1 Introduction
The 1618 baptism debate at the Synod of Dort will be interrogated as a topic within the discipline of World Christianity rather than being a topic within the Dutch history, the Long Reformation, the Reformed tradition, or early modern European history. As a topic within World Christianity, the 1618 baptism debate will be questioned with queries such as how did the Global South, specifically Asian religionists, frame and influence the debate at the Synod of Dort?
This chapter will explore how Dortâs 1618 debate on baptizing non-Christian Asians provide us with an alternative, non-polarizing way to engage difference. How did this debate offer an alternative discourse to engage the stranger differently and without xenophobia? With rhetoric of fear or xenophobic tropes available to deploy, the baptism debate about these non-Europeans appears to have avoided these options and chose a non-xenophobic approach. The primary sources of the 1618 baptism at Dort include Robert Shellâs translation of the essays written by the various delegations expressing their perspective on the baptism question and the account of the debate written by John Hales, an English observer at the Synod of Dort.1
This chapter will make three main claims.
The 1618 baptism debate at the Synod of Dort transpired prior to the rise of modern racism and orientalism; therefore, its discourse should be âuntaintedâ by xenophobia produced by modern racism and orientalism.
The progressive currents within the 1618 baptism debate offer an alternative, non-polarizing, non-xenophobic way to engage difference which could be called xenogenerosity or generosity towards strangers. In the progressive currents within the 1618 baptism debate, there was recognition that the stranger possessed rights, the Christian community possessed responsibilities to the stranger, and that a link existed between baptism and manumission; this perspective might embody what could be called Christian xenogenerosity.
2 Definition of Xenophobia and Xenogenerosity
Xenophobia is a fear, an irrational fear, of the stranger. It is prejudice, bigotry or hostility toward the stranger as the Other or the outsider. Xenophobia recycles and reproduces the stranger or the Other as a threat, danger, pollutant, contagion, disease, or pathogen. Within xenophobia, the stranger functions as a subversive undermining or overthrowing the social, religious, civic, or national order. Xenophobia employs a rhetoric of protection, security or cleansing to justify its responses to the stranger which range from subordinating or marginalizing the stranger within the community to deporting the stranger from the community. These xenophobic responses produce discriminatory laws as well as regimes of victimization, violence, and violation directed at the stranger.
To describe an alternative discourse to xenophobia, a term utilized by the African-American theorist Fred Moten might be suggestive: xenogenerosity. In this chapter, xenogenerosity will be employed to characterize a practice of communal co-existence. It could be understood as the practicing of generosity toward strangers rather than practicing hostility bred by xenophobia. For Moten, thereâs a distinction between xenogenerosity and counterxenophobia in which xenogenerosity is âdispossessive availability,â an open embrace, and counterxenophobia is âpossessive enclosure,â or a closed embrace. In dialogue with Afro-British theorist Paul Gilroy, xenogenerosity, like conviviality, registers a âradical openness that brings conviviality alive [and] makes nonsense of closed, fixed, and reified identity and turns attention toward the always-unpredictable mechanism of identification.â Like Gilroyâs conviviality, xenogenerosity could be set in the context of âcosmopolitanism as a ânetwork of inter-connectedness and solidarity that could resonate across boundaries, reach across distances, and evade other cultural and economic obstacles.ââ In the Christian practice of xenogenerosity or generosity towards strangers,
3 Baptism Debate at Dort in 1618
The 1618 baptism debate at the Synod of Dort was prompted by a letter sent in 1612 from Jakarta or Batavia (now modern Indonesia) in South Asia to the Dutch classis of Amsterdam in the province of Holland.
