Eucharist and Globalization: Redrawing the Borders of Eucharistic Hospitality

4.4/5 ( ratings)

The ritual of eating and drinking together is one of the most important Christian events. Often called Eucharist, Lord’s Supper, or Communion, this sacrament is about the presence of Christ transforming not only those who participate in it but also the world. In this book, the author engages this Christian liturgical act with movements of people around our globalized world and checks the sacramental borders of hospitality. The author calls our attention to the sacramental practices of Reformed churches and, from this liturgical practice, challenges Christian churches to expand the borders of hospitality. Engaging several critical lenses around the notion of the sacrament—namely, Greco-Roman meals, Calvin’s theology, and feminist and Latin American theologies—the author challenges theological and liturgical understandings of the Eucharist. He fosters an interreligious dialogue around the table and ends up using ritual theory to expand the circles of traditions, vocabularies, and practices around the sacrament. Proposing a borderless border eucharistic hospitality, the author encourages readers to ask who and where we are when we get together to eat and drink, and how this liturgical act around Jesus’ table/meal can transform the lives of the poor, our communities, societies, and the world.

“To gather around a eucharistic table is to practice participation in a world where unconditional hospitality permeates every word, sound, and action. Maybe it’s a pipe dream. Not for Carvalhaes. It is urgent, necessary, and possible. Life and death are at stake.”
—Janet Walton, Professor of Worship, Union Theological Seminary

“Carvalhaes’ work is a wonderfully fresh and thoughtful approach to the big table around which global Christianity gathers. He pushes us to take our cultural differences seriously, as we stand before the enormous gifts inherent in sharing food, drink, life, and challenge.”
—Hal Taussig, Professor of New Testament, Union Theological Seminary

“This is a book written for change—and it will surely change its readers’ notions of the eucharistic table, the borders etched across liturgical enactments, and the ritual life that opens up to us the possibility of a genuinely just transformation.”
—Christopher Elwood, Professor of Historical Theology, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary

“This is a brilliant analysis that peruses biblical, historical, and theological histories of eucharistic practice in order to point in provocative new directions about ways to reclaim the central role of Christian hospitality. Carvalhaes draws on the history of Christian tradition in order to re-appropriate it for the global world in which we live.”
—Paul Galbreath, Professor of Worship and Preaching, Union Presbyterian Seminary

Cláudio Carvalhaes was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil. A former shoeshining boy, he is also a liturgist, theologian, and artist. After serving churches in Brazil and the United States for almost ten years, Carvalhaes did his doctoral studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He has published two books and edited a third in his native Brazil. Currently, he is the Associate Professor of Worship and Liturgy at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.