“I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” —Jesus

As I journeyed with my desire and with a good spiritual director, something else was happening, too. Wrestling with my tradition while at the same time going deeper into that tradition and finding practices there that I had not known about opened me to the transforming work of God beyond all the human striving that had characterized my early religious life. Moving beyond mere dabbling in solitude and silence into a substantive commitment to these practices changed not only the landscape of my inner life, but the contours of my outer life as well.

Finding myself to be so deeply and unconditionally loved by God in all my unfinished-ness, my rawness, and my lack of performance and productivity began to form within me a different kind of love for others. Something significant was happening inside me that was changing me outwardly.

Slowly and imperceptibly, I was becoming a more open, a more welcoming, a more faith-filled and less judgmental person. This was rather unexpected, given that up to that point, my Christianity had functioned in large part to delineate who was “in” and who was “out,” who was right and who was wrong. I could not deny that coming closer to God at the center of my being drew me into a deeper kind of unity with others who were journeying towards that very same Center.

They Will Know We are Christians by Our…What?

There is simply no way to sugar-coat the kind of arrogant, judgmental, self-righteous attitudes certain aspects of my tradition had formed within me early on. It is hard to admit that we Protestants are not exactly known by our love; we are more known by what we protest. We are known by the fact that we think we are right and believe everyone else is going to hell—literally—unless they believe exactly as we do. Those from other traditions may have similar confessions to make, but I will only speak for myself.

So that’s the bad news. The good news, however, is that in order to be on an authentic spiritual journey, we actually need to have clearly articulated grounding in a particular tradition. Just as the caterpillar must fight and struggle to get out of the cocoon, we too must struggle and fight with our traditions to find our way into a more open space. Turns out that being grounded in a particular tradition gives us access to what Thomas Hart calls “a complete spirituality” which, he writes, “is more than an amalgam of practice. It is a master story, a theological integrity, and a community of practice that gives an orientation in life, a set of values to live by, a sense of direction, and a basis for hope, a relationship with Mystery, and a challenge to personal transformation.”

We as Christians have that, and eventually the authentic struggles we experience in relation to our various traditions really do pay off spiritually if we can stop short of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Authentically Wide and Welcoming

In her book, Sacred is the Call, spiritual director Sandra Lommasson writes, “growth in the spiritual life requires the sort of wrestling provoked and supported by a particularity of theological commitment and community. From this rooted depth, it is possible to become authentically wide and welcoming, to discerningly incorporate other perspectives and practices, and to work with those of other traditions in a manner truly open to the Spirit.”

Bede Griffith goes on to say, “Our aim is the deepening of our own faith which then becomes more open to others. This is not easy, for each tradition has its own position. If you try and mix them, taking a bit of Hinduism or Buddhism and you try and add Christianity to it, that is syncretism. But if you go deeply into one tradition you converge on the center, and there you see how we all come forth from a common root.”

Rooted depth, indeed! This is certainly my experience, and it brings me to a fourth observation: that from a rooted depth, the future of Christian spirituality will see us become more welcoming and inclusive. It is happening already. The emerging generations of young adult Christians simply cannot comprehend a God who does not love all God’s children equally, and who does not hold within God’s self an equal desire and an equally good plan for all to flourish. Just as good human parents do not play favorites, the God they know does not play favorites either.

Varieties of Faithfulness

Theology professor Brian Bantum (Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary) describes his journey out of a narrower and more exclusive upbringing towards a more welcoming and inclusive faith stance in this way: “There was no singular trauma or betrayal that led me away from the evangelical nest. Instead, it was the small ways I tried to bring the rest of me and my world into the sanctuary with me—and the ways I saw beautiful people cut out and ignored. I began to see histories and varieties of faithfulness. There was so much of God’s difference in the world that seemed to be held at bay in the theology of my youth. That theology swaddled us in certainty, hope, and a sense of purpose—and as it held me in, it also kept much out.”

I am particularly drawn to Bantum’s phrase “varieties of faithfulness.” What a lovely way to talk about diversity and difference. We are so quick to exclude people from our circles of influence, fellowship, and care based on our differences that we fail to recognize our differences as varieties of faithfulness—ways in which other serious and devoted Christians live out their faithfulness to God, themselves, and others differently than we do. Rather than approaching our siblings in the family of God with compassion, curiosity, and respect, we are intent on pronouncing them right or wrong and then making a “position” out of our own views—a position that often becomes a litmus test for whether we can be together or stay together.

I wonder whatever happened to Romans 14:1-4 where Paul asks this question: “Who are you to judge the servant of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And stand they will, for the Lord is able to make them stand.”

I wonder, what if Christian communities could be known as communities that hold difference, rather than splinter because they can’t?

Humbled in the Presence of Reality

Here is a hard truth: we (the older generation) are on our way out. Whether we agree with the upcoming generations of spiritual seekers and leaders or not, they will trust what they know about God deep inside more than they will trust “what the Bible says” according to our white, patriarchal, hetero-normative reading of everything. As heretical as it may sound, they do not always care “what the Bible says” if it contradicts what they know experientially about a loving God. To be more accurate, they are really saying, “We don’t care about what the Bible says the way you have interpreted it.”