One scholar from the early twentieth century framed the question as âWhether the children in East India [Indies], who have wholly entered into the families of Christians and who have a Christian protector, who promises to train them in the Christian faith, shall be baptized?â However, according to the 1618 contemporary English account by John Hales of the debate, the question was framed as âCan we baptize the children of Ethnicks (sic)?â Hales located a non-xenophobic term to identify non-monotheist religionists. Rather than pagan or heathen, Hales selected âethnick.â3
Key to the argument of this chapter is that John Hales, a contemporary observer to Dort, translated into English the Latin word ethnicorum as âethnick.â English Protestant authors began translating the term as âethnicksâ rather than heathens or pagans even before the Synod of Dort in 1618. During the sixteenth century, there were references to âAn ethnicke and pagan kyngâ as well as an âethnicke philosopher.â Robert Fludd (1574â1637) classified ancient Greek philosophy as âethnick philosophy.â According to Colin Kidd in sixteenth and seventeenth century English parlance, ethnic pertained to religious matters. Kidd drew this conclusion from Thomas Blountâs Glossographia which Blount compiled in 1618â19. However, Blount had more negative connotations than Robert Fludd and others. Blount defined ethnick as âheathenish, ungodly, irreligious: And may be used substantively for a heathen or gentile.â Based on the Greek word ethnos, it had been translated in English as âethnics,â ânation,â âheathen,â or âpagan.â As a term of religion, âethnickâ was regularly employed by the British as the opposite of monotheists who were Christians, Jews or
This chapter contends that the Synod of Dortâs debate about baptizing children of ethnics offers an inclusive way of framing the incorporation of new peoples outside of Europe who live in the Global South into the Reformed Christian community. Occurring prior to the rise of modern racism and orientalism during the early 1700s, this baptism debate points to a constructive manner in which difference can inform how societies perceive community and peoplehood in terms other than ancestry, land, and language, supplying an alternative to the polarizing currents within todayâs world.
The conference theme, âThe Calling of the Church in Times of Polarization,â which frames this chapter is engaged by proposing that in the 1618 debate were references to progressive practices of difference and inclusion that foster xenogenerosity or generosity towards strangers. These practices counter the practices of difference and exclusion or subordination fostered by xenophobia and hostility towards strangers. It should be noted that in the 1618 debate were other practices of differences which ranged from inclusive to exclusive and, possibly, xenophobic.
This chapterâs thesis is that the progressive currents within the 1618 Dort debate on baptizing the children of ethnics offers what the author identifies as the Reformed practice of xenogenerosity as an alternative to xenophobia; the Reformed practice of xenogenerosity recognizes that the stranger possesses rights, the Christian community possesses responsibilities to the stranger, and a link exists between baptism and manumission, with these particular rights and responsibilities being based on scripture and framed theologically.
A close examination of the 1618 baptism debate at Dort reveals the absence of key tropes related to modern racism and orientalism; these tropes cast the people of the Global South as infantile or inferior peoples. Why are racist and orientalist tropes missing from the accounts and documents of the debate? As an historian, I believe this is because the 1618 baptism debate occurred prior to the rise of modern racism during the late 1600s and of orientalism during the 1700s. Consequently, the 1618 debate at Dort provides texts that were theoretically âuntaintedâ by modern racism and orientalism, possibly, pointing to a constructive manner to engage difference.
Building upon the scholarship of George Frederickson, Cornel West, and Katherine Gerbner, this chapter identifies the rise of modern racism as a late 17th century and 18th century system co-constituted by the Enlightenment, chattel slavery, European colonialism, European imperialism, early capitalism, white supremacy, and legal tactics of the subordination and exclusion of peoples of color. The modern system of racism constructed the differences between Africans, Asians or First Peoples (Native Americans) in contradistinction to Europeans as racial, specifically in terms of the hierarchy of races. While Europeans invented modern racism to organize the way they interpreted and governed people of color, they invented Orientalism to frame the relationship between the West and Asia in terms of the dependency of Asia on the West.5
People of the Global South are races with deficits that deem them inferior in comparison to Europeans; they are inferiorâontologically, theologically, legally, politically and scientifically. People of color lack certain cognitive abilities, moral acumen, and spiritual capacity. People of color as racial or deficient appears to be absent from the 1618 baptism debate at the Synod of Dort. Consequently, the questions which will later dominate the era of modern racism were not posed during the 1618 debate on baptism at the Synod of Dort. The delegates at Dort didnât ask: Are ethnics fully human? Do ethnics have souls? Do ethnics possess the intellectual abilities to comprehend the Christian Faith sufficiently to profess the faith according to Reformed Protestant standards? Do ethnics possess the moral ability to live the Christian life as a gracious response to election by God? Can ethnics be âadoptedâ into the covenant?
How did the delegations at Dort answer âCan we baptize the children of Ethnicks?
