Woolman Lecture Series - The Politics of Christian Hospitality

Malone University is pleased to announce its 2010 Woolman Lecturer, Beth Newman, Ph.D., professor of theology and ethics, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, March 1-2, 2010 in the Johnson Center for Worship and the Fine Arts, located at 2600 Cleveland Avenue NW in Canton. Both lectures will begin at 7:30 p.m. Dr. Newman will also be speaking at the University’s chapel service Tuesday, March 2 at 10 a.m. in the Sanctuary of The Johnson Center. Her chapel address is entitled Worshipping with Helmets.

Beth Newman, Ph.D., is the author of Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers (Brazos Press, 2007). Professor Newman writes a bi-weekly column for the Associated Baptist Press, and has published numerous articles in theology and ethics. She currently serves on the board of The Ekklesia Project, the steering committee for Young Scholars in the Baptist Academy, and the editorial board of Studies in Baptist History and Thought. Professor Newman has been named a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology for 2009. She also taught at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana, for twelve years.

Schedule:

Monday, March 1

7:30 PM: Lecture One, Practicing Hospitality When No One’s at Home
Johnson Center for Worship and the Fine Arts
Room 106

Many people today equate hospitality with friendliness, a well-set table, and pleasant conversation. Others, in the “hospitality industry,” use it as a marketing technique to sell hotels, cruises, and much else. Some associate hospitality with tolerance and pluralism. By contrast with these distortions, Dr. Newman will examine how Trinitarian worship is the necessary place where Christians both receive and are enabled to extend God’s own hospitality, a Divine hospitality that is at once both strange and abundant.

Tuesday, March 2

7:30 PM: Lecture Two, What Divides Us Matters More Than What Unites Us: The Politics of Hospitality
Johnson Center for Worship and the Fine Arts
Room 106

Our current politics and economics are often more decisive for unity amongst Christians than the unity of the church. How does the politics of Christian hospitality sustain unity in the Body of Christ in a way that contemporary political and economic practices do not?

All programs are free and open to the public