Why do we welcome the stranger? Seems to me there are two types of motivations: mercy and justice.
Merciful welcomers focus on the giving of gifts. For them, welcome is an expression of the abundance of life. It’s a matter of generosity. They give because they have been given much.
At its worst, merciful welcome devolves into a parody of itself—making nice. At its best it creates circles of relationship that never existed before.
Just welcomers seek to rectify unwelcome. They see people who have been shut out in the cold and want to bring them in to join the party. (There’s a good chance that they were shut out of the party once themselves.) For them, welcome is a matter of what we owe each other.
At its worst, just welcome turns into the opposite of welcome—a closing of the circle against all who are judged not just enough. At its best it opens up a space for reconciliation to happen, where wrongs can be righted and forgiveness can begin.
Justice and mercy tend to compete, and it is no different with welcome. Just welcomers can make merciful welcomers feel like their gifts are unappreciated or even scorned. Mercy types will feel they are being told their compassion will never be enough, or even that it doesn’t matter. But mercy types can exasperate justice types with their calls to just get along.
Both sides need to learn from the other. Merciful welcomers will have a hard time hearing that their good intentions sometimes gloss over injustice or even cause it, that sometimes compassion isn’t enough, that injustice must be named and called out in spite of hurt feelings.
Mercy types teach us that justice must end with person-to-person compassion. Reforms and revolutions can be necessary, but they rarely heal. In the end, we have to be able to look each other in the eye and make pleasant conversation, or else what is the point of welcome?
What we justice types must learn is that no matter how high our cause or how enlightened our analysis, welcome always returns to individual members of a species of social animals who want, and need, to be nice to each other. Ideology doesn’t meet raw human need. The rhetoric of welcome must never become hateful.
What justice types teach us is that nice can’t smooth everything over. Sometimes welcome requires kicking someone out of the party. Sometimes welcome requires saying who’s not coming to dinner, because they haven’t been invited. The host has to be able to hear those ugly truths, even though he was kind enough to spend the whole day making dinner.
And that, my friends, is UUism’s struggle with anti-racist, anti-oppression work in a nutshell.
I appreciate your efforts to reconcile justice with mercy; indeed, efforts such as yours are what UUism needs to grow and thrive.
The problem with making a comparative analysis of justice and mercy is that I find it makes a little bit too much sense. You’re right, Chutney, no one doubts that– but when you run up against an ingrained, institutionalized form of militancy which entertains no notions of such crucial concepts as irony and reverse-racism then there’s no amount of fighting that will make them see the light. Their eyes are closed and so are their minds.
Getting 25 Beacon Street and C*UUYAN and FUUSE folks to get on the bandwagon is going to be tough going. I understand you went to your first GA this past June. I challenge you to at some point attend a national con like Opus or ConCentric and see what you’re really up against.
Well, that’s the great strength and great weakness of typologies—simplification. I tend to think in models, so I love a good typology.
I don’t think it’s a matter of getting 25 or any other organization on board. It’s a matter of putting into practice wherever it’s practical. And then the folks doing it will have to make it clear that they expect the same of others.
I think it’s probably already in practice in many congregations, where mercy welcome comes more naturally. The trick is to make welcome a clear expectation, correcting people who cross lines, whether that’s on a one-to-one level or an organizational level.
If the folks who make that a clear expectation are already walking the walk, then it will be tough to say no to them. But people who live lives of welcome can have a hard time demanding welcome.
I think this typology is useful, but what came straight to mind is the Bible passage that puts justice and mercy side by side and demands both in humility, Micah 6:8.
The answer to many a paradox is “Both/And”.
sorry i’m a little late to this party, but catching up on my blog-reading hasn’t made it to the top of my queue in a while. anyway.
what about the selfish welcomers? the ones of us who do it because we assume that we’re likely going to get something good from the stranger? both the merciful and the just versions as you’ve described them are kind of condescending. all the energy is traveling from the welcomer to the stranger.
i concede that they definitely predominate, but there is no room in the dichotomy for true welcoming. i’m all for people being nice whatever their motivation, but true welcoming isn’t about the gift i’m giving to the stranger. it’s about the gift that i anticipate the stranger giving to me. like your toonces and her belly rubs.
I’m not sure I can say which side of that is true welcoming and which isn’t, but point taken. I was just bragging on you today for taking that tack with it: what if I find out I like the person I’m about to welcome?