5 Difference at the 1618 Baptism Debate at Dort
The discourse of difference at this Dort debate utilized various terms and phrases in which the children of ethnic Asians as well as their parents are portrayed. Within the debate, difference is marked in terms of distance and deficit. Distance refers to the space between one religion and another while deficit refers to what is absent in one religion in comparison to another. Difference as distance is deployed in marking mostly as strangers and once as alien:6
Difference as distance is also deployed in which they were noted as possessing outsider status over against the Christiansâ insider status:7
Difference as distance marked those âoutside the covenantâ according to two delegations as including some who even âcall on the devil himselfâ (Geldri) or
Difference as deficit is deployed in which they were noted for lacking a Christian quality or trait by being:9
While the 1612 question framed difference and othering in religious terms of being non-Christian and non-monotheistic, in the theological responses of the delegations, they framed difference in terms of being âstrangers to the covenant of graceâ or âborn outside the Church.â It should be noted that only two delegations added that they were devil worshippers; it could be argued that this was an outlier perspective among the delegations.
For the progressives at Dort, while these ethnics were designated as strangers, these Asians were not identified as a threat to the integrity of the Christian Church, Christian culture, the sacrament of baptism, nor the Reformed Christian identity. The language of fear, prejudice, bigotry or hostility was absent from the discourse of the progressives. Rather than strangers being a phobic object, an object of fear, eliciting fear, strangers were a âcounterphobic object;â they were unattached to fear; they operated outside the minefield of fear. The progressivesâ discourse extended beyond the counter-xenophobic with its possessive enclosure posture to the non-xenophobic, possibly even xenogenerous with its dispossessive availability.10
6 Religious Differences
Being characterized as strangers, aliens, outsiders, unclean, even devil-worshippers is drawn from the vocabulary of difference as distance and deficit. How the delegates deployed, though, this vocabulary within their various
Here are three Reformed Christian frameworks on the non-monotheistic stranger:
The Xenophobic Exclusion of the Stranger as Threat.
The Xenophobic Incorporation of the Stranger as a Subordinate.
The Xenogenerous Inclusion of the Stranger as Peer.
Deploying the vocabulary of stranger within the xenophobic exclusion of the stranger as threat emphasizes the stranger in terms of difference as indecipherable or unintelligible. As indecipherable in this logic, they are to be excluded from joining the Reformed Christian community because of the threat that they pose. In this framework, the stranger is irredeemable, permanently outside the covenant, and baptism is to be prohibited for them. While the xenophobic exclusion of the stranger as threat is totally absent from the 1618 debate on baptism at Dort, the other two frameworks are present: stranger as subordinate and stranger as peer. These two frameworks are based on a relationship between the stranger and the Reformed Christian community, recognizing that the stranger possess certain rights and the Reformed Christian community possesses certain responsibilities.11
7 Religious Rights of Strangers
What minimizes the xenophobia in the second framework that cast the stranger as a subordinate is the recognition that strangers possess rights. What makes the third framework, the progressive option, non-xenophobic or xenogenerous is the commitment to equality as well as the recognition of the strangerâs rights. Both the xenophobic incorporation of the stranger as subordinate and the xenogenerous inclusion of the stranger as peer argue for the rights of non-Christian or Ethnic Asians. The Othering of non-Christian Asians did not lead to the stripping or denial of all rights.