Again, you do not have to agree with them, but this is real. If you don’t believe me, go have a series of true listening conversations with thoughtful, spiritually sensitive 30- and 40-something Christians. AND, if you are brave, reflect back on your own youthful self—the self who knew things on a level that contradicted some of the traditional interpretations that were taken for granted by the older generation of your time. Think Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who challenged the Church and the world with fresh perspectives on spiritual truth before their deaths at thirty-nine years old!

Then as now, current and future leaders of the church know God, too, and they will lead us deeper into the heart of our loving God if we will make way and let them.

The True Meaning of Catholic

In his book Sacred Fire, Fr. Ron Rolheiser observes that “Some of this truth is expressed in the wonderful truth of the word catholic. The opposite of a Catholic is not a Protestant, an Evangelical, or even a non-Christian. The opposite of Catholic is a fundamentalist. The word catholic means universal, wide, embracing everyone. Jesus defines the word in this way: In my father’s house are many rooms! In saying this, he is not describing a celestial mansion, but rather the scope of God’s heart. God’s heart is not a house with one room. God has a catholic heart (lower case c), a nonfundamentalist heart. In a fundamentalist’s house there is only one room, it might even be a good room, but it is a single room with no place for anyone not of its own kind. A true catholic heart has a room for everyone.”

I hope that makes us all want to be catholic (lower case c) because the future of Christian spirituality must and will be catholic in this sense—welcoming and embracing with room for all in the conversation, at the table, and in God’s house. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we as Christians were known for that?

Welcoming the Stranger

What we’re really talking about here is nothing more and nothing less than growing in the Christian practice of welcoming the stranger—that is, the one who is strange to you. The person who is different in personality or in the way they present themselves in the world. The one who has been shaped by different life experiences and cultural realities than you. The one whose experience in their body is different than yours. The one who holds a different opinion or “position” on a theological, social, or political issue than you. The one whose ethnicity or citizenship has shaped them differently than you have been shaped. Do we dare to welcome them and listen to them with openness and inner hospitality rather than dismissing them, marginalizing them, closing our hearts and minds to them, or (God-forbid!) walking away?

Are we willing to welcome the one who is strange to us in one of those ways, thus welcoming Jesus like the disciples did on the Emmaus Road? Think about it: if those two disillusioned and dejected disciples had refused to welcome the stranger, they would have missed the entire transformative encounter that came after (See Luke 24:13 f). Might this more welcoming and inclusive stance be a more “Christian” and a more Christ-like stance than what we are doing right now?

Christine Pohl, in her book Making Room, describes hospitality to strangers as a way of life that is fundamental to Christian identity and as a fundamental expression of the Gospel. From what I can see in Scripture, there aren’t a lot of spiritual brownie points given out for welcoming friends, family, the people we like and those with whom we find easy agreement, as lovely as that can be. It is welcoming the stranger—the one who is strange to you—that holds the most promise for welcoming the Divine Presence.

Imagining a Different Kind of Future

One of my favorite things about the way we gather in the Transforming Center is the fact that we intentionally create space for people who are strange to each other in a myriad of ways to welcome each other on their own journey between the now and the not-yet. For us, this is a spiritual practice. Rather than taking hard and fast positions on things, we trust that being together in this welcoming and inclusive way will be more transformative than rejecting people (or having them reject us) because of our positions on some of the controversial issues on which faithful Christians disagree. We welcome and celebrate the diversity that characterizes the body of Christ, and in doing so we find ourselves changed.

It is not always easy to hold steady in this place of creative tension, but time and again we witness transformations that could only take place as people who are strange to each other welcome each other and commit themselves to journey together. We are convinced this is one of the most significant things we can practice, model, and create space for in the body of Christ at this time—for ourselves and our own transformation—and also for the sake of others.

As I often do, I close with a favorite poem. As you read it, notice what happens in your body. Notice what shifts or even protests within you. Be curious and wonder what it means to you to be “right” and by whose standards, and why it matters so much. Let yourself imagine a future in which it is less important to be right, and more important to participate in God’s unconditional love for all God’s children.

The Place Where We Are Right
Yehuda Amichai
(Trans. Stephen Mitchell)

From the place where you are right
Flowers will never grow
in the spring.

The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.

But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.

© Ruth Haley Barton, 2024. Parts of this article were first presented at The Future of Christian Spirituality Conference in honor of Fr. Ron Rolheiser in 2019.

Read more from our ongoing series The Future of Christian Spirituality.

• Introduction: A Protestant’s Journey Toward a More Unified Faith
• Part 1: The Role of Desire in the Spiritual Life
• Part 2: The Charism and Practice of Spiritual Direction
• Part 3: A Spirituality that is Practice-Oriented and Practice-Based
• Part 5: Profoundly Justice Oriented