What I'm Reading #26: The Company of Strangers (Parker Palmer)

The Company of Strangers: Christians and the Renewal of America's Public Life, by Parker J. Palmer

I discovered The Company of Strangers (Crossroads 1981) through my pastor and supervisor for the summer, Kevin Armstrong. This book will definitely figure in my evangelism paper, particularly in the section I plan to devote to Lockerbie Central UMC and Earth House. It is also relevant to what North UMC is currently doing in exploring public ministry. Relevance all around.

Palmer emphasizes the importance for the church and the world of public life and interaction with the stranger in ways that challenge some basic assumptions about how one lives a good life. Especially in today's American culture, we value privacy and intimate relationships. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but Palmer admonishes the church not to devalue the public life and relationships with the stranger in the meantime, even and especially where we find those things threatening.

Although Palmer insists that a robust private life is vital to the health of the public life, he stresses that the former will suffer without the latter. He writes, "The word 'private,' which we often use to denote the opposite of the public realm, literally means 'to be deprived of a public life.'" For Palmer, the public and the private are interconnected and interdependent. A healthy private life enables people to live publicly, while a healthy public life gives meaning and context to the private. Problems such as crime and safety are often approached with private solutions such as home security and gun ownership, but in reality, a public solution—making the public more connected and aware of itself and all of its members—better ensures private well-being.

Another interesting point Palmer made is that our obsession with intimacy and warmth can become problematic. If we only value close relationships, we jettison all other associations, which almost always has a homogenizing effect, especially in churches. It also puts enormous pressure on any relationships we do have, because if they are not conducive to intimacy, we assume they are not valuable and abandon them. The stranger, Palmer says, is precisely where we learn things about ourselves that we do not like, or learn things about others that can help us grow. The stranger could be someone of a different socioeconomic class or of a different political persuasion, and without such interaction we become insular and self-satisfied. Moreover, we see in the Bible that God identifies with and comes as the stranger (Abraham and the three men/one man at the Oaks of Mamre in Genesis 19, Jesus on the walk to Emmaus in Luke 24, etc.). God not only meets us as a friend, God confronts us as a stranger, as the "other." If we forget that, we run the risk of domesticating God and making God in our own image.

Of course, it is in the public where we meet the stranger, and so Palmer insists that the church must be concerned not only with what goes on within its walls but what goes on outside the walls. The church must find a way to be in public ministry, not to increase its numbers or to make itself look good, but because it is in the public and among strangers where we meet a God who is bigger than ourselves.


Favorite Quotations

"The God who cares about our private lives is concerned with our public lives as well. This is a God who calls us into relationship not only with family and friends, but with strangers scattered across the face of the earth, a God who says again and again, 'We are all in this together.'"

"I once asked a politically active black minister in Washington, D.C. to name the primary task in his ministry. I suppose I expected him to say something about political organizing, protest, and the like. Instead, he said, 'To provide my people with a rich social life.' I asked, ‘Do you mean parties and pot-lucks and socials and things like that?' thinking his answer sounded a bit frivolous. 'Of course,' he said, 'things like that give my people the strength to struggle in public.'"

"We gain a deeper understanding of our relation to the stranger when we remember that Jesus did not merely point to, but identified himself with the sick, the prisoner, the stranger."

"Hospitality means letter the stranger remain a stranger while offering acceptance nonetheless."

"The best deterrent to crime against private property and persons is not a home arsenal, or even a skilled and well-financed police force, but the presence of a public which is aware of and cares about itself."

"The irony is that every community which rejects the stranger and anxiously protects 'its own kind' gives witness, not to the strength of its identity, but to its deep-rooted insecurity."