Generous Love and the Embassy and Hospitality of God
In 2008, an Anglican Communion report on interfaith relations entitled Generous Love , called upon Anglicans to practise "the embassy and hospitality of God". As an embassy, as ambassadors, we have been entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation. The challenges of hospitality include building relationships of trust and respect. Generous Love has an important and insightful sentence: "none of the places, situations or societies where we meet and greet are the exclusive territory of any one group; they are entrusted by God to be shared by everyone, since all humans are made in God's image". I reflected on this today. The great building and world heritage site which is Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was built as a cathedral in 537 and served as the seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople until the Ottoman capture of the city in 1453. It was then turned into a mosque. So it has been in its history a sacred space for both Christians and Muslims. In 1934 the...