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Article
Welcoming the Stranger: Anatheism and L’Arche
Toronto Journal of Theology (2016)
  • Brent Little, Sacred Heart University
Abstract
In his book Anatheism, Richard Kearney argues for God to be imagined as a stranger and a guest, a God who comes unexpectedly into mundane reality. As a potential host, the human person may freely say yes in hospitality or no in hostility to this divine stranger, a hospitality or hostility practised in encounters with the everyday strangers of life, such as marginalized populations. As an exemplar, Kearney offers Jean Vanier’s vision for L’Arche, a global network of communities that live in solidarity with the developmentally disabled. But Kearney provides only a start for a theological dialogue with L’Arche’s experience. In order to further refine this conversation between Kearney and L’Arche, I consider questions about the limits of hospitality in the context of L’Arche. What are, for example, necessary boundaries between guest and host? When does uncritical hospitality become problematic? After a discussion of Kearney’s anatheism and the writings of Vanier, Henri Nouwen, and others, I argue for the necessity of judiciously drawn boundaries so as to promote a healthy relationship between the disabled person and the assistant, a relationship that hopefully has become one of friendship. This article, then, confronts the task of discerning the limits to Kearney’s paradigm, and L’Arche’s practice, of hospitality.
Keywords
  • Disability Studies,
  • Richard Kearney,
  • Henri Nouwen,
  • and Jean Vanier,
  • L'Arche
Publication Date
Spring 2016
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/tjt.3465
Citation Information
Brent Little. "Welcoming the Stranger: Anatheism and L’Arche" Toronto Journal of Theology Vol. 32 Iss. 1 (2016) p. 95 - 111 ISSN: 0826-9831
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/brent-little/8/