Planting in Babylon Pt. 2

Maybe I’m not over it. Maybe the choice to start by telling this story is proof that it still bothers me. Still. Even if I’m “in my feelings,” I’m convinced he missed the point. Several years ago, while still in grad school, I submitted a paper on a model for multi-cultural congregations that I was quite proud of in the end. I had worked hard on the paper and included a theological argument for diversity I thought was soundly reasoned. When I got it back from my favorite professor, it included this feedback:

“I am puzzled why you have turned to the Exodus narrative to emphasize the multiethnic nature of God’s redeemed people.  Why not [use] the NT passages that more explicitly emphasize … God’s design of making His church multiethnic and its theological significance?”

This question is at the heart of this article. I believe God’s plan was always about making a mestizo people that would reflect His character on earth by making the world as it should be – a place of beauty, justice, and goodness. People failed to do this time and time again, but that doesn’t change the plan. He is redeeming a mixed multitude and calling them to create, to plant gardens, and build communities that set things right and restore His order. If this was always His plan, then it should be seen in the story the first time He rescued people and called them His own. In fact, the identity of Israel should hint to God’s plan for a multiethnic people just as the Church finally displays it. And, it does.

Returning from Exile

At the end of part one of this series, I noted the promise God made to Israel while they were exiled in Babylon. He said, “I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you, and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile” (Jer. 29:14). This promise reveals a second important identity marker for God’s people. The first was our non-innocence, our inability to work in Babylon as self-righteous missionaries detached from the city. The second is our mestizaje, our mixed identity as one chosen nation, a royal priesthood called to reveal His character (1 Pet. 2:9). We do this in our work (which will be explored further in the final part of this series), but we also do this in our very existence as a community. This is the focus of this article, and with all due respect to my former professor, the best way to show the importance of our mestizaje is to start at the beginning of the story.

The first time God rescued a people from slavery and called them His own, he rescued a mixed multitude (Exod. 12:38). The exodus story – the story of how the Lord rescued Israel from slavery to Egypt by sending Moses as His messenger – is essential to understanding how salvation happens in the Bible, what it means, and what it does to those who are saved. The Exodus was a significant part of ancient Israel’s history and identity.[1] It shaped their understanding of God and His works of salvation.[2] In fact, every time salvation happens in the bible, it’s meant to be understood as an echo of the exodus, a “new exodus,” a repetition of the pattern set in Egypt. While in exile, Israel waited on God to rescue them yet again in another powerful exodus that would bring them back home to their land. However, when they finally did return home, they quickly realized they had not yet been fully freed, and the exodus pattern remained unfinished. That is how the Old Testament ends, but for the careful reader paying attention to the pattern, the start of the New Testament should thrill because it introduces a new Moses, Jesus of Nazareth.

The writers of the New Testament, being faithful Jews, framed the story of Jesus as a great exodus. N.T. Wright argues that in the letter to Ephesus Paul is using the phrase, “guarantee of our inheritance” to draw from the themes of the Exodus narrative.[3] According to Wright, Galatians chapter four is part of a larger thought-unit “of the rescue of God’s people and the whole world from the ‘Egypt’ of slavery.”  He observes clear “exodus language” in Galatians 4:1-7 that is echoed in Romans 8:12-17. He goes on to say, “by overlaying that great story across the even greater one of the accomplishment of the Messiah, rescuing his people from the present evil age, Paul is able to say… this is therefore how you are rescued from sin and death.”[4]

If the exodus is this important to our understanding of all the salvation acts in the Bible, especially the way we understand Jesus’ acts in saving the Church, then the details of Israel’s salvation identity should inform the way we read Paul and other NT writers’ words about the multi-ethnic makeup of the Church. Precisely for this reason, Exodus chapter 12 verse 38 can’t be glossed over. At the very least, the mixed multitude of Israelites who left Egypt as God’s people included the half-Egyptian children of Joseph that formed the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. That means that “Israel” included some who had the blood of their oppressor. The verse says that a “mixed multitude also” (emph. mine) went with Israel. This suggests that other non-Israelites-by-blood went out of Egypt as part of God’s people. The instructions that follow Israel’s exit assume this mixed group.

The first instructions are for the Passover meal which commemorated God’s rescue of Israel from slavery. In these instructions God includes this accommodation: “A foreigner residing among you who wants to celebrate the Lord’s Passover must have all the males in his household circumcised; then he may take part like one born in the land … The same law applies both to the native-born and to the foreigner residing among you” (Exod. 12:48-49). This instruction, including its details about circumcision, and the ones that immediately follow are all about marking the identity of Israel. They make clear who belongs as part of God’s people. For instance, the next instruction is for a memorial that would be celebrated on the new calendar God gave them (see 12:2; 13:3-9). Holidays were established for Israel to remember who they were as the rescued slaves that were now God’s people.

The New Exodus

As the greater Moses (Heb. 3:3), Jesus accomplished a greater exodus. Therefore, the mixed multitude of Israel is only but a hint of the mestizaje of the Church. Like any biblical theme, the mixed identity of Israel grows more complex yet clear as the story continues. By the time Israel was exiled in Babylon, Ruth the Moabites had married into Israel. Rahab the Jerichoan prostitute joined the nation. These are only two examples of the many times Scripture makes clear that “Israel” is a complex name for a mixed people belonging to the Lord. When Jeremiah writes his letter to the exiles, he reveals that the Israelites were going to experience another mestizaje. They wouldn’t return to Israel exactly as they had left it. They would now bring back some of Babylon with them.

The Lord’s instructions to the Babylonian exiles was to plant gardens, build homes, and marry off their children. They were to become part of the fabric of Babylon. It was there, as members of the city, that the Jewish community developed synagogues. It was there that they developed new cultural rhythms that would mark them as God’s people. When Jeremiah, on behalf of the Lord, writes, “I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you, and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile” (Jer. 29:14), he is hinting that Israel would be a land of diverse experiences with a new Israeli community that now includes cultural expressions from nations abroad. Indeed, this is seen today. In Jerusalem, near the old city, there is a series of banners along a popular bike/walk path that display people from many ethnic groups in a prayer position. The text below the banners reads, “One of the most important visions for the city of Jerusalem is its existence as a cultural and religious center for all peoples.” The banner then quotes another prophet, “for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Isaiah 56:7).

Jesus was born a Jewish man in Israel while it was under Roman rule. His experience, his cultural context, included yet another mestizaje where Roman culture played a significant role. As the new Moses, He accomplished the greatest exodus of all, and through His death and resurrection, those who follow Him are part of the greatest mixed multitude to be saved from slavery. He is fulfilling that promise written by Jeremiah and more. There is one final theological contribution from the Exodus story. Peter Enns comments that the Exodus pattern is closely aligned to the new creation theme. According to Enns, “to redeem is to re-create.”[5] God, in recreating a people of a mixed identity, is now calling them to care for and develop a culture that reflects the world as He intended it. This is the subject of the final part in this series. For now, may we live in Babylon as one beautiful display of God’s unifying love for all people. Together, we are His holy nation, His Church.

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Footnotes

[1] Ronald S. Hendel, “The Exodus in biblical memory,” Journal of Biblical Literature 120, no. 4 (2001) 601 [601-622].

[2] Otto Alfred Piper, “Unchanging promises: Exodus in the New Testament,” Interpretation 11, no. 1 (January 1, 1957) 4 [3-22].

[3] Wright, Simply Christian, 125.

[4] Wright, Justification, 136. See also pg. 157-158 point 4, where Wright argues the Exodus slavery language is part of the summary of Paul’s theology

[5] Enns, New Exodus, 216.

Somos Todos Juan Diego (We Are All Juan Diego)

I was never a Roman Catholic. I only remember a handful of experiences in a Roman Catholic church, all for the baptism or confirmation of friends. As with most Puerto Ricans I know, my faith heritage was Pentecostal-Protestantism.  We were the legacy of Azusa street. Evangelists like Nicky Cruz and Yiye Avila were the heroes of my father. My abuelo was there in New York standing precisely on the corner where David Wilkerson first preached the gospel while balanced on a fire hydrant. These were the legends passed on to me with pride and faith. They shaped more than my beliefs; they shaped my identity. I associated the boldness of these preachers with being Puerto Rican. As a theology professor, I continue to discover other treasures I inherited, women and men like Elizabeth Conde-Frazier and Orlando Costas. These now sit among the many European, African, and Middle Eastern believers from church history that form the cloud of witnesses surrounding me. Yet, among all these greats, the legend of Juan Diego now stands out as one I failed to appreciate rightly.

Mexican hermanos y hermanas will know immediately the story of Juan Diego, but for many Christians, particularly protestants, he is an unfamiliar witness. Today, December 12th, is a holy day for Mexicans as they remember Señor Diego and the first appearance of La Virgin in America. According to legend, ten years after Spanish colonizers took central Mexico in 1521, the apparition of Mary appeared to Juan Diego, an indigenous farmer and laborer. The brown-skinned Mary revealed herself to him on a hill which was formerly the site of an Aztec temple and sent him to the bishop to command that a church be built on that site. The bishop, of course, dismissed Juan Diego demanding proof of his encounter with Mary, the mother of God. Days later, Mary revealed herself to Juan again, providing the proof he needed in the form of her image miraculously painted on his tilma (a kind of hood), which can be seen in the Basilica of Mexico City to this day.

