Hosting the Stranger: Between Religions

Hosting the Stranger is an exciting contribution to a new generation of inter-religious dialogue and scholarship - harmonizing an explicit hopefulness for hospitality within and between religions with an insistent respect for differing understandings of what constitutes hospitality. The book presses the urgency of the need for inter-religious hospitality without ignoring the risk entailed in 'welcoming the stranger'. It is a wonderfully balanced collection of essays bringing together theoretical and methodological investigations with a number of concrete discussions of the sources, understandings, and examples of hospitality in five different religious traditions. Accessible, yet historically attuned and theoretically nuanced, this collection of essays on hospitality in religion is an indispensable resource for students of religious studies as well as religious practitioners engaged in inter-religious dialogue. -- Tamsin Jones, Lecturer on Religion, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Harvard University, USA
This is an important, open-hearted and useful collection of essays on the subject of hospitality, which often takes language as the first sign of its difficulty. The ghosts of Ricoeur and Derrida haunt the first half of the volume, and then it opens into Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Islamic and Hindu perspectives on the subject of welcome in which God is the long-awaited guest. Almost any one of these essays could be read by students in a number of disciplines; the volume opens doors to discussions about translation and uprootedness, liturgies and history. They are written with great clarity and ease by people who know their subject and want to share it. It is, as its title suggests, a cheering book. -- Fanny Howe, Chair, Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, Georgetown University
this volume of high quality and accessible papers probes hospitality as a task toward the stranger, alien, and victim through Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist wisdom traditions (Part 2) under the hermeneutical influence of Levinas and Derrida (Part 1)... [It] will invigorate student learning in university classrooms across an array of theological subdisciplines for all intent on responding constructively to the scandals of alienation, violence, and their religious legitimation. * Religious Studies Review *