There are four groups of strangers discussed in the 1618 baptism debate at Dort: adults, âadolescents,â children around age eight, and infants. Each group of strangers possessed an array of rights, ranging from parental rights, individual rights of conscience and free-will regarding religious faith, the right to Christian instruction to the right to be baptized as any European could. While
For every delegation at Dort, Ethnic Asian adults possessed the right to be baptized. For Ethnic Asian adults requesting baptism, baptism could occur after they had been catechized and professed the Christian faith. These adults also possessed the right to reject baptism and Christianity; baptism and Christianity should not be imposed on them. Ethnic Asian adults possessed the right of conscience and free-will regarding religious faith. Moreover, Ethnic Asian parents possess parental rights. According to delegations such as the Hassaic Brethren, non-Christian birth parents possessed particular rights. If the birth parents are living, they should approve of all adoptions; children cannot be involuntary taken from birth parents at the whim of the colonial state. The birth parents can opt for a semi-adoption instead of a full adoption. In the case of retaining full or partial parental rights, Asian Ethnic parents reserve the right to approve or prohibit the baptism of their infant; the birth parentâs consent needs to be required, according to the Hassaic delegation. If the birth parents can agree to a full adoption by Christian families, according to the British delegation, they are ârenouncingâ their parental rights over the infant and transferring to the adopted parents all parental rights.12
Non-Christian Asian adolescents possess rights of conscience and free-will in regard to religious faith. Non-Christian adolescents must be granted the right to âoppose the doctrine passed on to them and resist baptism,â according to the British delegation. They possess the right to request baptism after they have been catechized and professed. Ethnic Asian adolescents may request baptism âwithout consultation with their [birth] parentsâ and they may even go against their birth parentsâ wishes. This is because âthe right and power of parents does not extend to such a degree that they are able to give to their children who have reached years of discretion any order of prescription in the case of religion that goes against the word of God and their own conscience.â Additionally, the Hassaic Brethren argue that âneither can the children abide by the judgement and opinion of their parents in the manner of religion, but rather are they bound to look to the wish of God and the judgement of their own conscience.â Like adults, Ethnic Asian adolescents may also reject the Christian faith and âresist baptism.â They should not to be baptized against their conscience nor their will because the British delegation contended that Ethnic Asian adolescents possess the right of conscience and the right to exercise their will in regard to religion.13
Ethnic Asians possessed religious rights. While they were âstrangers to the covenant.â Their rights ranged from parental rights, individual rights of conscience and free-will regarding religious faith, the right to Christian instruction to the right to be baptized. Whether as a subordinate or a peer, Ethnic Asians were members of the community to a certain degree. Baptism bestowed more rights, as Robert Shell, as these Asians were enrolled in the church and society.
8 Religious Responsibilities to Strangers
Moderates and progressives both argued for the responsibilities of the Christian heads of household, Christian parents, and Reformed congregations to the non-Christian Asians. The Othering of non-Christian Asians did not lead
As stated above, according to Deodati, slaveholders had the responsibility of reclassifying baptized enslaved people as âhired servants.â For progressives like the delegates from Great Britain, it was âthe duty of the father of the family to presentâ adopted infants of Ethnic Asian parents âto be baptizedâ and âthe duty of the ministerâ to baptize these infants. There also existed the responsibility to educate all members of the household, including non-Christian Asians, in the Christian faith.15
With rights and responsibility being vital to the relationship between Reformed Christians and Ethnic Asians, the two Reformed Christian frameworks of the stranger as subordinate and the stranger as peer can be better contextualized and made legible within the scholarly conversation.
9 The Xenophobic Incorporation of the Stranger as Subordinate
The xenophobic incorporation of the stranger as subordinate captures the conservative and moderate positions. For these positions, the adult and adolescent âstrangersâ can join the Reformed Christian community but under an additional set of rules than those assigned to Europeans. The catechetical education of Ethnic Asians needs to be longer. They must answer catechetical questions with answers in their own words. It might be best if they also expressed âprivately and publicly the rationale of their faithâ in Christ, in the words of the Palatine delegation. However, the conservatives unlike the moderates categorically deny baptism to the children of non-Christian Asian parents.16
While moderates believed that the infants of non-Christian parents who were adopted into a Christian family could be baptized, baptism, though, should be postponed until adolescence to minimize them deserting Christianity. If baptism was not postponed for these infants adopted by Christian families, two necessary conditions had to be addressed. First, the congregation had to be warned in advance of the upcoming baptism. Second, the heads of households as the sponsors had to guarantee publicly and in writing their commitments to the rearing and protecting of the infant in the Christian faith and community. The Bremen theologians required a record of these sponsorsâ vows: âlet
Fear of the newly baptized deserting the faith later in life led to Ethnic Asians being held in a subordinate position within the Christian community since they were âstrangers to the covenant of graceâ according to the conservatives and moderates. The xenophobic incorporation of the stranger as subordinate with added requirements for baptism above what was required of Europeans was deemed necessary by conservatives and moderates as a preventive measure to safeguard the Christian faith against these group of Asians recanting the faith.
10 The Xenogenerous Inclusion of the Stranger as Peer
For the progressives, the xenogenerous inclusion of the stranger as peer best described their framework. They welcomed the baptism of infants, children, adolescents, and adults. All were welcomed!
