Compassion between the Own and the Strange

Abstract

The voluntary work in the Christian Social Practice might contribute in a specific and fruitful way to the development of citizenship for the marginalized. Traditionally citizenship is a tradition and a discourse established to disturb and criticize the diaconia. Citizenship is supposed to be a word aiming at the inclusion of everyone, not only the ones belonging to some kind of confessional practice. Today the citizenship discussion takes up again words like belonging and participation. And therefore the question comes whether diaconia has a new contribution to citizenship. The article opens a discussion that phenomenology could open a new discussion of the contribution to citizenship from the Christian Social Practice. Compassion might be a word to articulate a common belonging to normativity.