My experience with Latin-American students of a Roman Catholic heritage is that they now maintain a sharp boundary between their protestant faith and their catholic upbringing. They prefer to keep their distance from all things catholic because they have seen the heavy catholic influence on Latin American culture keep many Latinos from really considering a relationship with Jesus. This boundary is significantly reinforced from the other side of the fence. Many of my students tell tragic stories of their families rejecting them for their conversion to Protestantism. Since my experience of Roman Catholicism is limited, I do not have the same anxieties about rituals, legends, or holy days associated with it. I recognize that my lack of these experiences colors my view of Juan Diego, yet I see great value in honoring the truth implicit in his legend.

How protestants choose to engage the legend of Juan Diego is a question of contextualization. If we move too quickly to critique the legend as pagan worship of an idol, we miss the opportunity to affirm a significant treasure hidden in the story. Juan Diego was an indigenous laborer. He was not part of what Justo Gonzalez refers to as the hierarchical church that was an arm of the Spanish power. That church had no place for Juan Diego, nor did it preach a message of hope and life for people like him. The astounding twist of Diego’s story is that he was sent to speak a revealed word to the bishop. “Thus the Virgin of Guadalupe became a symbol of the affirmation of the Indian over against the Spanish, of the unlearned over against the learned, of the oppressed over against the oppressor.”[1]

The story of the appearance of Mary to Juan Diego brought millions of Mexicans to the catholic church. Laura G. Gutierrez of the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies says, “The fact that Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared as a brown-skinned woman speaking Nahuatl to an indigenous peasant is an important part of the narrative.”[2] The power is in the details. Mary appears with a sash around her waist, indicating she is pregnant. She is brown-skinned and speaks with one of the people in their language. She meets Juan Diego on a familiar worship site, making clear to him that he is encountering the divine. As Father Johann Roten, director of research, art, and special projects at the University of Dayton said, “You don’t have to be Catholic to respond to the affirmation, affection, and security that she offers. These are central values that go all the way back to the first appearance of the apparition.”[3]

As I consider the legend of Juan Diego today, I think it is important to affirm the truth therein that God is indeed a God for the weak. I do not worship Mary, yet this story of her revelation echoes a truth about Jesus. God made Himself knowable by taking on human flesh. He is a Jewish man from Israel. Luke, one of the writers of the gospels, emphasizes that Jesus’ arrival turns the world upside down. The first to hear of His birth are lowly shepherds like Juan Diego. Repeatedly in his account of Jesus’ life, Luke shows Jesus as concerned for the religiously hated, the unclean, and the despised. He did more than spend time with the Diegos of the ancient world, Jesus took their place, becoming despised that they might have new life. On a hill, like the Mary of this legend, Jesus reveals the love of God for the lowly. His story gives shape to Juan Diego’s legend by providing the central themes that resonate so deeply with the Mexican identity. Others have recontextualized the legend of Mary. All these retellings recognize the inherent beauty of a God who reveals Himself in recognizable ways to a poor people in need of His rescue. Somos todos Juan Diego. We are all Juan Diego.

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Footnotes

[1] Justo L. González, Mañana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective, Reprint edition edition (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), p. 61.

[2] “‘Our Lady Signifies a Lot’: Here’s Why We Celebrate the Virgin of Guadalupe on Dec. 12th,” NBC News, accessed December 11, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/do-you-know-about-our-lady-guadalupe-here-s-why-n828391.

[3] “‘Our Lady Signifies a Lot.’”

Where Do I Belong? Reflections on How Education Changes Identity

“The pride of the laborer is gritty and unbelieving,

Binding the greatest thinker forever to a chain of insignificance,

The shrewdest business tycoon to a ladder of gold and glint,

Never thinking the self-made man needn’t always use his hands.””

— Emily A.

“‘It has never occurred to you,’ he said, ‘that you might have as much right to be here as anyone.’”[i] Why would Tara Westover believe she had a right to roam the illustrious halls of Cambridge? The youngest daughter of a large conservative Mormon family from the Idaho mountains, Tara was not a poster child for academic prodigy. Her homeschool education involved more hours working in her father’s junkyard and preparing her mother’s herbal tinctures than reading, writing, math or science. Yet there she was, studying abroad at Cambridge as an undergraduate student with Brigham Young University, defying fate and intriguing her faculty mentor with her intellect. All the while feeling that she didn’t quite belong.

In her recently published memoir, Educated, Tara Westover welcomes the reader into her not-so-common upbringing and the journey which proceeded from it. Numerous themes arise in Westover’s story, marking her life with complexity.[ii] This article focuses specifically on Westover’s experience entering the world of higher education from a working-class family. Higher education can be perceived negatively in working class communities. Urban and rural, majority and minority communities sense the impact of class shift through education. Rural flight is a cause for concern, as college graduates from rural communities seek to build lives in suburban and urban centers. With new perspectives on the world and faith, first generation minority graduates experience cultural dissonance when returning home. Westover’s memoir gives voice to the feelings and challenges of these individuals, offering insight for the communities we make and minister to.

During Westover’s junior year of her undergraduate degree she forged a relationship with Jewish history professor, Dr. Kerry. It was Dr. Kerry who tapped into Westover’s greatest internal battle—belonging. Dr. Kerry observes and identifies insecurity fueled by self-doubt in Westover: “You act like someone who is impersonating someone else. And it’s as if you think your life depends on it.”[iii] This question of belonging is not unique to Westover’s experience, but rather a common thread among first generation students of the working class. These students are stepping into a middle ground, a kind of “no man’s land” between classes. In Transition to the Academy: The Influence of Working-Class Culture for First-Generation Students, LaDonna L. Bridges shares theories of socialization when defining the differing value systems of the working and middle class. Bridges explains that habitus is a set of learned dispositions that children derive from their parents, which strongly influence how the child will interact with social and cultural connections and opportunities.[iv] For instance, middle class parents tend to parent their children in such a way that values self-control, consideration of others, curiosity and happiness. In contrast , working class parents often emphasize that children to be obedient, well-mannered and good students.[v] Culture and locality aside, class alone (a topic which Bridges argues is not openly discussed in America) significantly defines an individual’s access to opportunity.[vi] This brief look at differences between middle and working class reveals a first generation college student is wading into a system run on a different set of values than those on which they were raised.

In fact, even how these students view education likely differs from their middle-class peers. In his article, “The Danger of Telling Poor Kids College Is the Key to Social Mobility,” Andrew Simmons points out that low-income minority students are sold education as a means to financial security and opportunity. While not necessarily ill-intended, it is a message that deemphasizes “the intellectual benefits of higher education.”[vii] As Simmons states it is “a message that intellectual curiosity plays second fiddle to financial security.”[viii]  Simmons even suggests that minority students are being taught by the system to fill their place in society rather than ascend class divides, stating: “Some students learn to take orders and others learn to chart a course of action and delegate responsibility. School can either perpetuate inequity through social reproduction or have a transformative effect and help students transcend it.”[ix] This is essentially a catch-22, for as Westover explains in her story: “Curiosity is a luxury reserved for the financially secure.”[x] This working class view, most often bent on industry and survival, devalues the pursuit of education for the sake of intellectual growth. For those first generation students who graduate, take new opportunities, or make the jump to middle class, this value of the intellect may come to be the greatest point of dissonance they experience.

First generation, working class graduates live in what Bridges calls a “bifurcated existence,” torn between two classes and sets of values.[xi] Carried through the challenges of college by the very work ethic which molds their identity, these individuals now experience feelings of otherness when returning home. It is the classic scene of Christmas dinner, when asked by a curious relative what he is actually learning in college. Hesitant at first, the student mentions their favorite history class, cheeks glowing, eyes lighting up, until Uncle John loses interest and turns to Pops to discuss the newest piece of machinery on the job. Unfortunately, Uncle John is probably thinking he’s lost his nephew to the books, not realizing the gain the social capital of education could bring to their community.

Yet neither do these individuals fully belong in the middle class. Justin Quarry identifies the emotion of shame some feel with regard to their working-class background. In “Coming Out As Working Class” Quarry explains his own struggle as a working class college student and his current professorship at Vanderbilt. Interestingly, it is Quarry’s working class identity which he feels most vulnerable sharing with others, particularly his colleagues in higher education. Quarry believes working class individuals are underrepresented in academia. Imagining that he had someone like himself to encourage him in high school, Quarry muses: “Don’t worry, I’d say, you’re good enough. Don’t worry, there’s financial aid. Don’t worry, I’d reassure her, you’ll belong.”[xii]

I can echo to the working-class student, “You’ll belong.” While the unfortunate feeling of being an imposter[xiii] may always linger, one does eventually find their place on the other side. But is there room for the first-generation college graduate in their home community? As a recent graduate of a working-class home this question haunts me as I look to the future. How can I give back to a community which values hands over head? How can I be an asset without becoming a threat to a long held system of values? The Church must also wrestle with these questions.  I search the New Testament and see a church marked by socio-economic and class disparity yet gathered to share in the fellowship of the Lord’s Supper. I see a body, that need not be bifurcated, but enriched by the duality of the intellect and the work ethic.

