Inclusion and the Church Door: Threshold Theology

‘There is a theology of the threshold that we have forgotten. Every church begins with a doorway, but few of us consider what that means. We pass through it on Sunday mornings without reflection, assuming that the real action begins once we are inside — at the altar, the pulpit, the font. But inclusion, if it is to be more than a moral slogan, begins precisely here: at the point of entry.

The door is not simply a boundary between the sacred and the secular. It is a sacramental sign of what the Church is meant to be — a space that both gathers and sends, shelters and opens, holds and releases. In the earliest basilicas, the narthex was the place for catechumens and penitents: those not yet admitted to the Eucharist. The door marked liminality, a space of longing. But as Christian architecture evolved, the door began to signify not separation but invitation. “Knock, and the door will be opened to you” became not metaphor but architecture.

To enter a church is to enact a theology of access.

Inclusion, at its heart, is about what happens at the threshold — who gets to cross it, who feels able to, and who is left waiting outside. It is easy to write inclusion policies, to speak of “welcoming all.” But to live an inclusive ecclesiology is to attend to thresholds — the physical, social, and spiritual ones that mark belonging and exclusion.

The Church has often treated its doors as one-way systems. We welcome people in, but we seldom allow the world to shape us in return. Yet if we look to the Gospels, the door is always two-way. Christ says, “I am the door” — not the guard. His body becomes the threshold itself. To enter through Him is to participate in a continual exchange between inside and outside, heaven and earth, self and other.

To speak of inclusion, then, is not to erase difference or pretend that all boundaries are gone. The door remains; it is still a threshold. But its purpose is transformation, not control. The Church door should not say “You must already belong,” but “Here, belonging is made possible.”

Architecturally, that insight has deep resonance. Think of how many church doors remain inaccessible — up steps, narrow, heavy, hidden. These are not simply design issues; they are theological failures. A locked door, or one that cannot be opened without assistance, denies the Church’s own confession of who Christ is. It proclaims a Gospel with conditions attached.

But the theology of the threshold can renew our imagination. A threshold is porous: air, sound, and light cross it freely. It is the space of encounter, of first impressions, of decision. When we open the door to another person, we enact the Paschal mystery — the movement from death (closedness) to life (welcome). Every open door is a miniature resurrection.

What would it mean if the Church understood inclusion in these terms — as a spirituality of thresholds? It would mean that inclusion is not a finished state (“we are inclusive”) but a continuous act of conversion: of becoming open, again and again, to those who approach. It would mean recognising that inclusion is not about expanding the inside, but about sanctifying the space between.

In this sense, the threshold is the true altar of the modern Church. It is where grace first meets the world — often before a word of liturgy is spoken. The conversations on the steps, the hesitant first entry of a person unsure they belong, the return of someone who left long ago — these are sacramental acts as holy as any prayer.

In the Benedictine tradition, the porter of the monastery is instructed to receive each guest “as Christ Himself.” The porter stands at the threshold, embodying precisely this spirituality of inclusion: not as a warden, but as a witness to divine hospitality. Benedict understood that holiness begins not at the centre of the cloister but at its edges.

Perhaps inclusion today requires reclaiming that vocation — to be keepers of the threshold, not its guards. To open the doors wider, yes, but also to honour the courage of those who cross them.

Because every threshold, ultimately, mirrors the one Christ crossed in His resurrection — the stone rolled back, the tomb opened, the light pouring out into the morning. The first Easter began with an open door. The rest of Christian life is a matter of walking through it.’

Image:  with thanks to antiochchurchnc.org