be the means by which God’s presence was recognized. This means that the idea that God was somehow a petty ethnic cleanser24 is to be rejected. It also suggests that Christians who take these elements seriously need to reflect on how it is that our worship and communal life are open to including the stranger, and that indeed our structures continue to remind us of this. Second, the positive attitude towards foreigners also recognized that the people of God were not defined on the basis of ethnicity