Bridges proposes that first generation, working class college students and graduates are in a transition process of “meaning making.”[xiv] In the meantime, I believe the rest of us can be about space making. Rather than fearing loss or change, working class communities can capitalize on the goodness and growth first generation graduates offer. Church leaders can endeavor to utilize the teaching abilities of those who return. Businesses and ministries can seek funding to create full-time positions, empowering a minority to return to work in their own neighborhood. Family members can listen to historical anecdotes or new political perspectives. Sadly, space was not made for Tara Westover in the mountains of Idaho. But her personal journey extends an invitation to the rest of us. An invitation to welcome the educated home.

About Emily C. Alexander

A first generation college graduate of a rural working class family, Emily C. Alexander recently completed her undergraduate degree in Ministry to Women at the Moody Bible Institute. Emily lives in Chicago where she enjoys long walks admiring architecture and pondering theological and sociological issues. Her hope is to impact the lives of women and the flourishing of the church through thoughtful theological engagement.

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 Footnotes

[i] Westover, 242

[ii] As mentioned, many themes run through Westover’s story, her pursuit of higher education simply being one. This article in no way intends to diminish the other dynamics which shaped Westover’s life and personhood. We encourage you to read Educated for yourself to gain a fuller picture of Westover’s journey.

[iii] Westover, 242.

[iv] Bridges, 41-42.

[v] Bridges, 41-42.

[vi] Bridges 24, 38.

[vii] Simmons.

[viii] Simmons.

[ix] Simmons.

[x] Westover, 203.

[xi] Bridges, 4.

[xii] Quarry.

[xiii] Bridges, 6.

[xiv] Bridges, 16-18.

***Authors Note: For those interested in further reading, I highly recommend Bridges dissertation. Bridges frames the conversation well, and her research may prove to be a helpful resource for ministry leaders who are seeking to understand this issue.

Planting in Babylon Pt. 1

We like this or that propositions. Apparently, our brains prefer them. Decisions are simplified into either/or choices. Conflicts are reduced to good vs evil. Politics, at least here in the US, are framed by a two-party system. We like these binaries. Right or left? In or out? For or against? These thinking habits help us with simple decisions, but this kind of thinking is ill-used when applied to complex problems. A friend recently told me that in his counseling practice, every person he’s worked with thus far has developed a bad binary. They oversimplify their problem into two alternatives that do not account for the nuance in their stories, and this hurts them. This tendency toward binary thinking is seen in the way many local churches treat culture, and we need to move away from it to something new if we are going to live out our calling as God’s people.

Paradise Lost or Future Heaven[1]

In the consulting we do at World Outspoken, we generally encounter two postures toward culture. Some leaders approach cultural engagement with a deep sense of loss. They think back to a golden age, either in their country or in their local congregation, where things were better or right. These leaders express a desire to return their organizations to a past version. Their memories of the “good ol’ days” are romanticized, and the people of that age become heroes/legends. “For the person whose focus is mostly on the past, the present is a cemetery filled with monuments to the glory days that will never come again or with a painful record of the injuries and slights we have suffered.”[2] These leaders need the words of the teacher: “Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?” For it is not wise to ask such questions.”[3]

A second, equally common posture toward the present culture is to look beyond it to the future. Leaders with this mentality misapply the teacher’s words: “better is the end of a thing than its beginning.”[4] This group risks minimizing current events and borders on escapism when they focus too much on the truth that the Lord will one day make all things new and right. “To someone whose interest is chiefly on the future, the present is only a way station. Its primary function is to serve as a staging ground for what comes next.”[5] This group risks disengaging in significant ways from work that reflects the future they imagine. Rather than work toward that future, they wait passively for it. As my friend, Dr. Koessler writes, “The future and the past can both be an unhealthy refuge for those who are disappointed with their present.”[6] What we need, then, is another type of “imaginative response …  focusing neither on a past golden age nor an anticipated utopia.”[7]

The Exiled Imagination

This article is the first of a three-part series that develops an alternative response to present culture. We focus on themes drawn from Scripture’s exilic writers. Exile “is the experience of pain and suffering that results from knowledge that there is a home where one belongs, yet for the present one is unable to return there.”[8] The most iconic experience of exile in the Bible is the capture of Israel by the Assyrians (722 B.C.) and the fall of the southern kingdom of Judah to the hands of Nebuchadnezzar (586 B.C.). It was during the exile of the southern kingdom that Jeremiah penned his popular letter (i.e. Jer. 29). In this letter, we discover the first image necessary for a healthy imaginative response to culture; we discover an image of ourselves. While developing this image, my goal is to move beyond simple binaries to a robust imaginative posture that accounts for who we are and where we are today.

The first few verses of the 29th chapter of Jeremiah’s anthology sets the stage for this letter. It was written to Israelites who were taken as prisoners of war from the city of Jerusalem to Babylon. The letter begins with a simple but hard declaration from God. The Lord takes credit for their exile, for sending Israelites as POWs to a perilous city. We forget that these Israelites were not sent to Babylon as missionaries. They were not pure, innocent, and godly people who were given a special call to this dangerous and unjust place. They didn’t choose to move there. The truth, in fact, is that the Israelites were Babylonian before they ever lived in Babylon. Jeremiah makes this point repeatedly throughout his anthology.

Beginning in chapter two, we are told that the priests, the shepherds, and the prophets disobeyed God’s instructions. The entire nation’s crimes are summarized in two statements: 1) They disowned their God, and 2) replaced him with other gods (2:13). The leaders were corrupt, and the people were wayward, leading to rampant injustice (6:10; 7:5-20, 30-31). Jerusalem was the capital city, the city of God and His chosen king. It was the Lord’s special dwelling place, meant to reflect his peace, justice, and prosperity (Ps. 72), but the first 24 chapters of Jeremiah’s writings reveal a different reality. Israel never built the Jerusalem, the city which was a blueprint of Heaven on earth. Instead, they built a mirror-image of Babylon, following the plans for a city built on libido dominandi (the lust for mastery). What was ruling Babylon was in them too. God’s people were more Babylonian than they were citizens of Jerusalem, and after many warnings, they were cast out from the city of God to live in the real Babylon they lusted after.

A History of Non-innocence

The Lord sent Israelites into Babylon not as good people to a bad city, but as chastised people to a depraved city. A healthy imaginative response to our Babylonian world depends on a healthy view of ourselves. In a previous article, we discussed the Latino understanding of history. The Hispanic identity is shaped by the conviction that our heritage carries a deep sense of inherited guilt. The bible gives shape to a similar identity for God’s people (Rom. 5:12). Today, we are not beyond the guilt and crookedness of this sick world. Paul tells us as much. After listing a group of sinners that would make a kind of “top 10” list of criminals and deviants, Paul writes, “and such were some of you.”[9] The identity of God’s people is always simul justus et peccator (simultaneously righteous and sinner). Our sin tendency tethers us to Babylon. It forces us to acknowledge our complicity in Babylonizing the world. But we are also righteous.  We are washed clean only to be planted back in the world as God’s ambassadors (1 Cor. 5:20). It is with this dual identity that we are to read the instructions of Jeremiah’s letter.

The Bible gives us two examples of what it means to live well in Babylon: Daniel and Nehemiah. Both men worked in the royal court, directly engaging the political systems of the city. Both men have long prayers that are recorded for us to read, and both men confess their inherited guilt. Daniel chapter 9 records Daniel confessing the sin of all the people, declaring the shame inherited because of the corruption of all Israel. The 9th chapter of Nehemiah is very similar. In his prayer, Nehemiah recounts the history of Israel, highlighting the consistent mercy of God and the consistent failure of the people. In these men, we have examples of culture-makers who don’t pretend to be innocent when reflecting God in their present cultural home. They go before God on behalf of their collective guilt, then engage their city.

Planting in Babylon

When God chooses people to be his ambassadors on earth, He instructs them to reflect Him in what they make. Jeremiah, speaking on behalf of God, encourages the people to go back to basic culture-making. He tells them to plant gardens, build houses, and have families in Babylon. They are not supposed to spend their days dreaming of their past in Jerusalem, nor are they are to passively wait for a future rescue, refusing to enter and engage their new home. They are not going back anytime soon, and the rescue is still far out in front of them (vv. 8-9). In the present, God calls them to make culture, to create communities that live out His story in this city. They are tied to Babylon and instructed to give shape to it.

The Lord says, “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” The italicized word here is a translation of the word shalom. “In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight – a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, … Shalom, in other words, is the way the world should be.”[10] This command breaks our binary patterns of thinking. The good of God’s people is interconnected to the good of a corrupt city. This should scare us. We know, because Israel gave us an example in Jerusalem, that we can never produce shalom in the cities we make.

