy, what thou doest: but some portion many times is assigned to thyself also, both by vain-glory, and by the return of the favor, and by thy rising in many mens estimation on account of thy guest.65

Within the Christian tradition the stranger to be welcomed is consistently defined as someone who lacks any resources to support themselves. The stranger is someone who lacks a place in society because they are detached or excluded from the basic means of supporting and sustaining life family, work, polity, land and so on and are thus vulnerable. Christine Pohl states: Through most of its history, the Christian hospitality tradition has expressed a normative concern for strangers who could not provide for or defend themselves.66 In other words, following the parable of the Good Samaritan, the answer given to the question: who is my neighbour? (Lk. 10:29) has been that the neighbour to be welcomed is the friendless stranger. Hence, what constitutes the abuse of hospitality by hosts is defined in terms of whether their hospitality ignores the vulnerable and friendless stranger. The emphasis on welcoming the vulnerable stranger points to how Christian hospitality is often not simply a question of entertaining a stranger. To entertain a stranger implies the life of the host is relatively unaffected by the encounter. However, to accommodate (in the sense of adapt to and make space and time for) or host (in the sense of sacrificially offer oneself for) the stranger carries the implication that making room for the stranger requires the host to change their pattern of life. An emphasis on the readiness to change ones life in order that the vulnerable stranger may be accommodated is a constant theme in the tradition. Perhaps the most radical example of changing ones pattern of life in order that the vulnerable stranger might be accommodated is The Rule of St Benedict. Benedicts rule, and the forms of monasticism it inspired, sought a form of life in which humility and obedience were the means by which love of God and neighbour were accomplished. Benedict wrote: Renounce yourself in order to follow Christ.67 The renunciation he calls for is in order that the monk may relieve the lot of the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick and bury the dead.68 For Benedict, hospitality of vulnerable strangers was directly linked to a readiness to change ones self-willed and pride-filled pattern of life in order 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. 68 Ibid.

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first. To do this required training in a school for the Lords service and could not be achieved alone.69 However, hospitality of vulnerable strangers was not simply the response of individual monks resulting from their training in the monastery. It was also part of the witness of the whole community. Echoing Matt. 25:35 Benedict writes: All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Proper honour must be shown to all, especially to those who share our faith and to pilgrims.70 Special provision for accommodating guests was made and this provision was central to the common life of the monastery which was, as Michael Banner argues, designed to bear witness to the true peace of the City of God characterised by love rather than enmity.71 The practice of hospitality has continued to be a mark of Christian witness right up to the present day (even if it has not always been as forthcoming as it should have been). For example, while many Christians singularly failed to respond to the racist and violent persecution of the Jews by the Nazis, the response of those that did act faithfully was characterised by the practice of hospitality. A striking example is the story of the Protestant village of Le Chambon whose members, in their homes, and at great personal cost, protected thousands of Jews, and ensured their escape from the death camps.72 Another example is the work of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement whose solidarity with the poor took the concrete shape and character of hospitality. In a very different area of activity, the work of Jean Vanier and the care given to those with severe learning disabilities in the LArche communities is another example of how hospitality shapes the response of Christians to vulnerable strangers in relation to social and moral problems or crises.73 Likewise, the Hospice movement founded by Dame Cicely Saunders offers hospitality to the suffering dying who are vulnerable to neglect, over-treatment or euthanasia.
Michael Banner notes how Benedict, in contrast to the Desert Fathers, resolves the tension between communal and eremitic forms of monasticism in favour of the communal. Michael Banner, Who are my Mother and my Brothers?: Marx, Bonhoeffer and 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 Innocent Blood Be Shed (New York: Harper & Row, 1979). A more contemporary example of the same practice of hospitality in response to racially motivated persecution were the actions of Fr Sava and the Serbian Orthodox monks of the Decani monastery during the conflict 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 Story of LArche (New York: Crossroad, 1995).
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This brief review of ways in which hospitality has been conceived and practised emphasises the centrality of hospitality within Christianity. The above historical review also helps clarify how hospitality may shape relations between Christians and their neighbours. The neighbour is properly understood, within the Christian tradition, to be a stranger; moreover, the stranger is not simply someone who is different instead, there is a consistent and special concern for the vulnerable 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 church finds itself actively opposed by those who would be, by Christian criteria of evaluation, inhospitable to the vulnerable stranger. A pattern of hospitality that bears witness to Jesus Christ will meet with a variety of responses, some of which will be very hostile. Conversely, because of its particular understanding of what hospitality requires, the church is not uncritically welcoming of everyone: a proper evaluation must be made of who, in any particular instance, is the vulnerable stranger to be welcomed. Thus, hospitality is not the renunciation of justice but the instantiation of what justice requires in concrete terms.74 Care for the vulnerable stranger is not without its problems. A number of tensions have emerged within the practice of hospitality. There is the tension between greeting every stranger as Christ and discerning who would genuinely benefit from care; the tension of establishing institutional and corporate forms of hospitality and the need for hospitality to be personal, particular and practised by every Christian; and finally, the tension between provision and the capacity to 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 and consistent activity throughout the Christian tradition and it is an activity shaped by response to the words and actions of Jesus Christ, given in Scripture, as Christians seek to bear faithful witness to Gods hospitality of both them and their neighbours.75 5. Hospitality and Tolerance Contrasted It is instructive to draw a contrast between Christian hospitality and the conception of tolerance outlined earlier. There is no clearly identifiable concrete social practice with which tolerance can be
74 It is this thick vision of Christian hospitality as having limits and ends (care of the vulnerable stranger) that is what distinguishes it most from the somewhat passive and undifferentiated 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 Relate to Each Other with Regard to Ethical Disputes in the Light of Alasdair MacIntyre, Germain Grisez and Oliver ODonovans Work (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Kings College, London, 2001).

