Amy Oden
God’s Welcome, Our Welcome

July 18 - 24 

Maggie Kahin, founder of Ring Lake Ranch, once declared: “All are really God’s children. All will be received here in the search to understand one another and ourselves. In this one spot to which I’ve been led, Christ will not have to weep for his divided people. Here, the broken circle of humanity may join.”

She was reflecting the steady call from the Bible to be people of hospitality:

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.” (1 Peter 4:8-9)

“Love one another with mutual affection. . . Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.” (Romans 12:10-13)

Like most ideals, actually living hospitably takes spiritual discipline and mindfulness.

Amy Oden has written two very practical and carefully considered books about living hospitably. So we welcome her to the Ranch, delighted that she will help us understand this key virtue of an abundant life.
– Carl Koch, Director

God’s Welcome: Hospitality for a Gospel-Hungry World
Reviewed by The Rev. Endress is a pastor at Chapelwood UMC in Houston, Texas. A version of this review has appeared on his blog at www.clergyspirit.org.

Amy Oden’s new book, God’s Welcome, offers a biblical, theological and very readable reflection on how to open our lives and our churches to strangers.

Dr. Oden, a professor at Wesley Theological Seminary, doesn’t endorse the practice only because “radical hospitality” is a current buzzword for retooling stale churches, but because all people yearn to be welcomed. The need to belong and feel at home is one of the most powerful human hungers. . . .

God’s hospitality through Jesus Christ is connected to life in all of its fullness, its beauty and ugliness. Such hospitality gets into the mess of our lives, and speaks to the depth and duration of our compassion. It’s about welcoming people to a shared life and a common journey, not just to a building on a church campus. . . .

Dr. Oden says she felt compelled to write God’s Welcome in part because Christians are increasingly seen as intolerant, judgmental and closed-minded. She invites us to nurture a spirit of openness and acceptance that we practice with everyone, not just other Christians.

It’s a timely book, supplemented with study questions in each chapter for groups, individuals, preachers and teachers.

More about Amy Oden

And You Welcomed Me: A Sourcebook on Hospitality in Early Christianity by Amy Oden

Reviewed in Circuit Rider Reviews by James Noland, pastor, Good Shepherd United Methodist Church, Vienna, Virginia

Amy G. Oden’s And You Welcomed Me is subtitled “A Sourcebook on Hospitality in Early Christianity,” but it offers much more than this modest description suggests. Along with readings from a wide variety of texts, carefully culled from the formative centuries of the faith, Oden’s intelligent commentaries and her wise ordering of this little known material constitute a subtle, but persuasive, argument, suggesting that the practice of hospitality is central to Christianity.

Oden presents an expansive view of hospitality. She understands hospitality as a “particular moral stance” which enables one to “enter another’s world.” At its heart, Christian hospitality is a form of metanoia or repentance, which connects the individual to a new form of community that is based on the insight that each human being bears the image of God.

Hospitality is thus a form of worship, a way of honoring God by honoring those who bear God’s image. As such, it is an affirmative obligation, narrated in the stories of the Old Testament and displayed in the life and ministry of Jesus. In this context, Oden depicts the Eucharist as a vision of hospitality, a table fellowship that welcomes all of God’s children in a foretaste of heaven.

Oden has an impressive command of the literature, and she presents little know voices, such as that of Paula, a Roman matron who renounced her rank and privilege to live in poverty in the Holy Land, along side those that are more familiar, such as Augustine and Ambrose. This gives the work a texture of authenticity and makes for interesting reading.

In Her Words illustrates the contributions made to contemporary Christian theology by the increasing number of female theologians. Oden compiles selections from the writings of major female theologians from the early church through the present. The older selections have been translated into modern English. 

Each selection is accompanied by a brief introduction outlining its historical and theological context. Selections from the early church include Perpetua, The Martyrdom of Crispina, The Martyrdom of Agape, Irene, and Chione; from the monastic and middle period are Clare of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, Leoba, Julian of Norwich, and Catherine of Siena; and post-1500 C.E. include Teresa of Avila, Jane de Chantal, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Georgia Harkness.