It is in view of this, that the Lord’s promise in the middle of this letter is so comforting. The Lord tells a non-innocent, chastised people to live in Babylon as active seekers of shalom, as those who pray for shalom and make small pockets of its beauty in their cultural works. While they work, they are told to hope and wait because their exile is not permanent. After a set time, the Lord promises to visit Babylon and bring the exiles home, back to the city where God and humanity dwell together in peace. Thankfully, He has visited. He can be found by those who seek Him, and He is gathering people from all the nations and places of exile (v. 14). This last hope – the hope that God brings people from every nation and place to His city – is the remarkable truth that we will explore in the second part of Planting in Babylon. Until then, may we be sober-minded makers who remember our sin-tendency and live in God’s grace for the shalom of Babylon.

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Footnotes

[1] Credit to my friend and colleague, Dr. Baurain for these title phrases. Bradley Baurain, “By the Rivers of Babylon We Weep: The Exiled Imagination,” Christianity & the Arts, accessed July 23, 2019, link.

[2] John Koessler, “Practicing the Present,” April 22, 2019, Link.

[3] Ecclesiastes 7:10

[4] Ecclesiastes 7:8

[5] Koessler, “Practicing the Present.”

[6] Koessler.

[7] Baurain, “By the Rivers of Babylon We Weep.”

[8] I. M. Duguid, “Exile,” NDBT, 475. The author of this quote adds an * symbol to suffering that has been removed from the quote here. The symbol signals the reader to read a particular nuance he has added in a previous paragraph. By suffering, the author is referring to guilt or remorse stemming from the knowledge that the cause of exile is sin.

[9] 1 Cor. 6:10

[10] Cornelius Plantinga Jr, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids, Mich. u.a.: Eerdmans, 1996), 10.

Seeking Understanding: Building Partnership Across the Rural-Urban Divide

Stepping into the fray, Daman asks a pointed question: “Is the church becoming polarized too?” Brought to the forefront by recent political events, rural America is once again in national conversation. But what does this mean for the rural church? What does the urban-rural divide look like in American Christianity? And how does American Evangelicalism value or devalue rural congregations and their pastors? These are the questions Daman grapples with in Forgotten Church.

You might say I grew up in rural America. During my elementary school years, my town added its third stop light and approached a population of a whopping 1,800 people. The summer before first grade, I attended Vacation Bible School on the mountain, gathering with just two other children and a leader in the church foyer. While only owning one acre, the farm surrounding my family’s property felt like our own. We eagerly awaited the years the farmer planted soybeans, as it made for smoother sledding hills. It was a difficult choice though, because the other option was sweet corn to eat. Farmer Donnie would pull into the driveway in his pick-up in the late afternoon sun and my mom would get four dozen, sending us kids out to the porch to shuck corn for supper. There is nothing like drying off from a swim in the river, while shucking juicy sweet corn for dinner, knowing Mom also made fresh bread. Did I mention the river? Yes, the Shenandoah is not just a John Denver song, but also the water in which I swam, canoed, and the banks on which I encountered painful poison ivy.

Shenandoah is the name of my home county and the valley in which I grew up. Historically called the “bread basket of the Confederacy,” the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia is an agricultural community, boasting fields of soybeans and corn, apple orchards, and numerous vineyards. Rural Virginians are Republican voting, camo wearing, deer hunting, gun collecting individuals. They drive pick-up trucks, butcher pigs, boil apple butter, drink sweet tea, and fly the confederate flag. This is the stock from which I come and the world I left when I moved to Chicago. It is this context which drew me into Daman’s discussion of the relationship between the rural and urban church.

The most concise summary of Daman’s thesis is a cry for partnership. Tackling a topic sorely in need of attention, Daman is writing from the perspective of a battle worn pastor, having long and faithfully served rural communities, watching the landscape of America Christianity change. He highlights the overemphasis past evangelical movements placed on the urban expression of the church. Not only is rural America a forgotten place, Daman suggests, but American believers have forgotten the rural expression of the body and its unique perspective and contribution to the church at large. The solution—partnership between the urban and rural church, seeking to overcome the divide, and grow to a place of mutual edification and advancement of the gospel. Simply said, yet clearly something is keeping this partnership from being realized.

At the risk of reduction, the greatest stumbling block to constructing partnership between the rural and urban church is misunderstanding, fed by stereotypes and lack of genuine knowledge of the other. This Daman argued for well, at least from the rural perspective, by endeavoring to unpack the context in which the rural expression of the American church dwells, touching on political, economic, and social issues, as well as common misconceptions. One such misconception is the belief that the presence of churches in rural America indicates it has been reached with the gospel. Daman states: “Because rural people tend to be more conservative, both politically and morally, many people assume that rural areas no longer need a strong evangelistic focus. However, a vast difference exists between being religious and following a Judeo-Christian ethic, and being a genuine disciple of Christ.”[1] This point rings true with my own experience. While full of religious people, with churches on every hill, the valley in which I grew up still desperately needs congregations committed to preaching the Word of God and committed believers walking in obedience to it. Additionally, those rural Americans already seeking to follow Christ have just as great a need of biblically and theologically trained church leadership as suburban or urban congregations, a point Daman brings to light.

I am unsure if Daman realizes his argument works both ways. The urban church, and any expression of the body of Christ which differs from one’s own, can be equally misunderstood. Herein lies my greatest critique. While crying out for partnership, Daman veers off the track of the rural/urban discussion into the large/small church discussion. While churches in rural towns of two hundred arguably have a smaller population to draw from than a church plant in Queens, one cannot equate urban with large church or rural with small. As someone who attends a church with an average attendance of approximately sixty in an affluent northwestern neighborhood of Chicago, I can attest first hand that my pastor deals with some of the same challenges my pastor from the Shenandoah Valley encountered. Here, precisely, is where believers must take a step back to listen, analyze, and maybe take a breath before speaking.

“No church can be reduced to its location.””

— Emily Alexander

No church can be reduced to its location. Each local expression of the body of Christ is composed of unique individuals, having experienced a variety of socio-economic, religious, and political backgrounds. One may be tempted to generalize rural churches as dying, small, and traditional. One may also be tempted to color urban churches as large, popular, and progressive. But generalizations only feed stereotypes and increase misunderstandings. The cry for partnership will not be recognized until we set aside our stereotypes, lay down our locality, and listen to the experiences of the “other.”

Quite possibly Daman is misidentifying the root problem in the American church when he identifies it as polarization. Instead, it seems that he is describing the habit of “othering” between believers.[2] However, this habit has no place in the body of Christ. The church is neither rural or urban, neither American or otherwise, but a unified, collective body of unique image bearers who have been brought into the Kingdom of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ. For the unity of His Body, Christ prayed, asking that the interpersonal relationships in the Church would reflect the unity and working together of the Godhead.[3]

Fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking understanding,” is a phrase coined by Anselm of Canterbury, a theologian of the early 11th century. In an introductory theology course during the first semester of my life in Chicago, this quote was given to me as a framework from which to study theology. Little did I know it would also become my framework for ecclesiology. How can one seek fellowship with another believer, particularly of a different background or locality, unless first seeking to understand? Raised as a proud southerner, taught a particular bias of civil war history, I had no understanding that the confederate flag, proudly waved on the porches of many homes in my county, was a symbol of grievance and offense to my black brothers and sisters. I had never had a friend that was black, so I didn’t understand. Nor did I have a pressing reason to seek to understand. Stepping onto the campus of a theology school during the height of Black Lives Matter, my worldview fell to pieces as I heard fellow students share their painful heritage. It wasn’t until I sought to understand, until I laid down the confederate flag flying in my own heart, that I could find fellowship. It is only in first seeking to find fellowship through mutual listening and understanding, that partnership can even be considered, something Daman himself is trying to do. Unveiling his heart and experience as a rural pastor, Daman’s cry for partnership is embedded in seeking to be understood.

So what about partnership? What about the rural and urban church joining together for the advancement of the gospel? Understanding leads to fellowship, which in turn leads to partnership, when, like Christ modeled, it is pursued in humility. This past summer I was offered an internship position in a large black church on the south side of Chicago. Thrilled, yet terrified, I met with a black man I respect whom also pastors a church in the city, and hesitantly voiced my concern. “Why would they want me? A girl from the south. A girl who didn’t have a personal friendship with an individual from another ethnicity or skin color until age twenty. Why would this church want me to intern with them?” Gently, kindly, he encouraged me to enter the black church community in humility, seeking to learn and understand. Three months later, I have experienced Biblical, ecclesial partnership in a way I didn’t know possible, in a way that will forever shape the trajectory of my ministry. But only because I entered in humility, seeking to understand, desiring fellowship, hoping to bring my unique giftings to be utilized only if of use to the needs of the congregation.