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identified. Ian Markham argues that America itself constitutes an embodiment of tolerance derived from Christian commitments.76 He states: The American democratic experiment can take much of the credit for showing the world that it is possible to be committed to both truth and plurality. Tolerance is an American virtue affirmed in the First Amendment and celebrated in its cities.77 However, David Hollenbachs critique of the impact of tolerance on social policy, especially urban social policy in America, stands as a stark rebuttal of Markhams claim.78 Hollenbach states: Acceptance or tolerance of difference will certainly not knit up the tears in the flesh of the American body politic today. When acceptance of difference becomes acquiescence in deep social disparities and human misery it becomes part of the problem, not part of the solution. 79 For Hollenbach: Tolerance as acceptance of differences is a psychological stance entirely inadequate for the development of a creative response to urban poverty today.80 What the American experience demonstrates is how difficult it is to translate a commitment to tolerance as either a pragmatic policy, or a substantive value, into concrete social practices. For example, the problems surrounding affirmative action policies, wherein to counter intolerance (that of racism) an intrinsically intolerant policy is employed (one which causes reverse discrimination), illustrates how difficult 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 to silence and inactivity, because to add to and seek to change what others think is by definition intolerant. As Hollenbach notes, it is obviously a reductio ad absurdum to imply that a public philosophy built around tolerance aims to get people to stop talking and acting. However, this is the effect it has. The impact of tolerance on social policy has been to diminish the arena of public or social action. It has done this because, as Hollenbach points out, modern conceptions of tolerance formulate the ideal of respect by only focusing on its importance for individuals regarded one at a time.82 We 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 University Press, 1995), pp. 83126. 77 Ibid., p. 188. 78 Hollenbach, Common Good and Christian Ethics, pp. 3242. It should be noted that Hollenbach 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. 82 Ibid.

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individual autonomy. The good of individual autonomy necessarily places the good of the individual before that of other persons and provides little warrant for moving beyond the individual good and seeking either the common good or taking account of a wider context. Markham recognises that a commitment to tolerance can only guarantee a minimal level of social peace. He states: We need to move beyond tolerance, to active engagement and concern in the life of others, to dialogue, to collaborative truth-seeking and the enrichment of life through the insights of others.83 Yet the way in which tolerance frames relations between persons acts precisely as a block to such movement. By contrast, inherent within the Christocentric performance of hospitality is the call both to enter into relationship with, and accommodate, those who are different, and to take account of a wider context by identifying who is the vulnerable stranger. The move beyond mere acceptance of a strangers existence is not simply a move actively to welcome a stranger, but is a move actively to welcome those with the least status. The imperative to welcome the weak and the vulnerable serves as a constant reminder to see and hear those members of society who are most easily marginalised, oppressed and rendered invisible. For example, in relation to disputes around the practice of euthanasia, the sufferingdying are a good example of those who are likely to be neglected or oppressed because they lack the means to protect themselves. Thus, it is the sufferingdying who should be the focus of Christian hospitality. Tolerance involves no equivalent imperative to attend to and actively help those without a place or a voice in society; indeed, a tolerant society can be deeply oppressive for many of its members. By contrast, while the Christian commitment to hospitality has often been ignored, it has also been consistently invoked and acted upon in relation to the treatment of the socially excluded and, moreover, the diverse and wide-ranging legacy of its practice (for example, in hospitals, the provision of asylum for refugees, and the work of groups such as the Salvation Army) demonstrates how hospitality has inspired a wide variety of concrete social practices. A good illustration of the contrast between tolerance and hospitality in relation to protecting and aiding the vulnerable is the issue of immigration. In an analysis of the debate surrounding Enoch Powells Rivers of Blood speech in 1968, Markham notes that the response of the churches called for integration, but failed to take account of any notion of tolerance. Markham states that tolerance does not require complete integration and acceptance, which is why many Christians are unhappy with it.84 He goes on to say:
83 Markham, Plurality and Christian Ethics, p. 188. Markham provides no justification for why there is a need to move beyond tolerance. 84 Ibid., p. 69.

