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  • Just Hospitality: God's Welcome in a World of Difference
  • David M. Csinos
Letty M. Russell . Just Hospitality: God's Welcome in a World of Difference, ed. J. Shannon Clarkson and Kate M. Ott . Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009. Pp. xviii + 138. US$20.00. ISBN: 978-0-664-23315-0.

Context matters. Theologies are formed and informed by circumstances that surround a person, congregation, and faith tradition. Letty Russell, in her posthumously published Just Hospitality, demonstrates that experience, social reality, action, and tradition are all "ingredients in our theology" (1). Thus, she locates herself as white, affluent, feminist, bisexual, an ordained minister, a postcolonial theorist, and a religious educator involved in many ecumenical programs. With this hybrid identity, the author identifies herself as a "misfit" and an "outsider within."

Russell knows from experience that the church has not always been a place of just hospitality, and it has used its resources (Bible, theology, tradition) to exclude those who are different. Believing that "in God's sight no one is a misfit" (14), she submits a model of just hospitality that affirms difference through solidarity. Just hospitality is "the practice of God's welcome embodied in our actions as we reach across difference to participate with God in bringing justice and healing to our world in crisis" (2).

To build her model of just hospitality, Russell begins by discussing her action-reflection method and locating herself as one who has been excluded from ecclesial contexts because of differences. In chapter 2, she grounds her arguments in postcolonial studies and offers insight into postcolonial and feminist methods of interpreting tradition and Scripture in ways that are vital to a hermeneutic of hospitality. She then demonstrates these ideas in chapter 3 by discussing biblical stories that inform a view of difference as God's intention and that speak to the church's calling of unity-in-tension among difference (53). In chapter 4, Russell reframes hospitality by drawing from postcolonial and feminist thinkers as well as the biblical story of Ruth to discuss aspects of God's welcome; she also examines safe readings of Scripture that celebrate difference through [End Page 300] insights discovered as one confronts patriarchy, seeks contradictions, and engages in hermeneutics of suspicion, commitment, and silence. Russell devotes the final chapter to a discussion of how God's welcome in a world of difference can be lived out in order to foster justice as equal distribution and the establishment of structures that allow for human flourishing.

Russell makes a number of methodological and interpretive shifts in her book, one of which is moving from colonialistic/imperialistic views of the "other" to seeing one another (and herself ) as postcolonial subjects—people who have been colonized and colonizers at the same time (27). This allows for a move from a hermeneutic of the "other" to a hermeneutic of hospitality.

Through her reliance on theory and experience, the author challenges the codification of knowledge that is prevalent in the church, and she moves from describing hospitality to empowering readers with tools for practising just hospitality. Through ideas and example, Russell helps readers develop hermeneutical strategies for avoiding "textual harassment" (89) by contextually interpreting tradition and Scripture in ways that welcome difference. She helpfully uses the image of roundtable ministry to speak of God's welcome in the church (16)—in roundtable ministry, socially constructed margins blur, solidarity with strangers is forged, and all are welcomed into mutual relationships of care, trust, empowerment, and action that foster the gift of unity and the restoration of right relationships.

Russell's book is the result of a lifetime of research, action, and reflection. Through stories about her involvement with ecumenical initiatives, accounts of relationships across lines of difference, awareness of her social location, naming contradictions in her life, and the use of hermeneutics of suspicion, commitment, and silence, Russell incarnates her arguments, offering them in a challenging and hospitable manner. This book is not only about just hospitality; it is an act of just hospitality offered by one who lived a life of welcome and unity expressed through creating communities of riotous difference.

Just Hospitality invites readers to join Letty Russell (and one...

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