Once misconceptions and misunderstandings are cleared through the process of listening and nurturing fellowship, the real work of partnering together can occur. This partnership extends from an acknowledgement of both weaknesses and strengths, and an identification of commonalities. Today, the opioid crisis in America impacts countless of families and communities. In her 2018 book, Dopesick, Beth Macy unveils how the opioid crisis is affecting not just urban and suburban communities, but also ravaging central Appalachia. The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, while classically played off as traditional and idyllic, lies right in the thick of the opioid mess. Is it possible that the urban expression of the body of Christ who have planted churches in neighborhoods wracked by drug abuse, gang influence, and violence (strength through experience), could possibly come alongside the rural church (weakness through inexperience) to battle against the increasing opioid crisis (shared commonality)? Quite possibly the rural church has a unique contribution to offer in return. A theology of space and land, deriving from generational ties to farms, mines, rivers, forests, and even buildings, could be shared with urban believers seeking to reach their communities with the gospel through constructing a sense of place. As Daman so poignantly suggests, the parts of the body, as outlined by Paul to the church at Corinth, are not specific to a local expression of the church, but applicable to the global church as well. The rural church cannot live into the fullest expression of the body of Christ without its urban and suburban sister churches, just as the urban church can benefit from the perspective and theological underpinnings of rural congregations and ministry leaders.

As I step back and consider the past three years of learning from the urban church, what rises to the surface are not so much the differences between my home community and Chicago, but the similarities. Similarities grounded in the brokenness of mankind and its need for redemption through the gospel. Similarities of tired land and decaying buildings crying out to be renewed by the Creator of all things. And within the church specifically, mutual human experiences of joy and pain both challenged and transformed by the participation in the global church of Jesus Christ. The urban church has equipped me to once again enter into my rural community, this time with fresh eyes, my heart ready to listen, my mind ready to understand, and my hands eager to partner within a local expression of Christ’s body. This experience prompts me to agree with Daman, that the rural church too can bring a transforming and needed perspective to American evangelicalism. But this can only happen if you as well are willing to lay down your flag of locality and seek to understand.

About Emily C. Alexander

A first generation college graduate of a rural working class family, Emily C. Alexander recently completed her undergraduate degree in Ministry to Women at the Moody Bible Institute. Emily lives in Chicago where she enjoys long walks admiring architecture and pondering theological and sociological issues. Her hope is to impact the lives of women and the flourishing of the church through thoughtful theological engagement.

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Footnotes

[1] Daman, pg. 49.

[2] I am using a definition of othering that is like this basic definition pulled from the Google dictionary. Othering is "to view or treat (a person or group of people) as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself." I was hesitant to use "othering" because some view it as a fairly liberal concept, connected to inclusivity. However, if we look at history, it proves to be a sinful human response to differences.

[3] John 17.20-21

Beyond Racial Binary Pt. 2

Miles Morales. That’s the name of the Spider-man at the center of the newly released Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse. He is half African American, half Puerto Rican, and the first bi-racial superhero to hit the big-screen. As a true coming-of-age story, the movie portrays Miles ascending to the idea that he too can be spider-man. This is the main theme of the film, and it’s summarized in a mid-credit title card that reads: “That person who helps others simply because it should or must be done, and because it is the right thing to do, is indeed without a doubt, a real superhero” (Stan Lee). The Spider-verse, with its many spider-people, is a forward-thinking contribution to the race conversation, one that subtly adopts a thicker identity than the binary (i.e. black/white) so common to the discussion. Miles is more than a black character. Spider-man is more than a white Peter Parker. The super-hero behind the mask is recast as a Criollo, a product of a complex racial world.

Original Artwork/Christian Perez

After reading our previous article on the racial binary, a reader sent me the following critique (I’ve shared it in full because it is the question at the center of this second article):

“This article proved that historical events demand a more nuanced view. Now you should take it further and explain how [a tri-racial history] will not only account for what actually happened in America but what that historical accuracy will do for discussions about race in America. So yes, the truncated [binary] starting place doesn’t account for the history of the west and south, but how will the new proposal change the discussions about our racialized history?”

Essentially, I believe this reader is asking for points of application, for the “what now” that follows from a tri-racial American identity and history. My goal is to answer his question by building from the same two points that I proposed in the original post. A tri-racial dialog on race is one that is rooted in a thick history of non-innocence and the Criollo/Mestizo Identity, and together these provide a base for reconciliation and unity. Miles Morales will serve as a contemporary case study, an example of how a history of non-innocence and a Criollo identity can shape us all for the better. While Miles serves as the social example, I intend to draw points of connection between these ideas and the Bible when appropriate. In making these connections, my aim is to show that the Church is uniquely equipped, when guided by Latino/a brothers and sisters, to be the ambassador of reconciliation in a racialized America.

A History of Non-innocence[1]

In the previous article, I briefly covered a history of racial oppression and violence in the west coast. By recounting this history, I demonstrated that the Hispanic experience in America includes acts of racism dating back further than the history used to support a racial binary. However, this more nuanced historical account is not meant to be used to lay claim on land once stolen by Americans. That is not my goal.  On the contrary, the Hispanic social identity does not permit me, nor my people, the gift of innocence when it comes to ownership claims on the land. Remember, the means by which these lands became Spanish was conquest and encomienda (see previous post), practices no more honorable than those used by Americans years later.

Hispanics are the mixed products of Spanish conquistadors and indigenous people. Our inheritance is always a mix passed down from guilty ancestors. As Justo Gonzalez remarks,

Our Spanish ancestors took the lands of our [Native] ancestors. Some of our [Native] ancestors practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism. Some of our Spanish forefathers raped our [Native] foremothers. Some of our [Native] foremothers betrayed their people in favor of the invaders. It is not a pretty story. But it is more real than the story that white settlers came to this land with pure motivations, and that any abuse of inhabitants was the exception rather than the rule. It is also a story resulting in a painful identity.[2]

A Criollo history, a mixed, tri-part history that accounts for the crimes of our ancestors and acknowledges that our inheritance is the result “not merely of hard labor, daring enterprise, and rugged individualism but also of theft” can cultivate the empathy necessary to pursue justice together.[3] This is the great gift and therefore the great responsibility of a Hispanic heritage: to challenge the myth of innocence in the American past.

Miles and his Heritage (Spoiler Alert)

One of the tensions of the Spider-verse movie is the relationship between Miles and the male figures in his family. His father, Jefferson, is a hard-nosed police officer who lives on clear cut lines of right and wrong and pushes Miles to transcend the mire of life in Brooklyn. In a powerful moment between father and son, Miles questions why he must go to the new magnet school instead of being in a traditional public school “with the people.” Jefferson’s answer is firm: He wants something better for Miles; he doesn’t want Miles to become his uncle. To this, Miles responds, “What’s wrong with uncle Aaron?”

Miles admires his uncle Aaron, who is a clear foil of Jefferson. The big reveal of the film is that Aaron is The Prowler, a murderous villain who works for the Kingpin. During a tragic scene following the revelation of Aaron’s alter-ego, Miles is encouraged by his dying uncle to do better, to be better, because he is “on his way” to greatness. Miles’s own family is complicit in the crimes, his uncle is caught up in the wrongs, yet he drives Miles to transcend as Jefferson had hoped. Miles’s hero was also a villain. This is part of his complex inheritance. This history of non-innocence undergirds Miles’s embrace of his call to be Spider-man. In the end, we see Miles paint a tribute to his uncle in the police station with his father, a beautiful act of remembrance.

A History of Non-innocence and the Church

The way we capture and relate history affects the way we perceive the world and the Bible. This is one of the basic claims of Justo Gonzalez’s book, Mañana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective. Justo demonstrates that Bible stories are not politically and socially neutral, and he convincingly argues that American retellings of biblical stories tend to sterilize them and remove these aspects. However, a slow examination of the Older and Newer Testament would prove to be quite contrary to this mostly innocent account of the stories. The history of Israel is a dark heritage which includes rape, the murder of the innocent, and the oppression of the poor. The heroes of the Old Testament are often deceitful and out for their own gain. The disciples in the New Testament are not much of an improvement. As Justo writes,

In short, biblical history is a history beyond innocence. Its only real heroes are the God of history and history itself, which somehow continues moving forward even in spite of the failure of its great protagonists. Since this is also the nature of Hispanic history, it may well be that on this score we have a hermeneutical advantage over those whose history is still at the level of guilty innocence, and who therefore must read Scripture in the same way in which they read their own history.[4]

Justo concludes his remarks with a clear challenge to read the Bible as it is intended, as a record of an entirely guilty humanity in need of God’s grace. This reading of Scripture and act of responsible remembrance, argues Justo, leads to right action in the present. Again, if we are all ladrones (thieves), we are readier to empathize and challenge injustice together.

A Criollo/Mestizo Identity

I introduced the criollo/mestizo identity in the previous article. These words have been given theological significance as well. Jose Vasconcelos (a Mexican writer, philosopher and politician) was the first to take the term mestizo and redeem it as a positive term. In his early writings, Vasconcelos argued that America could be the place where La Raza Cosmica (The Cosmic race) could develop. He saw great potential for unity in the Hispanic identity because it transcends designation by skin color. Many Hispanic theologians since have followed his line of reasoning to portray the Church as a kind of mestizo group.