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But toleration accommodates Powells realism . . . Tolerance is a call for different communities to live together in peaceful coexistence. It is true that these communities will disagree about religion; and there are numerous differences in terms of history and custom; but these different communities need to discover tolerance as the half-way house between whole-hearted acceptance and outright hostility.85

Markham is not alone in advocating tolerance as the principle governing the reception of immigrants. John Locke, on the basis of an economic rationale, similarly appeals for the tolerance of refugees.86 However, in the light of our theological account of hospitality, neither Markhams nor Lockes advocacy of tolerance as a half-way house will suffice. The church has no place accommodating Powells realism. As the story of the encounter between Peter and Cornelius illustrates, and Paul constantly emphasises, Christ breaks down the barriers between different races and nations. The Church has no stake in preserving the kind of unity Powell advocated, one based on language or race. Instead, the unity the Church seeks to bear witness to is the eschatological unity given by the Spirit at Pentecost.87 Neither should the churches have adopted tolerance as the principle governing their response to refugees and immigrants as Markham and Locke suggest. Christs demand is for hospitality toward the stranger and not, as the principle of toleration allows, mere acceptance or peaceful coexistence.88 Christian hospitality requires the active welcome and making a place for immigrants (whether these immigrants accept Christianity or not) and this hospitality includes the support of public policies that echo Christs imperative to make a place for the stranger.89 Christians are not only commanded to welcome the vulnerable stranger, but to see the vulnerable stranger as representing Christ. The foundation for welcoming strangers is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. To warrant hospitality the stranger neither has to be
Ibid. John Locke, For a General Naturalisation, in Locke: Political Essays, pp. 32226. Michael Welker, God the Spirit, trans. John F. Hoffmeyer (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), pp. 23233. 88 Maurice Cranston counts it as a merit that Locke appealed for tolerance of Huguenot refugees. However, while it is to the credit of Locke that he did not share the xenophobia of his peers, his essentially utilitarian arguments still constitute a singular failure of Christian vision. See Maurice Cranston, John Locke and the Case for 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 realism of the Gospel and followed a false account of reality as exemplified 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 Indian Migrants and the London Churches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963); and Glynne Gordon-Carter, An Amazing Journey: The Church of Englands Response to Institutional Racism (London: Church House Publishing, 2003), pp. 814.
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deserving in some way, nor do they have to earn the right to it, nor must they possess some innate capacity that renders them worthy of acceptance among the human community, nor is welcome dependent on 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 gift from Christ. Conversely, hospitality of the stranger constitutes part of the churchs witness to the Christ-event, especially the hospitality each sinner has received from God in and through Christ. The call to welcome strangers as if they were Christ contrasts with the commitment to tolerance as a substantive good, founded as it is on a commitment to the good of individual autonomy.90 As can be seen in relation to the issue of euthanasia, placing a value on human autonomy in no way guarantees the acceptance of the vulnerable stranger. In many instances it can lead to the neglect and oppression of those who are not autonomous. Thus tolerance, unlike hospitality, involves no imperative to protect and care for the innocent and the weak. 6. Conclusion This article has given a critique of the notion of tolerance and its promotion in education as a means of fostering respect for the other. In its place a theologically defined account of hospitality was suggested as a better way of framing relations with and between strangers. Along the way, the three questions initially posed have been answered. It has transpired that there is an intrinsic link between most liberal philosophies of education and the notion of tolerance, the link deriving from the relationship between tolerance and the good of autonomy. Yet, despite the claim to promote respect for the other, subsequent analysis suggests that promoting tolerance might well be counter-productive to such a goal. What is clear is that tolerance, as conceived within the terms of liberal philosophy, is not something Christians should promote. Rather, the tradition-specific practice of hospitality, with its emphasis on welcoming the vulnerable stranger, should be recommended both as part of what it means to be a Christian and 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 to the good of individual autonomy, is the mark, not of the Christian host, but of the Aristotelian ideal of the self-sufficient magnanimous man. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 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 wider community of shared practices is to condemn oneself to that moral solipsism which constitutes Nietzschean greatness. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd edn (London: Duckworth, 1994), p. 258.

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the earthly city. For hospitality fosters both the general and concrete respect necessary to allow the validity of ones own tradition to stand while at the same time attending to the otherness of the other and the ways 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 the other. Indeed, contrary to contemporary expectations, it could be that the reverse is true: religiously constituted schools Christian, Muslim or otherwise may well have tradition-specific resources available to them that are better able to foster real respect for the other, the kind of respect that the current promotion of tolerance by liberal philosophies of education seems to undermine. For those involved in specifically Christian schools and programmes of education, the practice of hospitality outlined here should serve as a vital resource in the preparation of students to lead lives of human flourishing, lives that genuinely contribute to the flourishing of everyone who inhabits the often rocky terrain of a liberal, democratic, multicultural, and morally plural polity.

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