As an Indian adoptee raised in Northeast Wisconsin, I grew up in a world of white faces. I was caught in between two communities, benefiting from the privileges of a white family, yet often sitting alone as the only person of color in a crowded room. Surrounded by white pastors, educators, and friends, my perception and imagination of the world were inherently shaped by a white lens. By “white,” I don’t mean to speak only to ethnicity, but imagination. Whiteness, in this way, is a theological and sociological construction in which people of all ethnicities and cultures may imagine the world. In this system, goodness, success, and power, are seen in approximation to how close one may come to mirroring this white identity.
An honest analysis of American history reveals how whiteness is deeply embedded in evangelical practice. Since the first colonists arrived on the eastern shores, the evangelical church has borne witness to a nation governed by this white imagination, yet has intentionally remained silent and complicit. Through national genocide of First Nations people, the transatlantic slave trade, the Civil War, the Reconstruction era, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights movement, and even in our current moment, this expression of evangelicalism has little to say about seeking justice and reparations for those who continue to be marginalized and oppressed in our nation. Instead, white evangelicals have embraced a faith centered around Christian nationalism. Rather than reckoning with our history, many have continued to believe the lie that America is a “beacon of light,” “a city on a hill” that will carry the Gospel into our modern world.
As this history becomes more widely recognized, many scholars have argued it is necessary that we “follow Jesus out of evangelicalism” and into a “new Christianity.” This, of course, is one of many answers to the question frequently asked in recent years: is evangelicalism worth redeeming?
In short, I do believe that the evangelical tradition is worth redeeming from its cultural heritage; and I believe evangelicals are already equipped with the theological tools to acknowledge and repent of our historical patterns of sin, both individual and systemic.
““God might have created the world in seven days, but it takes us many generations to create a new humanity, a new culture. It cannot be merely legislated. It has to develop gradually through the efforts of the poets, the artists, the thinkers, the culture-makers.””
However, any future for American evangelicalism requires more than a simple denouncing of whiteness. In return, it must reconstruct something new. If evangelicalism seeks to be redeemed from a history of racism and nationalism, we must ask what it is being redeemed towards? In other words, to exclusively deconstruct evangelical practice is to eliminate evangelicalism as a tradition and move on to a new Christianity. To reconstruct, on the other hand, is to critique our tradition without abandoning it. It is to both claim and reckon with our history so we may be released into new possibilities — a new reality. As Brian Bantum summarizes, “This is important because in rightly seeing the de-formation, we can also see the lines of re-formation. We can see the textures of humanity and its possibilities in Christ’s person and work.”
This reality, I am convinced, is a mestizo evangelicalism: a tradition that is centered around a theology of belonging and community. This multi-ethnic vision is not antithetical to the theological commitments of evangelicalism, but rather it is a greater living-out of our core beliefs: the truthfulness of Scripture, the central, atoning work of Jesus Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the importance of evangelism. This, I believe, can be our evangelical witness for centuries to come: that we may be known as a faith that crosses racial and ethnic lines because of our shared unity in Jesus Christ. We may be known as a faith that disrupts dehumanizing racial binaries by embracing a Galilean Christ.
In this reconstructing project we must remember, as Virgilio Elizondo wrote decades ago, this mestizo reality does not happen overnight. “God might have created the world in seven days, but it takes us many generations to create a new humanity, a new culture. It cannot be merely legislated. It has to develop gradually through the efforts of the poets, the artists, the thinkers, the culture-makers.”
By God’s grace, this culture-shaping work was already begun by the saints who have gone before us. While white evangelicalism has centered around political dominance and cultural influence, the overlooked mestizaje of evangelicals in minority communities has been one of diligently sowing gospel seeds in the margins of society. This is the silent work of evangelicals serving in underprivileged neighborhoods, homeless shelters, prison ministries, and food pantries. It is the thousands of evangelical ministers who took up Martin Luther King’s call to march in Selma. It is the work of evangelicals who have faithfully sought to emulate the leadership and activism of those who have gone before us. It is evangelical pastors willing to condemn white supremacy and anti-blackness from the pulpit. It is the work not broadcasted on the news or written in headlines. It is the long-suffering work, the costly grace, of Christian activism.
In practice, this future looks like shared power and equity within vibrant, multi-ethnic communities. As Dr. Eric Baretto notes, this future “puncture[s] the myth of scholarly objectivity and demonstrate[s] the persuasiveness and power of contextual theologies and readings.” In other words, hearing the Gospel preached and theology taught from a diversity of ethnic communities has the power to awaken evangelicals to a world of Christianity that extends far beyond their church buildings. This communal reading of Holy Scripture from beyond the reaches of the white imagination invites American evangelicals into the global practice of our tradition.
This vision looks like Black theologians tracing the themes of God’s liberative action alongside Latino/a theologians juxtaposing the experience of Jesus, a Galilean Jew, with “Mexican Americans living on the geographical and cultural margins of the borderlands.” It looks like reading Scripture corporately, not only in English but in Spanish, Hindi, German, Arabic, Latvian, and Greek. It is bringing our bodies, our full, ethnic self, and orienting ourselves toward one another in hope and faith.
This is the work of moving from blindness to sight; from darkness to the full spectrum of color. It is in this moment that the world takes on a new form, words take on new meanings, and one’s perception of the world is seen in proximity to the greatness of the world around them.
In America today, the events of 2020 have opened the eyes of many evangelicals. The dirty mud of whiteness has been wiped from their eyes and they are moving from blindness to sight. White evangelicals are listening to a theology that speaks to the terror Black Americans, Asians, and Latin@s continue to face in our nation. They are entering into something greater, a global tradition of evangelicalism that has stood for centuries. They are reimagining Christianity by reading God’s inspired word alongside their neighbors. Just a taste of this community leaves many craving more.
I have hope for my tradition because this work is faithfully being done. Across our nations, evangelicals at the grassroots are speaking up in their churches, their communities, and their institutions. As we protest, raise our voices with charity and grace, and love our neighbors as ourselves, may the tide of evangelicalism slowly turn away from whiteness and into the mestizo, Christ-centered tradition we have been called to.
Amar D. Peterman is a graduate student at Princeton Theological Seminary, focusing his studies on American religious history. He is a featured writer at Ideos and his work is published in Sojourners, The Christian Century, Faithfully Magazine, Fathom, and more. Amar holds a B.A. in Theology from Moody Bible Institute. You can follow his work on his website or on Twitter: @amarpeterman