The Temple will host an Interfaith Shabbat with guest Speaker Dr. Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos on Friday, February 17, at 7:30 p.m. in the Waller Chapel. Dr. van Wijk-Bos will discuss “Between Faiths – an exploration of the disposition toward the ‘other’ in an interfaith context.”
The meditation will focus on Exodus 23:9: “A stranger you must not oppress. You yourselves know the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The congregation will consider this instruction in a framework of religious “otherness.”
Dr. van Wijk-Bos is Dora Pierce Professor of Bible and Faculty Liaison for the Women’s Center at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Louisville, where she has taught for the past 34 years.
Ordained to the professional ministry in 1977 in Rochester, NY, at the Downtown United Presbyterian Church, she has served the church through teaching, lecturing, writing and speaking for the rights of those who are denied full citizenship in religion and society. She has participated in interfaith conferences and discussion groups, most recently at the University of Lund, Sweden, during a conference called “Stereotyping the Other.”
She is the parent of Kim and Martin Bos and grandmother of their daughter Emma Claire Bos. Her husband, David Bos, who was a retired Presbyterian minister, author, poet and activist, died last February.
Among her writings are the books: Making Wise the Simple – The Torah in Christian Faith and Practice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) and Reading Samuel (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 2012). Her next book with Eerdmans, entitled: A People And A Land – Reading the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, is in the planning stage.