Virgilio Elizondo, for instance, argued similarly in The Future is Mestizo.[5] Much of his work focuses on the theological significance of the mestizo/a and the process of mestizaje, which defines the mixing of the three bloodlines (African, European, and Native) not only biologically but culturally and religiously as well. These theologians reflect deeply on their ethnic-social identity, but they also reveal a key observation about God’s people throughout history. From their very origin, the people of God were a mestizo (mixed) group. A brief review of the biblical story reinforces this identity.

When the Lord first redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt, the Bible tells us that “a mixed multitude also went with them” (Exod. 12:38). Moses married a black woman, though he was criticized for it (Num. 12). When Israel crossed the Jordan river into the promised land, Rahab, a prostitute, helped Israel in their conquest of Jericho. She would marry into Israel, and later genealogies reveal that she is a foremother of Jesus (Matt. 1:5). Ruth, a moabite, is another foremother of Jesus. The Bible tells us that one of the earliest converts to Christianity was an Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:28-40). The church where the term Christian was first used was a mixed church led by a group that included a black teacher named Simeon (Acts 13:1). The early church included Jew and gentile alike, and the startling conclusion of the Bible foretells that God will be praised by a multitude “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev. 7:9).

From the beginning, God’s people include a mix of Africans, Europeans, and Israelites as one group. The history is one of non-innocence and the identity is uniquely and profoundly mixed. Mestizaje is the process by which Hispanics became one group consisting of brown, white, and black people. One of my Abuela’s favorite reminders is that you cannot identify a Puerto Rican by the color of their skin. Indeed, my family includes relatives of white skin with blue eyes and others with dark skin and curly hair. Despite these physical differences, we are united in one culture, one spirit, and one family. Is this not what Paul envisions in Ephesians chapter 4 when he challenges the church to walk worthy of their call by living in profound union?

Anglo Americans already have a sense of this mixed identity and union. They typically do not self-identify as German, English, French, Dutch, etc. Instead, the identity is now subsumed in the racial category: white. Mestizaje, however, moves beyond skin color and is rooted in more nuanced history; it produces a social group readier to welcome the other with genuine hospitality.

Conclusion

Miles Morales is a criollo Spider-man deeply committed to his family. When he faces the villain of the film, it is his connection to his family that lifts him to the task of defeating evil. He wins the fight by remembering his father’s words and using his uncle’s move. Miles is black, he is Rican, and he’s Spider-man. His empathy and desire for justice are rooted in his heritage and the complexity of his identity. Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse was an excellent display of the gift of mestizaje. Like Miles, the Church can learn from their brown family members to remember responsibly and act justly in the world. This is the great gift and great responsibility inherited from the Hispanic identity and the Latino/a church.

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Footnotes

[1] Credit must be given to Justo L. Gonzalez for this title and framework for history. His thoughts on history shaped what I propose in this section, and I recommend readers consider his book Mañana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective.

[2] Justo L. González, Mañana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective, Reprint edition edition (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 40.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 77.

[5] I suggest reading Nestor Medina's book called Mestizaje: ReMapping Race, Culture, and Faith in Latina/o Catholicism as a primer. Nestor dedicates an entire section of the book to expounding and critically reviewing the ideas of Elizondo.

Beyond Racial Binary

I recently attended a panel discussion on race, diversity, and the city. The panel included a prominent African American church leader, a Canadian social scientist, a white professor of urban studies and politics, two pastors working in a Hispanic context (one Hispanic, the other white), and an Asian American pastor. In all, the group represented a fascinating intersection of theology, policy, and ministry. During the discussion, the moderator addressed the Hispanic and Asian pastor and said, “Often these discussions about race and diversity are framed as racial binaries (black/white). How do you think the conversation should be reframed? What do you think about the black/white binary?”

Much to my surprise, the two pastors were comfortable with race discussions as is. In fact, one of them said, “I think blackness and whiteness are the two archetypes for us to understand race. We can’t understand Asian-ness or the Latino-type without first understanding these two primary types. Black and White should frame and help us make sense of the other experiences.” I suspect that many in the audience found his answer profound and insightful, but I think there are several problems with this line of thinking. The black/white binary does not sufficiently account for the experiences of either group – Latino/a or Asian – and reflects a certain set of historical biases that need to be reconsidered.

I am asking the question again and attempting an answer from my Latino perspective. I do not pretend to know the Asian experience sufficiently enough to address it, but I believe my answer will help reframe the discussion such that someone more able than I can fill in the Asian perspective where I cannot. There are two basic lines of thinking that I use to address the question and introduce a new way of discussing race in the city. The first will be an analysis of Puerto Rican heritage as represented in public artwork. The second will be a brief history of the United States that will focus on events in the 1800s. When appropriate, I will suggest places where the Asian perspective is likely lacking and can be purposely inserted.

La Fuente de la Herencia

There is a small promenade in San Juan, Puerto Rico called “Paseo de la Princesa.” This promenade includes two public art installations worth considering as we think through race in America. Both are sculptures in a garden called La Fuente de la Herencia (The Fountain of Inheritance) that is tucked away in the ancient walls of San Juan. The fountain includes five sculptures representing the heritage of Puerto Rico: 1) the inheritance of the faith, 2) the inheritance of liberty, 3) the blood inheritance, 4) the social inheritance, and 5) the cultural inheritance (i.e. the inheritance of the arts). I want to focus on the third and fourth inheritance depicted by this collection of sculptures because they nudge the conversation from binary to tri-part.

The Blood Inheritance

According to the description of the garden, this sculpture represents the “integration of the three principle races of America, symbolized by Ponce De Leon, Chief Agüeybana’s sister, and a black African slave who later makes his ethne-cultural contribution to the new world.”[1] In 1508, Juan Ponce De Leon established the first settlement on the Island of Puerto Rico and named it Caparra. This depiction of him shows him taking the princess of the indigenous Taino tribe as the spoils of battle. The description of the piece reminds us that Spaniards later brought African slaves to the Island to help with the search for gold. The three characters suggest that the heritage of the America’s includes three bloodlines, not two. We cannot make sense of race in America by using two categories. If we do, we fail to acknowledge the indigenous people whose bastard children are known today as Hispanics. This points directly, as Ponce De Leon does in this picture, to a new social reality.

The Social Inheritance

Directly across from Juan Ponce De Leon and the bloodline sculpture is this piece. Here we have three other significant figures to consider. According to the descriptions on the plaque this sculpture depicts “the ibero-american priestess as symbolic mother of the new world and the Spanish conquistador, who together present their son, El Criollo, to the world.”[2] El Criollo is the Hispanic son, the mixed product of indigenous people and Spanish colonizers.[3] Over a hundred years before the arrival of English immigrants to America, the criollo children of the Spanish conquest where forming into a new ethnic-social group. The social situation in America has since been at least about the interaction, just or unjust, between these three races.

I suspect that part of the reason conversations about race in America fail to move from binary to tri-part, including Native Americans and Hispanics, is a truncated history that focuses too much on the eastern region of the United States. Instead, I’d like to propose a few key events that are regularly forgotten as we engage in dialog.

The East Coast Bias

I’m not going to provide a very long history, and it is important to acknowledge that the panel discussion I attended may not reflect the kind of thinking present everywhere in the city and church. However, for those who do think issues of race and reconciliation are essentially black/white problems first before considering everyone else, I propose a different narrative. In my experience, those who think in the way expressed by the pastor-panelist have the events of African slavery, the civil war, reconstruction, and the civil rights movement in mind. They are rightly trying to confront longstanding systems of black oppression and the traumatic social impact of these systems today. I do not want to diminish the importance of that element of the discussion. However, the civil war, for instance, only accounts for 11 states in the southeast and 20 states mostly in the northeast part of the U.S. My point is that the whole US, including that 3rd bloodline, is not accounted for in the story of the civil war. To capture the fullness necessary to have a good discussion on race reconciliation, we must go a little further back in history and work out the situation in the west.

Encomiendas - The Spanish Slavery System

Early in the 1500s Queen Isabella established a system of encomiendas in which Native Americans were grouped together and “entrusted” to a Spaniard colonizer to be “civilized” and “Christianized” in exchange for free labor. While the native people were not technically enslaved, the conditions were often indistinguishable from slavery as we know it. In 1510, Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos arrived as one of the first colonial citizens to la Republica Dominicana. He preached vehemently against encomiendas, and in 1512 the system was changed though not abolished. Other priests followed. For instance, Bartolome de Las Casas was an avid defender of native people. In 1515, de Las Casas gave up his Native American slaves and chose to denounce the evils being committed in the colonies. These two priests reveal that the apparently monolithic Roman Catholic Church in Latin America really has always been two churches from the very beginning.[4] One of the “two” Roman Catholic churches was an arm of the Spanish power and an aid in the conquest, colonization, and oppression of the Americas (1519-1532). The second, however, repeatedly stood with the oppressed and decried the abuse of power. This later version of the church became deeply associated with the ethos of the Mexican people.

