Making space at the table or turning the table?

In search of a more just praxis

Abstract

A popular turn of phrase in recent years has been: “build a longer table, not a higher fence”. It is a phrase that ultimately refers to the need for hospitality as an antidote to exclusion. Deep inequality, racism and  the rise of populism are not new crises and the COVID 19 pandemic itself has done what pandemics in previous centuries have been known to do, which is  to reveal just how deep the fault lines of exclusion in our society are. During this period, we have seen a global socioeconomic crisis emerge and protests such as  #BlackLivesMatter  have reverberated around the globe as they unveiled once again the extent of systemic racism and the crises within modern democracies. The notion of hospitality, as interpreted by theologians over the centuries, has often been offered as an antidote to exclusion and injustice of the kind we are witnessing. Others, however,  have questioned the power dynamic inherent in the notion of hospitality as popularly understood: which discourses are centered in these understandings of hospitality (whose stories matter)? Who owns the spaces and places within which such hospitality takes place?  Indeed, is the notion of hospitality at all helpful in avoiding patronizing and exclusive forms of engagement? In search of faithful connections in society, faith communities and the academy, this paper seeks to trouble the notion of hospitality as commonly understood through the lenses of the current crises and justice discourses as a starting point towards a more just praxis.