Regarding infants adopted into Christian families, progressives such as the delegates of Great Britain, adoption by a Christian was equivalent to being born of Christian parents. In this Christian household, the adopted infants became âpartakers in the spiritual blessings which was contained in the Church.â Consequently, these adopted infants âcan be seen to enjoy almost the same right as those in the Church.â This is because âto have been so received into the families of Christians and indeed into the Church is a form of profession, just as also to be born in the Church.â The Christian adoption of infants of non-Christian Asian parents operates âexactly as if they [these infants] had been born of Christian parents.â
The Hassaic Brethren added when parental rights are legitimately transferred from the non-Christian Asian birth parents to the Christian parents these infants âindeed cease, as it were, to beâ the children of their birth parents because âthrough their adoption by Christians, and indeed after their adoption are rightly reckoned as members of the same Church of which those Christians who have adopted them as sons are themselves members.â In a sense, then, adoption by a Christian parent âsanctifiesâ the infant, making them members of the Covenant and eligible candidates for infant baptism.18
⦠should be baptized, if they were rightfully adopted into Christian Families, and that their parents had altogether resigned them into the hands of the Christians. They grounded themselves upon the examples of Abraham circumcising all that were of his Family; of Paul baptizing whole households, of the primitive Church recorded in S. Austin, who shews, that anciently children that were exposititii were wont to be taken up by the Christians and baptized.19
The English delegation crafted an affirmative response to the query from South Asia, framing their argument in terms of Reformed covenantal theology wherein the sign of baptism was analogous to circumcision for Jews. The English delegation interpreted Abrahamâs act of circumcising everyone in his household, whether they were his biological kin or purchased household servants, as biblical proof that the sign of the covenant extended to all persons who were members of a Christian household. Genealogical connections between the Christian head of the household and the members of the household were not a prerequisite to being included in the covenant. Ethnic infants and children, while not born into the covenant because they were not born to Christian parents, could be âadoptedâ into the covenant and were included by virtue of their membership in the household.
In addition to the Abraham case, this inclusive faction appealed to Augustine who chronicled how Christians rescued abandoned ethnic children, incorporated these ethnic children into their household, and had them baptized. They also took Apostle Paul as a precedent in his baptism of all members of households; they assumed that since infants and underage children were in an average first-century household, they were also baptized. They argued that since such ethnic infants and children lacked the maturity to request baptism, they needed a Christian sponsor to agree to commit to support and encourage them in living the Christian life. The sponsor had to be a Christian married couple who would adopt the underage child or infant through proper channels, becoming the Christian parents of the baptismal candidate. The baptismal candidate would then become a member of a Christian family.
For the delegates at Dort, when non-Christian Asian parents converted to Christianity from their ethnic religions and were baptized, they were no longer ethnics; they now were Christians. Their children of newly baptized parents became part of the Covenant as children born of Christian parents. These children
11 The Topic of Baptism and the Global South after Dort
After the Synod of Dort, inquiries from the Global South continued to be sent to the classis of Amsterdam, from Brazil in South America in 1637, Curaçao in the Caribbean in 1644, Luanda in Central Africa in 1644, and Asia. A letter from Brazil which was sent by 1637 was addressed by the Classis of Amsterdam on the 16th of November in 1637. On the issue of baptizing âadoptedâ Native Americans, Africans, and others in Brazil, there were Reformed Christians in Brazil who advocated for, and, possibly, there were clergy who baptized adopted ethnic children. Letters from Curaçao in the Caribbean and from Angola on the central African coast were read before the classis of Amsterdam on the 7th of November in 1644. Reverends John Backerus and Jacobus Beth wrote from Curaçao and Angola, respectively. It appeared that each sought for the authority to baptize the children of Ethnic parents.21
The situation of Rev. Beaumont in Curaçao and Rev. Henry Selyns in New Amsterdam involved African parents who had been baptized and were requesting baptism for their infants and young children, and so differed from the issue that prompted the 1618 Synod of Dort discussion in which Dutch adopted parents where making the request. Probably, it was the African parents who were also prompting the issue in Angola. For New Amsterdam, Selyns specifically states: âAs to baptisms, the Negroes occasionally request, that we should baptize their children â¦.â22
