Welcome as a Way of Life

"Wall's Welcome as a Way of Life is a welcome addition to the growing realization that Jean Vanier and his friends have a lot to teach us about the Lord."

--Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus, Duke Divinity School



"Benjamin Wall has made an invaluable contribution to our understanding of how the life and writings of Jean Vanier cohere in a precisely articulated vision of Jesus Christ. Wall shows why welcome and responsiveness must be central to any human community, Christian or otherwise, that we want to label 'caring.'"

--Brian Brock, Lecturer in Moral and Practical Theology, University of Aberdeen



"'Welcome,' 'hospitality,' 'community'--while trite in some theological discourses, Wall has retrieved these notions from deep within the Christian tradition with help from a source not expected to yield theological and conceptual robustness: the L'Arche 'way of life.' It's the radical otherness of L'Arche realities that moves practical theology from the margins of applicability to the center, where it will transform Christian imagination and praxis from within. Difference and vulnerability here do real theological work to generate new forms of human relationality, thanks to Welcome as a Way of Life."

--Amos Yong, Professor of Theology and Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary; Author of Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity (2007)