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The Theology of Hospitality ˜ 315
us to hate and fear Willie Horton, and to lust for ever increasing use of the death
penalty. Ed Meese invited us to hate and fear the poor as he assured us that people
who eat in soup kitchens do it because they are lazy and don’t want to work.
According to Reagan, Bush, and Meese, these are our enemies, objects of our
collective fear: Central American peasants, African American criminal-types, the
homeless poor, and the list goes on. . . . We must realize, people like Reagan,
Bush, and Meese say, that all of these folk want to take something precious
from us.
So, according to our leaders, our response should be to build up and maintain
the number-one nuclear arsenal, to build more prisons and jails, to execute
more prisoners, to get a handgun and another insurance policy, and to let the
poor and homeless get what they deserve: nothing.
Another common denominator is that all of these collective enmities create
policy that comes down squarely on the necks of the poor and the helpless.
Campesinos by the thousands are left dead and maimed by our policies. Hundreds
of thousands of men, women, and children, most of them poor, a disproportionate
number of them minorities, are locked in steel and concrete cages
with what looks like an unending mania to spend millions on prison and jail
construction, while at the same time we can’t seem to find money for housing.
The death penalty sweeps in its vicious, racist grasp the poor, the mentally retarded,
the mentally ill, the illiterate, and a disproportionate number of African
Americans and Hispanics. It grinds out its violence, purporting fairness, but in
fact creating one more violent institution with which to hate and punish
the poor.
When we opened Clifton Presbyterian Church as the first free shelter in Atlanta
in 1979, we estimated that 1,500 homeless people were on our streets. Now,
just over ten years later, there are more like 15,000. How many will there be next
year and the next
Yes, brother Gorbachev, I’m afraid we’ll be dealing a long time with this
“enemy image” before we make it a thing of the past.
The image is more serious for us than most because we believe, we confess,
that peace has been made. We believe that God through Jesus Christ has broken
down the dividing wall of hostility. Our leaders build that same wall for political
gain and social control. But listen! Anytime the enemy image works, we participate
in a system that positions itself squarely against the cross of Jesus Christ.
That’s why Paul says, “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice,” or, as Jim Wallis
translates Romans 12:1, “Put your bodies where your doctrines are!” That’s the
power of acts of conscience. Conscience is a fine thing, but until we act on it, it
doesn’t make a lot of difference what you believe. As James would say, “Faith
without works is as dead as a doornail.”
Jesse Jackson was in Atlanta a couple of months ago, and he said we have a
problem because our insult level is too high. We need to lower our insult level,