Intercultural Churches: The vision stifled by privilege

 

"Reconciliation without a clear understanding of the needed reciprocity destines those in the pursuit of reconciliation to do so on preexisting constructs of power, ultimately rendering this endeavor toward reconciliation to be nothing more than a nuanced and complicated captivity for people of color"

    --Rev. Brandon Green in Intercultural Ministry (Grace Ji-Sun Kim, editor)

The early church (first generation after Jesus' death) was a multicultural, multi-ethnic, socially diverse movement.  The lives and social worldview of the initial followers of Jesus throughout the Roman empire were just as polarized then as our communities are today.  Yet, the difference is that they rejected homophily (anthropologic description of the desire to gather with people who are like yourself) and formed intimate communities made up of people who were radically different but radically in love with Jesus.  In these early communities, we see no diminishment in individual identities or a hint of pretense that differences do not exist.  In fact, multiple scholars have argued that the mission of early church community was to demonstrate the ethics of the Kingdom of God through living in, what is now popularly called "Beloved Community".  (Scot McKnight, Fellowship of Differents, as an example)

Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes (I Bring the Voices of My People, 2018) succinctly defines beloved community as "a liberated people in transformed relationships creating a new reality".  In the definition, liberation leads to inclusion but transformed relationships are what provides the cohesiveness to create a new type of community based upon the ethics of Jesus.  Transformation involves a fundamental change in structure and substance.  Beloved community involved a fundamental change in the way members of the community related to one another and collectively, how they related to their world.

Today, most church leaders will tell you that the churches they lead are very homogeneous.  Demographically, I can nearly guarantee that your church is less diverse ethnically, culturally, and socially diverse than the community around it.  Yet, most of those church leaders will tell you that they would love to be multiethnic, multicultural, and socially diverse (which I will call the intercultural church) but will give you a number of excuses why it's not practical today.  "My church is not close to minorities".  "People are just uncomfortable and will not tolerate cultural differences."  "Worship styles are just too different." The list goes on...

I would argue that the greatest impediment to intercultural churches is pride and privilege.  Pride is placing too much emphasis and importance to yourself, and your way of doing things.  Privilege is a preferred access to resources (opportunities, finances, power, prestige, education, neighborhoods, etc).  In order to show how this plays out, allow me to share some facts and then put it together.

1. African American led Churches rarely have more 30% Whites in their congregations unless the church was previously led by someone White, the lead pastor is married to someone who is White, or the lead pastor is a celebrity (former athlete, known for something outside of ministry).

2. When a denomination is seeking to build intercultural churches, there are initiatives to recruit Black, Brown, and Asian persons to predominantly White churches.  There are rarely ever initiatives asking White Church goers to go to a predominantly Black, Brown or Asian Church.

3. The degree in which multiethnic churches with White people remain multiethnic is dependent upon the Whites feeling comfortable and accustomed to what they perceive as normative practices.  Therefore, it depends on the people of color, being willing to sacrifice and compromise to keep Whites comfortable.

4. Most of the intercultural churches in the US are Black and Brown but often those are not well researched because most of the research uses assumptions based upon a dominant culture and White privilege status.

Because American Churches center whiteness (The idea that European heritage, practices, and approaches are superior, and even divinely appointed), they see privilege as normative.  A healthy church has European-inspired traditions, celebrating great White men exclusively as the pillars of Christianity, and demonize those who dared to question its authority, its use of Scripture to maintain hegemony (the social, cultural, ideological and economic influence exerted by a dominant group), or its pretext of faith to generate wealth for themselves.  

Think about how abolition was a minority opinion in a mostly Self-identified Christian nation in the nineteenth century.  Think about the genocide to indigenous people by multiple groups in the name of Jesus.  When I was growing up, black and white "Cowboys and Indians" movies were really prominent.  You could buy cowboy toy guns and holsters and the "Indians" were always depicted as angry, violent, animalistic people.  No movies centered on the indigenous experience nor were indigenous heroes identified and celebrated.  The Settlers claim on indigenous lands was normative.  The concept of manifest destiny that White people are divinely called to the lands and over the lives of non-White people was seen as a virtue, literally a mythological marvel.  

So, many people (of all ethnicities) believe that ideal church is a church centered in whiteness.  Customs and cultures that are outside of that whiteness bring a discomfort for many White people.  This may or may not be a conscious connection.  For example, the Christian School movement came as a response to integrated schools ordered by the Federal government in the landmark case "Brown vs the Board of Education" in 1954.  For years, many southern Christians had taught that the Bible specifically commanded segregation.  White only schools were not only preferred culturally, but divinely mandated, according to many Christians (J.R. Hawkins, The Bible Told Them So, 2021).  

The legacy remains today.  Intercultural churches that seek to develop an expression not centered in whiteness are not only unattractive to many White Christians, but many avoid them.  Intercultural churches recognize that ongoing multi-axis reconciliatory processes need to occur to promote solidarity.  "Multi-axis" is my way of describing the intersectionality of the overlapping reconciliatory processes in a given context.  Its not just ethnic reconciliation, but cultural, and sub-cultural.  Its reconciling issues of gender, and socioeconomic status.  Not independently, but collaboratively. 

The effort towards reconciliation requires a truthful naming of common past, repentance, renouncement, restructuring and restoration.  Most of these processes require understanding the power dynamics of your context.  Leveraging privilege or like the Apostle Paul said "When I am among those who are poor and weak, I join with them in their struggle" (I Cor 9:22a FNV).  There is a renouncing of privilege and the empowering of others to promote solidarity.  Unwillingness to understand one's privilege and an unwillingness to decenter one cultural preference prevents relational transformation within the community.

Therefore, the churches dedicated to diversity without reconciliation, are simply assimilating people into the dominant culture.  Most often, people of color are asked to come into predominantly White spaces and asked to adapt to white models used to attract more white people.  Yet, rarely do the leaders of these assimilating congregation understand that their congregation may not be a safe place for people of color, or for women, or for socioeconomically disadvantaged persons.  Their personhood and the freedom to fully live into their callings are often threatened or severely inhibited. 

Pastor Fred TenEyck of New Vision Fellowship Church in Forestville Md (www.2020VisionChurch.org) lists four signs that your church is a safe place for persons of color:

1. Persons of color in key positions of leadership

2. There is cultural priority devoted to urban and cultural groups

3. There are existing partnerships with community organizations that advocate among communities of color.

4. The church regularly addresses issues of importance to people of color such as police brutality, fair housing, legal reform, immigration, education reform, etc.

All four recognize a common past and need to leverage existing privilege while empowering those who have been traumatized and discriminated against.  Without this, not only will persons of color find your congregation unsafe, but most likely it is a place where they will simply be assimilated.

However, as I stated earlier, an alternative and Biblical approach would be to stop asking people of color to integrate into mostly White churches but ask White people to join congregations of color.  White people are not being invited into churches of color to run them, lead them, or to show them "the right way to do church".  That is the colonizing model that is an expression of ethnic exceptionalism where White people see God as divinely putting them in positions to be in charge. We are talking about a decolonized approach where you bring your gifts and graces, liberated from the control of White exceptionalism and allow the Holy Spirit to use proximity to people different than you, to transform your relationship with them and your community in order to join Jesus mission of loving God, loving your neighbor! 

All as a sign and symbol of the Kingdom of God!