Remembering Mexico

By 1819, Mexico was a significant portion of New Spain. The population growth of the colonies led to dispersal over greater distances. Here is a map reflecting the area of Mexico that is now the Western United States:

CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=937608 [5]

Again, there are a few historical events worth noting briefly. First, Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821. Due to the war for liberty, the Northern lands of Mexico were severely underpopulated. Therefore, the government enacted the General Law of Colonization. Under this law, white Americans were given right to migrate into Texas and other lands. In 1830, Mexico halts further immigration because white settlers began to outnumber Mexican citizens. Tensions began because white immigrants refused to honor Mexico’s anti-slavery laws. This is where I believe the connection with the second Roman Catholic Church was perceived as a problem for protestant white immigrants. Tensions reached their height in 1836, when Texas became an independent nation, and in 1846 the Mexican-American war began.

The war ended tragically for Mexico. In 1848, Mexico and the US signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and Mexico relinquished all or parts of their entire northern territories. With the signing of this treaty, 100,000 Mexican citizens became strangers in their own land. Like their parents in the 1500s, Mexicans were displaced, removed, and rejected as “greasers.” Remembering this history, along with the social identity of Hispanics, would help us resist the tendency to discuss issues of race in black/white binary terms. The Mexican-American war precedes the civil war and did much to increase the tension regarding black slavery in America. My point is that these issues are interrelated and ignoring them only reduces our ability to reconcile as one people.

Conclusion

The black/white binary isn’t a helpful way of thinking about race in America because it does not account for the displacement of ibero-americans and it reflects a historical bias for the eastern narrative of the United States. I said I would at least identify where I think the Asian voice may have important contributions to make, and I want to conclude there. If we recall, it was in the west where Japanese interment camps were most prevalent during WWII. Prior to the war, California was the scene of severe violence against Filipino migrant contract workers during the Watsonville Riots of 1930. It wasn’t until 2011 that CA publicly apologized for these hate acts. I suspect more must be said regarding the experiences of Asian Americans in the west and no doubt broadly in the US. This, however, may be a starting point. We have to know our stories (intentionally plural) if we are ever going to make something different of our divided city.

Recently, there is significant discussion and tense debate regarding the migrant caravan from South America. Our president has unabashedly referred to it as “an invasion.” In response, I heard a Native American brother plead with a group of evangelicals, saying, “I have some cousins on the way back home. When they get here, I hope you’ll treat them kindly.” Indeed, I hope we remember that they once received white immigrants into the very lands we are now accusing them of invading.

The plaque at the center of La Fuente de La Herencia says that the base of the fountain, where the waters meet, represents the unification of the Americas in the grand cause and inheritance of universal man. The fount elevating from the base and shooting water symbolizes “the hope for a better world, founded on the values of our grand inheritance and the faith in the eternal life that is the aspiration of all mankind.”[6] Written around the edge of the fountains base is this prophetic utterance:

I will run like the rivers to the heart of the world

to nourish your inheritance

With my faith, my blood, my intellect, and my ancestral origin

In the name of God almighty I took these lands

To later dedicate them to the divine principle

That all men are created equal

Under the shelter of an Indian Chief, a European, and an African who gave their blood

To you. I give you the most noble of the old and new world

The future awaits your key for its destiny[7]

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Footnotes

[1] My trans.

[2] My trans.

[3] Another common word for a mixed person of Spanish and Native American descent is Mestizo.

[4] Justo L. González, Mañana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective, Reprint edition edition (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 56.

[5] “Adams–Onís Treaty,” Wikipedia, October 27, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adams%E2%80%93On%C3%ADs_Treaty&oldid=866029907.

[6] My trans.

[7] Ibid.

Lessons From A Man Called Ove: A Story about Inclusion and Community

Some years ago, I was in the second round of interviews for a pastoral position with a significant church in Chicago. This church was in the process of launching several new campuses, and my neighborhood was their next target for a new site. They wanted this campus to have two pastors on staff that reflected the primary ethnic-groups residing in Logan Square: an older Hispanic community and a younger, millennial-aged white constituency. As is customary, I was given a few minutes to ask questions of my interviewers, and my first was this:

“Hispanics value the care of their elders. Your church has a younger membership, so how do you intend to serve the Abuelas and Abuelos and make them part of your community?"

The response was bewildering. The pastor reminded me that the church’s brand was younger, that it was part of their “DNA,” and he suggested that no plans would be significantly changed to serve or integrate the elderly. Inexplicable! A church interested in reaching, serving, and representing all of Logan Square wasn’t considering the longstanding Abuelo/a who sits on the porch every day to watch the neighborhood. The sad truth is his response reflects the real experiences of elderly people frequently ignored, even cast out, by the rapidly developing city around them. Thanks to Fredrik Backman, however, these experiences are set, named, and reconsidered in the fictional life of his original character, Ove, and his story exposes just how vital elders are to the city we make.

Introducing A Man Called Ove

Ove is the titular character of Fredrik Backman’s first novel. He is a man of principle who believes a thing should be done or abstained simply because its right. “Men are what they are because of what they do. Not what they say,” says Ove. He’s a misunderstood widower labeled a curmudgeon, and he’s forced out of society completely, left alone to contemplate his presumed uselessness and plan his suicide. This is Ove’s condition when the reader meets him. He’s alone “in a world where he no longer [understands] the language,” dejected, and preparing to take his life. The trope of the old hero forgotten by society and broken by an untimely lost is used by Backman to bring readers near to the experience of this bristly old Swede. Ove is a hero. But, Ove is lost.

In this story, as in others, the hero must be found and called back from his exile before the villains can be defeated. However, it is his calling and foes that reveal the unique insights latent in Ove’s story. Here are three of the many lessons learned from Ove and his neighborhood.

Seen and Known

It takes someone who knows the margins to bring someone back into the fold. Ove and his neighbors are living a fragmented experience of community when the story begins. Rune and Anita, Ove’s oldest friends, no longer speak to him. His neighbor across the street, Anders, is judged from a distance and suspected of being a dubious character. Where there was once a vibrant community of neighbors, there is now only echoes of an old life which only serve to further ostracize the characters. That is, until the arrival of a certain “crazy, pregnant foreign woman and her utterly ungovernable family.”

Parvaneh, an Iranian immigrant, moves into the neighborhood with her husband Patrick and their children and immediately restores life and laughter to its residents. She sees through Ove’s rough exterior, and her daughters quickly fall in love with their new “granddad” (or Abuelo).  Parvaneh is the force behind Ove’s reintegration, compelling him to help Anita and Rune, take in the stray cat fond of Ove’s home, and interact with Jimmy and the other young men of the row house street. Because of her, Ove becomes a handy-man, helping the “fools” in almost every house within a four-street radius. On one occasion Ove mumbles to his wife, “Sometimes it can be quite nice having something to get on with in the daytime.”

“The neighbors are saying he’s been “like a different person” these last days, that they’ve never seen him so “engaged” before."

All this teeming life is born from Parvaneh’s insistence that Ove return from his exile. She becomes like a daughter to the old Swede. Were it not for her, Ove’s gift would be lost to the world. Instead, Ove flourishes in his old age, and his neighbors benefit from his presence thanks to Parvaneh’s call.

The Dignity of Work

Ove frequently bemoans the new world of modern society. He hates credit cards, thinks the idea of retirement is flawed and unjust, and is shocked by the general lack of loyalty toward Saab, the only car manufacturer Ove trusts. “Nowadays people change their stuff so often that any expertise in how to make things last was becoming superfluous,” thought Ove. The lost of that expertise meant that Ove was viewed as a relic.

In an astounding display of blindness and injustice, Ove’s employer forcibly retired him. “This was a world where one became outdated before one’s time was up,” thought Ove. Many of his critiques of the world proved to be wisdom in the end. When Parvaneh successfully brought Ove back into community, she also revealed the importance of his skill for others. Beyond his technical and architectural skills, Ove helps young Adrian with his romantic woes and provides leadership for the community. The dignity of work and tradition are made clear through Ove’s story.

Resist. Together.

Ove and his wife, Sonja, were the first to move into their community. “Their understanding was that children should live in row housing developments among other children. And less than forty years later there was no forest around the house anymore. Just other houses.” The quiet backwater home became a city district, and they had drug dealers, young couples, and immigrants as neighbors. Ove lived to see the under-developed neighborhood come to age and grow old, gentrifying as a “parade of uppity real estate agents … patrolled the little road between houses … like vultures watching aging water buffalo.”

Gentrification done wrongly is a destructive force, and its effects are observed in Ove with accuracy. In a study of the Italian West End of Boston, Marc Fried observed severe grief in residents who experienced the loss of their homes.[1] It is not simply the loss of a habitation, but the memories that are grieved. Old buildings become monumental works of art. Ove experiences such lost. However, when Rune and Anita are facing the similar threat, Ove gathers the community in their support. The book reveals the remarkable power of a community that works together against systems of injustice.