While serving in Batavia, Rev. Adriaan Jacobszoon Hulsebos wrote to the classis regarding baptizing the children of ethnics because different practices were being performed within Reformed Protestant congregations in Asia. In Sri Lanka and the Moluccas, the Reformed Churches adopted an inclusionary baptism policy, opening baptism to all people regardless of their parentage or genealogy. According to Sutarman Soediman Patronadi, âmass baptisms were
The ordinance of 4 May 1622, derived from strict Christian principles rather than Roman law, consisted of nine articles, supplemented with directions for the proper âgovernance and upbringing of slaves.â It decreed that the âalienation of male and female slavesâ could only be done âfor good and sufficient reasons.â Such transactions had to be duly registered before a magistrate or legal authority. Christians could not sell or alienate slaves of any sort to âpeople outside of Christendom.â Unbelievers in Company territories could not buy, receive or hold title to slaves from Christians. â¦Christian slaveholders were to treat all their slaves with âcivility, benevolence, and reasonableness,â âto care for them as their own children,â and to raise and instruct them in the Christian religion that âthey might come to receive baptism.â Non-Christian masters could not deny their slaves instruction in the Christian religion and, were they to become Christians, their owners would have to part with them at a âreasonable priceâ either to a Christian or to the Company itself.24
It is unbefitting for Christians to engage in this rough, confusing, dangerous, and unreasonable trade, adding to a personâs troubles and being an executor of his torments. Instead, if one desires to bring forth good from that evil, one should purchase him [the slave] in order to be manumitted and freed from such great servitude to cruel tyrants, and, if possible, instruct him in the Christian religion.25
The Christian practice of xenogenerosity was seemingly present within some Reformed communities of Asia, Africa, and the Americas in the generation following the Synod of Dort. This included in the New Netherlands and Virginia Colony honoring the bond between baptism and manumission in certain cases.
12 Conclusion
While scholars always recognize the Synod of Dort was a pan-European and solely European Reformed confessional council, I would like to argue in light of what was discussed in this chapter that this 1618 debate on baptism could be interpreted as an inter-continental council with European topics as well as pastoral issues of Asians. Could Asians also be ârecognizedâ as âpresentâ as âparticipants?â The Asian âparticipantsâ were present in terms of how their perspectives, concerns, and voice were embedded in the 1612 pastoral case which promoted the baptism debate and how they were also âpresentâ in the baptism debate by being the subject of the deliberations. While I would have preferred them being physically present with the right of voice and vote, I would like to encourage us to recognize the significance of them being âdiscursively present.â
After Dort, the Christian practice of xenogenerosity increased the Reformed Protestants of Color population during the 1600s in the Americas and, especially, in Asia.
One can convincingly argue that the 1618 Baptism Debate at the Synod of Dort lacks the xenophobic and racist tropes produced by modern racism and orientalism in discussing Ethnic Asians with ethnic as a religious category. So, it does offer a way to engage difference in a non-xenophobic direction.
The progressives during the 1618 baptism debate at Dort with their xenogenerous inclusion of the stranger as peer offered an alternative, non-polarizing, non-xenophobic way to engage difference and the Ethnic Asian as a stranger.
Since it could be argued that the progressives within the 1618 Baptism debate with their xenogenerous inclusion of the stranger as peer recognized rights of the stranger, the responsibilities of the Reformed Christian community to the stranger, and a link exist between baptism and manumission, they might be deemed as practicing what could be called Christian xenogenerosity towards the Ethnic Asian.
Does a Christian practice of xenogenerosity offer a way out of our polarizing, xenophobic times? The progressive currents during Dortâs 1618 baptism debate supplies content to a Christian practice of xenogenerosity that could be generative for our times. Difference as distinctive rather in terms of deficiencies or distant is promising as a concept. Choice and rights belonging to strangers to decide whether they wanted to seek admission to the Christian community is a positive maneuver. The Christian community being tasked by Reformed Protestants to honor and process the request is an inclusive attitude.
The Christian practice of xenogenerosity redefining the symmetry between ancestry and belonging is a key corrective. Like salvation, life and community are gifts of God. Maybe within the Christian practice of xenogenerosity the host is God and we humans are Godâs guest; there is just space for divine hospitality. Rather than people, even Christian people, adopting the logic of the host and the guests, the Christian practice of xenogenerosity challenges us to welcome the stranger as a peer with rights, organizing the Christian communities with responsibilities to the stranger and as generous, inclusive spaces where a common humanity unites all as peers and?.
