I am in Novi Sad in Serbia for the General Assembly of the Conference of European Churches. The shadow in which 500 Christians from a vast range of churches meet is a rapidly changing Europe. The first day has concentrated on the Christian obligation to offer hospitality to the stranger – pertinent in the face of populist nationalism, mass migration, the corruption of the public (and political) discourse, and the easy equation of the common good with mere economics and self-protection.
However, this is no abstract conversation between lefty snowflakes about bleeding-heart do-gooding; rather, it is intelligent and informed, led by speakers and contributors who are deeply engaged in practical hospitality for refugees and migrants in places like Syria, Iraq, Greece – places on the front line of bitter suffering.
This is why it is so depressing that in the Brexit debates in Parliament and the media the sole preoccupation seems to be with economics, trade deals and money. Human value, social good, cultural richness – the soul of a society – get forgotten. People are more than cogs in an economic machine; society must be more than simply a functioning economy. For whose benefit does an economy exist? Or, to put it differently, does the economy exist for people, or do people exist to serve the interests of an economy?
The language we use usually gives away the truth of our response to these questions.
Given the contrast between Abraham (the nomad who offers hospitality to the strangers at Mamre in Genesis 18) and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah (who abused hospitality by trying to exploit the strangers/guests), it is perhaps understandable that the stand-out sentence in this morning’s sessions was to the effect that “maybe today’s Sodomites are those who preach against hospitality to the refugees and migrants”.
Discuss.
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