Hospitality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor

Building on a life of careful Biblical scholarship and insights into the practices of Jesus and the early Church, launched on the day of Pentecost, Amos Yong shows (1) that the religious "other" is not a mere object for conversion but a neighbor to whom hospitality must be extended and from whom Christians should be open to receiving hospitality; and (2) that the practices of the Christian community must reflect this insight if they are to be faithful to the trinitarian God of Jesus Christ. This book is pivotal in the shift to a new paradigm of theology of religion, interreligious interchange, and the nature of missionary theory and practice. Yong's argument is all the more impressive in not reducing Christian theological categories to modern insights. Instead, he shows how contemporary practice needs to catch up with the revolutionary Biblical notion of extending hospitality beyond every boundary of faith, nation, and ethnicity.