Abstract
American evangelicals have not exactly covered themselves with glory over the course of these past few Donald Trump-dominated years. Indeed, their brand might even seem to be tarnished beyond hope of repair. Into this rather sad situation comes Joshua Jipp’s new book Saved by Faith and Hospitality, in which Jipp, a professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and a card-carrying member of that tribe, mounts an exegetical argument that ‘the God of the Christian Scriptures is a God of hospitality, a God who extends hospitality to his people and who requires that his people embody hospitality to others’ (p. 2) and thus, more provocatively still, that ‘Christians must reject anything that dehumanizes, stigmatizes, and perpetuates violence against the marginalized and vulnerable’ (p. 9, italics original).
In between a brief introduction and an even briefer epilogue, Jipp’s argument unfolds in two parts of three chapters each. Part One: Divine Hospitality comprises three focused exegetical chapters, each one on a different book (or corpus) of the New Testament: 1. Food, Stigma, and the Identity of the Church in Luke-Acts; 2. Ecclesial Hospitality amidst Difference and Division in Paul; and 3. The Meaning of Human Existence and the Church’s Mission in the Gospel of John. Part Two: Human Hospitality comprises three thematic, ethical chapters (which are, however, still rooted in biblical exegesis): 4. Hospitality and the World: Overcoming Tribalism; 5. Hospitality and the Immigrant: Overcoming Xenophobia; and 6. Hospitality and the Economy: Overcoming Greed.
The title of the book is a bit of a red herring (or perhaps a Trojan horse?). It is a verbatim quote from 1 Clement—not, of course, part of the Protestant canon that is the book’s point of reference. In a didactic account of several heroes of the Pentateuch, 1 Clement writes, ‘Because of his faith and hospitality, a son was given to him [Abraham] in his old age. . . . Because of his hospitality and piety, Lot was saved from Sodom. . . . Because of her faith and hospitality, Rahab the harlot was saved’ (1 Clement 10:6–12:1). In short, the ancient Christian author suggests a causal relation between the virtues of these matriarchs and patriarchs (notably their faith and hospitality) and their salvation from destruction. Jipp, good Protestant that he is, does not want to make any theological claim too far down this path. He writes, ‘These texts would not justify some form of ‘works-righteousness,’ as though we could accumulate merit with God by loving the stranger’ (p. 7). (Other interpreters of a less Protestant sensibility might say that is precisely what these texts justify.)
Jipp does want to insist, however, that ‘hospitality to strangers was not an optional practice for the church, but is something that is deeply related to salvation’ (p. 7), and again, ‘Hospitality to strangers. . . is at the core of our faith and a necessary practice for all those who claim to follow Jesus’ (p. 177, italics original). Because Jipp expressly mentions Christian hospitality to Latin American immigrants, incarcerated black men, and transgender people, among other examples, I think I am not mistaken in detecting here a broadside against a certain, culturally dominant form of evangelicalism. I wish Jipp every success in his effort. If evangelicalism is what we so often hear from many of its TV-news spokespeople, then good riddance to it. But if evangelicalism is the kind of thing Joshua Jipp argues for in this book, then I, at least, have all kinds of time for it.