Entertaining Angels Unaware: Introduction Welcoming the Immigrant Other

I have made a short video introducing the book.  

You can find it here Entertaining Angels Intro

Text:

Where’s the beef?

My name is Phil Gottschalk and I have written a book called Entertaining Angels Unaware: Welcoming the Immigrant Other. 

In general I’d say that my book is like a hamburger, which is composed of different parts. Some chapters are technical and difficult, but they had to be to deal with the content of that chapter.  Some chapters are full of true stories about people, heroes I call them, who helped refugees and immigrants.  Some chapters are biblical exposition for how we should deal with refugees and immigrants.  Some chapters are more philosophical attempting to bring across not only facts, but feelings; how being a refugee or an immigrant feels.

When I was a teen, Wendy’s restaurant opened.  It was competition to McDonald’s and Burger King at the time.

Wendy’s had a series of ads, which featured a white haired old lady asking, “Where’s the beef?” The idea was that Wendy’s hamburgers had more beef, while competitors emphasized either special sauces or flame broiled burgers.

My dad developed a lot of food allergies as he got older.  He couldn’t eat anything with glutin in it.  So much for his beloved Cinnamon buns! 

However, at Wendy’s my dad got more beef for his buck. So my dad would order his double and take the bun off and set it aside.  He couldn’t eat the bun, but he could eat the salad and the beef patties. Boy, could he eat the beef!  He could even eat their chili!

My book is like a burger.  There is “real beef” in the book.  The core of the book is the stories of heroes who cared for refugees and immigrants.  There’s a lot more to the book, but the stories are the core.

There are tough chapters of analysis and exposition of how different countries have deal with or deal with immigrants.  They are good solid chapters, but perhaps just a little too heavy for some. If you are reading my book, you might want to skip some parts or chapters that seem irrelevant to you.  I believe all the chapters have something to say, but if you don’t understand a chapter or it sets you off, skip to the next one. The various chapters work together like the perfect burger, but if you’re allergic to parts or you don’t want the sauce, skip to another chapter.

Why should you listen to me?

When I showed up in Leuven, Belgium where I studied, I was telling stories about our experiences in Yugoslavia, where we spent the first ten years of our missionary career.  Some people thought I was telling “tall tales.” I think I laid that to rest when I was speaking in Russian one day with a Russian Ukrainian fellow student.  After I wrote my MA thesis about a Russian Jewish philosopher, I think people began to realize my stories were real.

The stories in my book are real.  There is in one sense no political agenda to my book.  My goal in the book is to motivate Christians, evangelical Christians especially since that is my “pedigree” as a missionary and teacher, to help immigrants.

Finally I want to say that you should be careful not to believe reviews or accept a short portion of the book, which you might read on some website, as representative of the book or its main message.  You won’t know the whole book without sampling several or all of the chapters.

Don’t miss the beef! If you have been turned off by one chapter or even two.  Read on or skip to the next section.  The beef of the book is the stories of the heroes, those who have helped the refugees and immigrants. 

So who am I?

Briefly I am a professor at Tyndale Theological Seminary near Amsterdam, the Netherlands.  I have lived in Communist Yugoslavia, Austria, Serbia, Belgium and the Netherlands.  I have experienced dealing with refugees in all of these countries, as well as in Greece.  If you wish to know more of who I am, you can go to our seminary’s website: tyndale-europe.edu and look for me under the Resident Faculty members.