- Forum gives voice to three important women of the New Testament
- Hospitality theme of two-day November conference
- To Read: SPEAKING FOR OURSELVES: Voices of Biblical Women by Katerina Katsarka Whitley
- To Read: EXCLUSION AND EMBRACE: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation by Volf, Miroslav
Forum gives voice to three important women of the New Testament
[ENS, Washington, October 5, 2004] - Wednesday’s Forum in the Great Hall at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C., continues October 6, from 7-8p.m. with "The Voices of Mary, Martha and Mary Magdalene" with Katerina Whitley.
Whitley, church journalist and author of several books including “Seeing for Ourselves: Biblical Women Who Met Jesus,” blends imagination with biblical narrative in a series of compelling monologues to give voice to three important women of the New Testament: Mary Magdalene and the sisters Martha and Mary of Bethany.
For more information, call 202-363-4119 or visit http://www.columba.org/
Hospitality theme of two-day November conference
[ENS, Convent Station, October 5, 2004] - Xavier Center on the campus of the College of St. Elizabeth in Convent Station, New Jersey, will be the site of the November 5-6 “Entertaining Angels” conference.
Geared toward congregations interested in attracting and welcoming new members to their church, the conference will focus on hospitality in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Christ in the stranger's guise, the needs of newcomers, and components of successful hospitality programs.
Keynote speaker will be the Rev .Canon Elizabeth Geitz, who is the author of the best selling book, “Entertaining Angels: Hospitality Programs for the Caring Church.” Geitz serves as Canon for Ministry Development in the Diocese of New Jersey, and has been a keynote speaker in numerous dioceses as well as at the Episcopal Church Women’s Triennial Conference. Her next book, from Church Publishing, will address evangelism in a pluralistic world and is due out in early 2005.
For more information and registration visit http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/churchgrowth/
Note: The following titles are available from the Episcopal Book and Resource Center, 815 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017: 800-334-7626; http://www.episcopalbookstore.org/
- To Read: SPEAKING FOR OURSELVES: Voices of Biblical Women by Katerina Katsarka Whitley (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Morehouse Publishing, 1998; 115 pages; $10.95)
From the publisher: “There are many powerful women in the Bible, but their descriptions are almost always tantalizingly brief. If they had had the chance to tell their own stories in their own voices, what would thy have said? Basing her interpretation of these women on extensive research, Katerina Whitley puts herself in their shoes, giving today’s listeners a fuller understanding of each of their stories.
Katerina Katsarka Whitley, born in Thessaloniki, Greece, now lives in North Carolina. She has worked as a church journalist for the past two decades, and she performs these monologues regularly across the country.
- To Read: EXCLUSION AND EMBRACE: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation by Volf, Miroslav ($22.00)
From the publisher: “Life at the end of the twentieth century presents us with a disturbing reality. Otherness, the simple fact of being different in some way, has come to be defined as in and of itself evil. Miroslav Volf contends that if the healing word of the gospel is to be heard today, Christian theology must find ways of speaking that address the hatred of the other. Reaching back to the New Testament metaphor of salvation as reconciliation, Volf proposes the idea of embrace as a theological response to the problem of exclusion. Increasingly we see that exclusion has become the primary sin, skewing our perceptions of reality and causing us to react out of fear and anger to all those who are not within our (ever-narrowing) circle. In light of this, Christians must learn that salvation comes, not only as we are reconciled to God, and not only as we "learn to live with one another,” but as we take the dangerous and costly step of opening ourselves to the other, of enfolding him or her in the same embrace with which we have been enfolded by God.
Miroslav Volf, a Yale University theologian, has won the 2002 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for his book.
