The Fear of Strangers

"When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizens among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt."

-Leviticus 19: 33-34, NRSV

For well over a century, there has been a strong conviction in our movement that Unitarian Universalism has an important role to play in the world. Beginning with 19th century missionary efforts by the Unitarians in India, and by the Universalists in Japan, Unitarians and Universalists have seen a number of opportunities for international connection flourish and then fail for a variety of reasons. Partnerships between Unitarians here and in Eastern Europe actually began in the 1920’s following World War I, only to be interrupted for almost 70 years by historical events, including the crash of the stock market in 1929, the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the fall of the Iron Curtain.

The importance of international engagement has continued to be recognized in our Unitarian Universalist Purposes and Principles, which include our 6th principle, "the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all." The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee has maintained an international focus since its work began during the darkest days of World War II. Unitarians and Universalists were also among the founders of the International Association for Religious Freedom at the beginning of the 20th century. We maintain an office at the United Nations, and we were strong supporters of its precursor, the League of Nations.

Following the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1989, the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council was founded to once again foster partnerships between North American Unitarian Universalists and Unitarian congregations in Eastern Europe, particularly in Transylvania, which has the largest Unitarian movement in the world besides our own. The Partner Church program has since expanded to include indigenous Unitarian groups in both India and the Philippines. (Stand-by for more partnership opportunities around the world as the Partner Church Council looks to revision its mission in order to encourage the participation of every North American Unitarian Universalist congregation in international partnership activities with liberal religious groups and agencies around the globe. One of our goals? That every Unitarian Universalist Church have a budget line item devoted to international work.) More recently still, the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists, the ICUU, has been founded to foster cooperation and exchange among international Unitarian and Universalist groups.

Despite all of these efforts, the commitment of North American Unitarian Universalists to international work has often been weak. We have too often lacked staying power. Why this has been so is not completely obvious, though what is clear is that Unitarians and Universalists have sometimes lacked the resources or, more disappointingly, the will to see our global commitments through. Too often, our own self-interest or self-centeredness has caused us to turn our backs those commitments.

The task of tracing the history of our successes and failures in international work has recently been taken up by Professor George Williams on behalf of the Partner Church Council. (Some of you remember our Transylvanian friend Judit Gellerd, known affectionately as Zizi, who spoke here last year; George is Zizi’s husband. It’s a very small Unitarian Universalist world out there!) It is our hope that building upon George’s work, the Partner Church Council may be able to learn from and avoid the failures of the past, as we move forward toward a wider vision of global partnering for North American Unitarian Universalist congregations.

Never before in our religious or national history, I believe, has it been so important that we be engaged in this work. Never before in human history, perhaps, has the need for international understanding and cooperation been greater than it is today. Since the events of September 11, 2001, we here in the United States have experienced what I can describe only as the dangerous growth of a "fortress mentality." The ongoing and morally questionable war in Iraq is only one expression of this. Out of our collective fear, we have also begun to put our historic freedoms in jeopardy.

In a manner almost unprecedented, prisoners are currently being held by our government without any recourse to legal protections whatsoever! Torture has become an acceptable means of extracting information from them. Each and every one of us should have pause to consider the grave consequences of such developments. While our President speaks of extending "freedom" around the globe (he mentioned freedom over thirty times in his State of the Union Address), our freedoms here at home have been seriously curtailed in the months and years since 9/11. Efforts by your local clergy group to discover some of the implications of the so-called "Patriot Act" have been virtually ignored by our local police department, which has so far declined to send a representative to meet with us to discuss our concerns. One worries these days about the definition of the word "patriot."

Why should Unitarian Universalists be concerned about these developments? Besides the obvious fact that as Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "The threat to freedom anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere," there are also theological reasons for us, in particular, to be concerned. The greatest sin for historical Universalism was the sin of "partialism" in whatever form it might take. Universalism, as the name implies, had as its central affirmation the salvation of all. No one, regardless of religious tradition or creed, nationality or political affiliation, or racial or ethnic characteristics, is beyond the reach of God’s loving embrace. This was, and is, the great, saving message of Universalism. Everyone, as my friend Scott Alexander is fond of saying, is welcome at God’s table. As my friend George Williams put it at our meeting last week, "Liberal religion has always said that the stranger is not the enemy, but the neighbor."

