another year another book on hospitality

Just reading Jason's post 'On hospitality' and was thinking that this has become one of the latest 'buzz' words in Christian theology. There doesn't seem to be a year goes by recently without a book on recovering hospitality. Here are seven recent books that explore the theme.

Christine Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Eerdmans, 1999)

Luke Bretherton, Hospitality as Holiness: Christian Witness Amid Moral Diversity (Ashgate, 2006)

Arthur M. Sutherland, I Was a Stranger: A Christian Theology of Hospitality (Abingdon, 2006)

Elizabeth Newman, Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers (Brazos, 2007)

Amos Yong, Hospitality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices and the Neighbour (Orbis, 2008)

Letty M. Russell, Just Hospitality: God's Welcome in a World of Difference (WJK, 2009)

Wolfgang Vondey, People of Bread: Rediscovering Ecclesiology (Paulist Press, 2009)

Update:

George Newlands and Allen Smith, Hospitable God: The Transformative Dream (Ashgate, 2010)

Comments

[Terry]

You sound a little incredulous, Andy.

[Terry]

Oh, and don't forget Douglas's The Eschatological Economy: Time and the Hospitality of God.

[Andy Goodliff]

I think its good, I think 'hospitality' is helpful, but it does seem rather fashionable that lots of different publishers have commission a book on it.

[Michael Westmoreland-White]

This trend started at the end of my time doing doctoral studies. Then, it was recovering an ancient theme/practice. Now, its trendy--but it isn't that what "recovery" entails?

[Darren]

Hans Boersma's book on the atonement, "Violence, Hospitality and the Cross," is entrenched in this theme, as well.

[Richard L. Floyd]

Hospitality is trendy now, to be sure. In my denomination it seems hospitality trumps creeds, confessions, and just about everything else. According to this view, Jesus wouldn't have thrown the money changers out of the temple. He would have invited them to lunch. Real hospitality is a wonderful thing, but as an ideology it is thin and often goes hand in hand with an easy dismissal of the atonement on the grounds it cultivates violence. More rigor is needed on this topic. Publishers can spot these kinds of fads a mile away, and too many trees get wasted making many of these books.

[andy goodliff]

Richard, I'm not sure if I'm as negative as you about the trend. Certainly some of the accounts of hospitality I've read (like Luke Bretherton's) I think would resist the interpretation you give here. He makes a strong case.

[hospitality college]

Andy, thanks for your great book sharing