Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, 25th anniversary ed.

by Christine D. Pohl

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2024

Overview

Hospitality is crucial to Christian ministry.

To the early Christians, hospitality was central to the gospel mission. This hospitality did not consist of entertaining neighbors, but welcoming the stranger, especially those who could not return the favor. Yet despite urgent need, hospitality has fallen by the wayside.

Christine Pohl’s classic work, Making Room, first spoke to this issue in 1999. And it is just as relevant today, with the refugee crisis, the rise in homelessness, and growing loneliness and isolation. This revitalized edition, with a new foreword and afterword by the author, introduces the theology of hospitality to a new generation. Pohl combines rich biblical and historical research with experience in contemporary Christian communities, including the Catholic Worker, L’Abri, Good Works, Inc., and others.

Pragmatic and thoughtful, Pohl deals frankly with both the blessings and the boundaries of hospitality. Readers will find a wealth of wisdom to revive authentic hospitality in their ministry.

Key Features

• Combines rich biblical and historical research with experience in contemporary Christian communities
• Features a new foreword and afterword by the author
• Deals frankly with both the blessings and the boundaries of hospitality

Contents

• Preface to the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition
• Preface

I. Remembering Our Heritage

• 1. Introduction: A New Look at an Old Tradition
• 2. Ancient and Biblical Sources
• 3. A Short History of Christian Hospitality

II. Reconsidering the Tradition

• 4. Hospitality, Dignity, and the Power of Recognition
• 5. The Stranger in Our Midst
• 6. Hospitality from the Margins

III. Recovering the Practice

• 7. The Fragility of Hospitality: Limits, Boundaries, Temptations
• 8. Making a Place for Hospitality
• 9. The Spiritual Rhythms of Hospitality
• Afterword
• Appendix: Communities of Hospitality
• Select Bibliography
• Index

Praise for the Print Edition

When I first picked up Making Room, I imagined I would be reading about inviting people over for dinner or making sure your son's girlfriend feels welcome when she comes to visit. But Christine Pohl is concerned with the poor. I may envision potlucks when I think of hospitality, but Pohl means welcoming strangers. . . . Pohl demonstrates that hospitality is obligatory, ‘basic to who we are as followers of Jesus.’ . . . Casual readers beware: Making Room is guaranteed to challenge even the most complacent Christian. You are not likely to walk away from this book unchanged.

—Lauren Winner, in Books & Culture

Pohl is particularly effective in identifying the paradoxes, ambiguities and tensions associated with hospitality. Central to its New Testament roots is the intermingling of guest and host roles in the person of Christ. Jesus welcomes the marginalized into his presence, offending those who thought themselves to be more important. At the same time, he experienced the vulnerability of the marginal—as a refugee, an itinerant, convict. And so, for Christians, ‘We offer hospitality within the context of knowing Jesus as both our great host and our potential guest.’ Jesus extended the definition of who is the stranger, widened the dimensions and intensified the implications of hospitality.

—Hillary Russell, in The Expository Times

Product Details

• Title: Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition)
• Author: Christine D. Pohl
• Edition: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 2024
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 219
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Hospitality › Religious aspects--Christianity; Christian life
• ISBNs: 9780802883810, 0802883818
• Resource ID: LLS:MKNGR25NNVRSRYD
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-01-09T22:37:33Z

About Christine D. Pohl

Christine D. Pohl (Ph.D., Emory University) is professor of social ethics at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. Her books include Making Room and Living on the Boundaries.