What we need in these darkening days is a reinvigorated sense of Universalist hospitality on an international scale. The Bible, for one, is clear that the stranger is to be treated compassionately and accepted unconditionally. Because of their memory of having themselves been "strangers in a strange land" in Egypt, the ancient Israelites were ever cautious to counsel the love and inclusion of strangers or "aliens."

In the Christian tradition of the New Testament, hospitality is also a key virtue. This is most obvious in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan: the story of the foreigner who turns out to be the true neighbor.

Monks in ancient times were expected to greet strangers at the monastery door with the admonition, "O, Jesus Christ, is it you again?" My colleague Edmund Robinson, in a recent sermon, cautions us to be on the lookout for what the biblical author of the Letter to the Hebrews once called "angels unawares" [Hebrews 13: 2]: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels unawares." As spiritual writer Kathleen Norris has written, "True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person. Henri Nouwen has described it as receiving a stranger on his terms, and asserts that it can be offered only by those ‘who have found the center of their lives in their own hearts’" [in Dakota: A Spiritual Geography].

Parker Palmer, in his book The Company of Strangers, has written that

The key figure in public life is the stranger. The stranger is also a central figure in biblical stories of faith, and for good reason. The religious quest, the spiritual pilgrimage, is always taking us into new lands where we are strange to others and they are strange to us. Faith is a venture into the unknown, into the realms of mystery, away from the safe and comfortable and secure. When we remain in the security of familiar surroundings, we have no need of faith. The very idea of faith suggests a movement away from our earthly securities into the distant, the unsettling, the strange.

The fact is, as I think Palmer is suggesting, there is never any security in life! Life, and faith, are tremendous risks. Whoever said that we, of all the peoples of the earth, had a right to expect security? Most of the people in the world, including our partners in Transylvania, have hardly any security at all! Only by taking the risk of living openly in the world, among the strangers we encounter there, will we have any real chance to achieve a lasting security, whether now or in the future.

In the New Testament, the Greek word for hospitality is "philoxenion," which means, literally, the love of strangers. The institution that we know today as a "hospital" has its origins there, though these days, alas, it is as much about money as hospitality. In his sermon, Edmund Robinson pointed out the relationship of this word philoxenion to its opposite, "xenophobia": "fear of or contempt for that which is foreign, especially the fear of strangers or foreign peoples" [The American Heritage College Dictionary].

Ironically, given our history as the greatest immigrant nation of all time, I believe that we have entered into an dangerous new era of xenophobia. Our foreign policy since 9/11 has certainly reflected a contempt for the opinions of our allies from foreign lands, just as here at home our fear of the stranger among us has led to new levels of fear and sometimes of hostility toward immigrants and non-Christians and even of anyone who does not fit a peculiarly narrow definition of Christianity: in short, anyone who doesn’t fit the norm. Muslims, in particular, no longer feel particularly welcome here. We have circled the proverbial wagons and proclaimed in so many words that it is "us against the world," as most frighteningly represented in our adoption of the questionable military doctrine of "pre-emption."

I think it is especially true in what author William Gass once called "the heart of the heart of the country": those parts of our country which are most characterized by homogeneity, least impacted by exposure to differences, or, paradoxically, which already include large numbers of ethnic or religious minorities.

It is against this background of fear and xenophobia that the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council is embarking on a bold new vision. Among the common themes of this new vision:

• Establishing global citizenship as a common construct of liberal religion, and making it a norm of Unitarian Universalist congregational life;

• The idea that we are not alone: that we need to be linked to groups and activities not currently on our radar screen;

• Continuing to promote partnering, whether in Unitarian Universalist to Unitarian and Universalist relationships, or in liberal religious church to church relationship, or in church to international service agency relationship;

• Creating transformative expectations and experiences, including journeys and pilgrimages;

• Changing our values to reflect the importance of an internationalist perspective;

• Becoming a bridge between congregational life and globalism;

• Remaining congregationally based; and

• Engaging more individuals and groups to grow, create, and maintain linkages with local partnering committees and congregations.

Partnering is an endeavor filled with enormous risk, but also with the potential of enormous reward. As Kahlil Gibran once wrote, "All work is empty ave where there is love." May we, together, continue the important work of building that world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. It has never been more critical than now. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock