In Christian circles the work of peace and reconciliation is put forward as a something to which all Christians should aspire. That is, to be Christian is to be called to make peace with one another and the world. This call has a long history revolving around the early church’s interpretation of Jesus’ death as an act of reconciliation between God and humanity. As God did for us, so must we do for the world. Does this admonition extend to Christians who reject the idea that Jesus was physically resurrected? Is a resurrection story essential to the practice of reconciliation?

In my exploration over the past ten years of humanistic rather than supernatural ways of being Christian— Christian in the sense of deeply owning my Christian heritage— the call to reconciliation has grown rather than diminished in its importance to me. One of the few truly universal teachings across religions is the admonition to offer hospitality to strangers. The call to reconciliation makes this a little bit harder but no less universal: offer hospitality to the estranged.

This month the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) broke their silence on the three-year investigation of their activities by the Vatican. When asked whether this counts as a “win” for the nuns, LCWR president Sharon Holland said, “I don’t believe in saying anybody ‘won.’ I think the church won.” What I love about this response is the way any past enmity falls apart in the sentence. “Us” and “them” become one in “the church,” one body, one family, whole. In the same month eight churches in Fountains Hills, Arizona, launched an attack against The Fountains United Methodist Church. In response, The Fountains has committed to “err on the side of grace as we move ahead” and members of other religious groups have committed to coming to The Fountains in a show of support. The outcome remains to be seen.

As a foster and now adoptive parent, I have focused on practicing peace by healing local hurts, by helping families make peace with one another. I also had the privilege of working briefly with a nonprofit that supports family reconciliation in Idaho. Ironically, as often as Idaho is criticized for its “failings” in response to women’s rights and abortion, its excellence in the deeply related work of adoption and foster care goes unmentioned. Idaho leads the nation in child welfare. When I worked with the system here, I had recently adopted and recently moved. I had the skill but not yet the emotional reserves to work as a facilitator for families long-term. To say I admire the people who do is an understatement. In the short time I was there, I witnessed something remarkable: I saw birth parents make peace with themselves and with partners, families, medical professionals, social workers, foster parents, even adoptive parents and vitally, their own children. I saw families discover the humanity behind the system and professionals acknowledge the humanity behind some of their “tough cases.” To the skeptics among us, yes of course, sometimes the parents failed; sometimes the family or the system failed. I’m not naïve. But I’m moved by the moments community won.

We humans feel deeply. We nurse our wounds. We get scared. We must come to terms with this in ourselves, too— little acts of personal reconciliation that lead up to the big ones with others. In 2008 I went to the United Kingdom to carry out a Fulbright project on the many fascinating interfaith activities going on there. I thought I’d bring back what I learned to the United States and make good on it. Early on, I sat down with the leader of a highly conservative religious group in Lancashire who dismissed such work at the outset: “People who do interfaith are already interfaith.” He felt there was no place for people like himself who feel, with all due respect, that they already belong to the community that holds the full truth. That threatened to derail my project right from the start: if such people weren’t open even to the UK’s excellent interfaith programs and networks, then what? How can you come to terms with someone who won’t walk through the door?

It turns out that was a bit of an arrogant streak on my part. It was quite easy for me to walk through this community’s door. They welcomed me gladly. I spent several months attending their services and programs and talking with them about how they came to belong to this community and why it mattered to them. Dare I admit that I even experienced a number of meaningful spiritual moments with them? As a community of converts, they were nearly all first-generation members, so wouldn’t you know it, every single one of them was negotiating and reconciling with people of other faiths in their individual lives. A pain point they all shared was the negative reaction of family and friends to their decision to convert.

They all blamed the Church of England or the Catholic Church for this. They told me they blamed these other churches because they felt the church had unduly influenced their families to reject them. But the stories they told reveal a more complicated situation: since the pain emerged not from the church but from the things their families said and did, the church had become a buffer for reconciliation with their families. And every single one of them had reconciled with their families by the time I interviewed them. They were all, in some way, actively navigating their obligations both to their new religion and to their families, where religious differences remained ever-present.

So the “interfaith” problem was mostly a problem because the church was the scapegoat and a queerly noble one at that, for it prevented the estrangement of families. It was quite easy to engage in interfaith dialogue with all members of this community when I approached it the way I approach the reconciliation of families. We kept the focus on human beings understanding one another better, sharing what moved us (including past hurts), and not ruling out the possibility that we could be moved by something greater in one another’s presence. Rather it is on the level of the official, the leader, the public, that the interfaith problem remained unresolved. Perhaps even that could have been breached in time with strong enough personal relationships to buffer the conversation.

I began this essay by asking whether a resurrection story is necessary for the practice of reconciliation to remain vital to Christian identity. I suggested reconciliation is a natural outgrowth of the universal obligation to welcome the stranger, especially when we extend that to welcoming he or she who has been estranged— such as by supporting families who enter the child welfare system or by walking through the door of a religion that doesn’t understand why it should do the same for us. Much more could be said, but here is one final thought: reconciliation is not the same as reciprocity. Etymologically, reconciliation suggests we “regain” or “win over again” or “reunite.” It leads back most concretely to the notion of being near or with someone. We should not enter into the work of reconciliation believing that the other already wants to be near us. Reciprocity by contrast is a mix of “ebbing” and “prayer” or “request.” It ebbs and flows between two people already in close proximity. It comes after we have already been reconciled. Let us think, then, of reconciliation as the opening prayer,the petition that must begin at the beginning, with winning someone over— not to one’s own view but to nearness even in the most physical sense— and so it is an act of service, an act not of expectation but of hope.

Cassandra Farrin is the Marketing & Outreach Director of the Westar Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing religious literacy. A US-UK Fulbright Scholar, she has an M.A. in Religious Studies from Lancaster University (England) and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Willamette University. She is passionate about books and projects that in some way address the intersection of ethics and early Christian history.