A couple of months ago I was at a Lutheran seminary—I won’t say which one—for a day-long session with a bunch of other pastors. Thinking it might be interesting to keep other company during lunch in the seminary’s cafeteria, I flagged down a student and asked if I could sit with her. She gladly agreed and we had a nice chat. But as the table filled in with more students—of many races and both genders—I found myself utterly ignored by the newcomers.

The original student did not introduce me. None of the other students introduced themselves to me, nor did they ask who I was. They didn’t even attempt to include me in the conversation. Feeling alternately rebuffed and annoyed, I injected myself into the conversation several times, hoping this would procure some acknowledgment. It didn’t; I got some blank gazes, though. I wondered who they took me for: maybe a fellow student whom they were embarrassed not to recognize so far in the school year? I was in casual dress so there were no signs to indicate that I’m a pastor, though it disturbs me to think that a clerical collar would’ve gotten attention where my common humanity did not.

Afterwards I was imagining that all of these students regularly assert in their classes the importance of welcoming the stranger and alien in their midst, and grieve how terribly the church fails in its hospitality to newcomers. The irony is so obvious I need not belabor it. But what is the gap here—one of theology or one of basic civility? I have long thought that Miss Manners ought to be required reading in pastoral theology courses. Whatever her evangelical convictions, Miss Manners would certainly not allow a stranger and alien to sit neglected all the way through lunch.