Book: Welcoming the Stranger

Welcoming the Stranger by Denise Cottrell-Boyce is published by Darton, Longman and Todd.

Welcoming the Stranger explores how the Bible can help us better to understand our increasingly multi-cultural world and society, especially in light of those people fleeing war, poverty and oppression. What does the Bible have to say about xenophobia? How can we contribute to the rebuilding of a world of peace in our lives and local communities today?

We are living through a period of extraordinary mass migration, with many displaced by war and destitution. In response to the rapidly increasing numbers of asylum-seekers coming to our shores, the government has placed significant numbers of them in the poor depopulated towns and cities of post-industrial Britain.

Welcoming the Stranger takes the Bible as a pathway through the moral and emotional issues thrown up by this new normal, exploring the desperation that drives people from all that is beloved and familiar. But it also addresses the fear of those whose streets, schools and shops have suddenly been populated by people who speak, dress, eat and worship in unfamiliar ways.

For all of us, the walls and ceilings of our emotional safe-houses are familiarity and predictability. For migrants and their host communities these cannot be relinquished without pain. In the face of this pain - and the division it can cause - some of us seek to champion one side or the other.

In this bible study, Cottrell-Boyce seeks to show that there is a more embracing approach. We can look at familiar passages with a new eye, seeing the stories of great biblical heroes from a variety of perspectives. We can examine both our emotional as well as our moral responses to the Sermon on the Mount. We are invited to ask who would be the reviled Samaritan in our own personal telling of Jesus' great parable. Welcoming the Stranger invites us to understand all the players in this global drama.

Denise Cottrell-Boyce was born in Birmingham. She studied theology at Keble College Oxford and she has been a catechist for 30 years. Since 2008 she has been a volunteer with MRANG - a charity for pre-and post-natal asylum-seekers, supporting and accompanying women through a variety of practical and emotional situations. She co-created The Nativity, a BBC Radio 4 Christmas play involving school children from Northern Ireland and starring Liam Neeson. Her Christmas 2020 script, Lockdown Nativity, was performed by large numbers of schools around the world as a fundraiser for Mary's Meals. Welcoming the Stranger is her first book.

Welcoming the Stranger is part of the series, How the Bible can Help us Understand.

'The Bible,' says Pope Francis, 'is not a collection of books for the benefit of a privileged few. It belongs to those called to hear its message and to recognise themselves in its words.' The new How the Bible Can Help Us Understand series, inspired by the Revised New Jerusalem Bible (published July 2019), is designed to help us explore these words together, today.

Each book in the series asks what the Bible has to say about an important aspect of our lives, and can be read either privately or as part of a small study group. The authors offer thoughts and questions for reflection, prayers, and suggestions for considering a topic more deeply.

The other books in the series are:

Approaching the End of Life by Virginia Moffatt (£7.99, 27th February 2020)
Forgiveness by Frank Cottrell-Boyce (£7.99, 27th February 2020)
Illness, Disability and Caring by Bernadette Meaden (£7.99, 27th August 2020)

For more information see: www.dartonlongmantodd.co.uk/titles/2272-9780232534238-welcoming-the-stranger