As a prelude to a post-xenophobic future, the progressive currents of Dort possibly offer us a way forward. We can build on Bakhtin to understand that in the xenogenerous church and society is birthed âa second world and second life outside officialdom,â a reality outside the reigning logic of xenophobia, the politics of fear, the victimization of the stranger, a reality anticipated by the progressives at the Synod of Dort during the 1618 baptism debate.
Possibly, âThe Calling of the Church in Times of Polarizationâ is to add the practice of Christian xenogenerosity to our other practices. Can we consider choice as belonging to the migrant, the immigrant, the asylum seeker, or the economic refugee to decide whether they want to seek admission to our country or Church? Is the Christian community tasked with honoring, processing, and lobbying their requests? Since the Christian practice of xenogenerosity redefines the symmetry between ancestry and belonging as key to Christian community, does this also apply to national communities, too? As engagers of the Synod of Dort, in practicing Christian xenogenerosity, do we welcome the stranger as peers to our Christian and civic communities as generous, inclusive spaces?
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Henry E. Dosker, Review of doctoral thesis, âDe Pro Acta der Dordtsche Synode in 1618. Academisch Proefschrift, ter verkryging van den graad van Doctor in de Heilige Godgeleerdheidâ (T. de Vries Dz. Rotterdam: 1914) in Princeton Theological Review 12 (1914), 661â662; John Hales, Golden Remains, 17 (3 December 1618).
Oxford English Dictionary, 1545 Udall, Erasm. Par. Pref. 3; 1581: Marbeck, Bk. of Notes 61; Robert Fludd, Mosaical Philosophy, Grounded upon the Essentiall Truth or Eternal Sapience (London: Humphrey Moseley Printer, 1659), 30 at https://archive.org/stream/mosaicallphiloso00flud/; Colin Kidd, British Identity Before Nationalism and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600â1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 34.
George M. Frederickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, 2015), 26â39; Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982, 2002), 55â57; Katharine Gerbner, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 74â75; Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
Jonathan Z. Smith, âDifferential Equations: On Constructing the âOther,ââ Thirteenth Annual University Lecture in Religion (Arizona State University, Tempe, 1992); Shell (ed.), De Ethnicorum, 56, 64; 16, 15; 16; 54; 51, 54.
Shell (ed.), De Ethnicorum, 35; 66; 9; 52; 52.
Shell (ed.), De Ethnicorum, 43; 5.
Shell (ed.), De Ethnicorum, 9, 35; 43; 61; 47; 67.
Moten, Universal.
On types of difference see Smith, âDifferential.â
Shell (ed.), De Ethnicorum, 8, 10.
Shell (ed.), De Ethnicorum, 3, 11, 3.
Shell (ed.), De Ethnicorum 4, 17; on a discussion of the Synod of Dort and ethnic baptism see: Robert Carl-Heinz Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652â1838 (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press / University Press of New England, 1994), 334â348, 350â356, 362â365.
Shell (ed.), De Ethnicorum, 4, 17.
Shell (ed.), De Ethnicorum, 6.
Shell (ed.), De Ethnicorum.
Shell (ed.), De Ethnicorum.
Hales, Golden Remains, 17 (letter of 3 December 1618).
Shell (ed.), De Ethnicorum.
âActs of the Classis of Amsterdamâ in Documents of the Senate of the State of New York, Vol. 14, 112 (16 November 1637); Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York (1902), 186 (7 November 1644); Acts of the Classis of Amsterdamâ in Documents of the Senate of the State of New York, Vol. 14, 112 (16 November 1637); Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York (1902), 186 (7 November 1644).
Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York (1902), 509.
Sutarman Soediman Patronadi, Sadrachâs Community and Its Contextual Roots: A Nineteenth Century Javanese Expression of Christianity (Amsterdam: Brill, 1990), 27; History of Christianity in Indonesia, eds. Jan Sihar Aritonang and Karel Steenbrink (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 105â107.
Markus P. M. Vink, âA Work of Compassion? Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Centuryâ (2003), http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/2005/history_cooperative/www.historycooperative.org/proceedings/seascapes/vink.html (accessed 20 March 2019).
Vink, âA Work of Compassion?â