One of the most riveting lines in the book is said by Sonja’s new principle and boss. When offering her the job at the local school, he says, ““There’s no hope for these boys and girls,” the headmaster soberly explained in the interview. “This is not education, this is storage.” Sonja, a hero in her own right, resists this notion and teaches her young pupils to read Shakespeare. Education, gentrification, homophobia, and generational bias are all confronted by Ove and his community. They do it together, and they overcome.

Life is a Curious thing

A Man Called Ove is a story about a hero resisting the systems of social change that empower wicked men to exclude the elderly, the weak, and the disabled. These white-shirted villains are city councilmen who believe they have the power to evaluate people and decide when they are only good enough to die. Our vision for the world can and should be shaped by Parvaneh’s reminder that the elderly are needed just as much by their communities as they are dependent on them to flourish. Ove himself reveals the dignity of work done well and the vitality of a world that enables the work of its elders. The entire community illuminates the tangibility of social injustice, and they encourage the reader to resist by pursuing another way of flourishing, one that commits to the well-being of those Abuelos and Abuelas that are often forgotten.

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Footnote

[1] Emily Badger, “Why Trump’s Use of the Words ‘Urban Renewal’ Is Scary for Cities,” The New York Times, December 7, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/upshot/why-trumps-use-of-the-words-urban-renewal-is-scary-for-cities.html.

Montgomery

“True Peace is not Merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of Justice.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Cradle of the Confederacy and The Birthplace of The Civil Rights Movement

Cities, like people, have complicated histories. Their character can reflect apparent contradictions, but if we take them as a whole we see their beauty. Cities bear the marks of who we were, and in remembering, they give us the opportunity to decide who we will be in the future.  Montgomery is one of those cities. Its seal is a jarring reminder of paradoxical truths. Montgomery is both the “Cradle of the Confederacy” and the “Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement.”

The city is still home to the First House of the Confederacy, but thanks to the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), it now has the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The EJI is founded and directed by Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy. They work to provide legal services to prisoners. We’ve been interested in their work for some time and recently visited their new public exhibits. Here are some photos that highlight the power of the memorial.

“The centerpiece of [the memorial] is a sprawling wood-and-metal open-air structure featuring 800 6-foot columns, each one representing a county where a lynching took place in the United States between 1877 and 1950.”1 The EJI worked over six-years to recover the history of the public murders, documenting 3,959 lynchings across the south.

Etched in each of the 800 columns are the names of lynching victims. “None of the columns are telling exactly the same story—made of corten steel, an alloy that changes hue when exposed to air, they’ve each morphed to a different shade of brown over time.”2 Several times, the records are so incomplete, the column reads “Unknown” in the place of the name.

At the memorial entrance the columns are eye level. Victor Luckerson captures the effect of the memorial as one moves further into its heart. He writes, “As you wind your way through the memorial, the floor slopes downward and the eerie symbolism of a cluster of human-sized columns suspended by metal poles becomes more apparent. Eventually, the columns stretch too far in the air to clearly read the names, so the viewer can only assess them in aggregate. The terror of lynching becomes mass spectacle, as it was when it was happening across the South less than a century ago. The structure evokes the haunting photo of a mutilated black body hanging over a crowd of white onlookers, but turned upside down.”3

After looking at these pictures, consider the Town Fabric concept. Town Fabric is the quality of the city that distinguishes it as a distinct place for human interaction. Town Fabric is the setting-ness of the city. It distinguishes the city as a place for a particular story. It can be broken down into three essential functions, the first being exemplified by Montgomery. Town Fabric

1. Creates settings for monuments

2. Houses people and provides places for work and their private needs

3. Shapes and defines the outdoor public spaces of a town/city4

The first function highlights the importance of The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Monuments and memorials are a product of civic art. The purpose of civic art is to “reinforce and communicate the layers of meaning that have accumulated within a particular city…”5 Making civic art is about two things: 1) creating monuments (i.e. works of art, often in the form of statuary, or buildings) that tell the story of the city and 2) creating settings (i.e. plazas, streets, and squares) that encourage the community to live-into the story. Monuments are those pieces of public art which concretize the story of the city. They gain their distinction from other fabric buildings in two primary ways. First, by their architectural vocabulary (i.e. height, scale, the use of grand style and other architectural details, and the quality of materials). Second, by their placement in the town fabric. Town Fabrics often set monuments on focal points of the city’s street design. In this way, “town fabric employs monuments to reflect and undergird meaning for a particular locale.”6 In this case, the memorial is set on a hill, overlooking the skyline of the small city. Montgomery is now cast in the shadow of lynching-history, slavery, and other acts of racial violence. The memorial encourages the community to remember with hope, courage, persistence, and faith.

The Town Fabric concept reinforces the importance of the city-setting in increasing the community’s ability to live-into the story of their culture. It also signals the connection between the city and memory. Through their fabric, cities retain the memories of those citizens that use, engage, and enact the story-set-in-place in their city. It is then up to the community to do in remembrance.

Quote written on end-wall of The Legacy Museum just above their parking lot.

The EJI’s new public exhibits help us remember well and confirm that the only way to “transform culture” is to make new culture. Their memorial represents a counter-culture, a counter-narrative that confronts the southern story deeply entrenched in “The Cradle of the Confederacy.” In a state that still celebrates Confederate Memorial Day, Bryan Stevenson and his team are transforming their city. We couldn’t help but see resonance between their work and the story at the core of all just culture-making. Long ago, a dark-skinned King hung from a tree on a hill outside the city of Jerusalem, lynched despite his innocence. The story of his death and resurrection ushered in the possibility of a new city where justice and peace are realized. While they may not intend it, the EJI’s memorial points back to this King and forward to His city.

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Footnotes

1. Victor Luckerson, “‘Drenched in Blackness’: Pain and Truth in Montgomery’s Lynching Memorial,” The Ringer, April 30, 2018, https://www.theringer.com/2018/4/30/17300786/montgomery-lynching-memorial-equal-justice-initiative-bryan-stevenson.

2. Luckerson.

3. Luckerson.

4. I am indebted to Eric Jacobsen for my understanding of town fabric (Eric O. Jacobsen, The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment, ed. Robert Johnston and William Dyrness (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012).

5. Jacobsen, The Space Between, 16. In particular, Jacobsen notes that civic art was the task of inculcating values in public settings. Civic art as a discipline is no longer practiced, but the work of city planners today still considers the use of civic art in organically shaping the city.

6. Jacobsen.

7. Sections of this article are from Seeking Zion: The Gospel and The City We Make, written by Emanuel (Ricky) Padilla. 2017.

Seats at the Table: Jesus’ response to Nietzschean Power

A friend recently sent me a video where John MacArthur was asked to give a “Biblical and Christ proclaiming view” on the events of Charlottesville. While I am in no position to critique MacArthur for his response, I think his comments were broad theological statements rather than a direct response to Charlottesville. No doubt others will have opinions about this video, but I just want to give the question a second look considering the discussion we started two weeks ago about “power.” What does the Bible tell us about the display at Charlottesville? Is the Bible capable of reorienting the world so that “power” isn’t grasped for with such violence and coercion?

Two weeks ago, I concluded my own thoughts on Charlottesville with a brief definition of privilege. “Privilege is the ongoing benefits of past successful exercises of power” (Crouch, 150). It’s important to remember that privilege is neutral. That is, privilege is neither good or bad, and it is usually invisible. Privilege can originate from oppressive or benevolent acts of power. Privilege can even be shared for the benefit of another. Just go back to my story about Steve if you want an example. In his book Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power, Crouch makes a distinction between neutral (though potentially dangerous) privilege and status. His definition of status is as follows:

“Status — at root, “where you stand” –is about your place in line. It is about the human drive to be ranked above another, to be counted more worthy than another … Status is about counting, numbering, ranking and ultimately excluding … We rarely have any control over where we land in these rankings; they are assigned based on realities that long preceded us. Status is by definition a scarce resource … Status is rarely anything but dangerous” (Crouch, 156–7; italics are mine).

Jesus and the Status-Obsessed

Though I suggested previously that the protestors at Charlottesville were more concerned about privilege than power, I think status is an even more precise term for what the alt-right group wants to retain. To that end, to the pursuit of status, Jesus spoke directly. Luke tells of a day when Jesus went to dine in the home of the ruler of the Pharisees (Lk. 14:1–24). Pharisees were the religious elite of the day, and they enjoyed a great deal of status. One historian wrote, “They had the greatest influence upon congregations, so that all acts of public worship, prayers, and sacrifices were performed according to their injunctions. Their sway over the masses was so absolute that they could obtain a hearing even when they said anything against the king or the high priest” (quoted by Unger in his entry on Pharisees, 998).

Given that this was the home of this elites’ leader, no doubt only the “supreme” Pharisees were in attendance. Jesus observed them as they took their seats at the table to dine and noticed that they worked their way around the room trying to position themselves in the places of honor. Every greeting was calculated, ever step intentional, every smile was a mask hiding their anxiety about their place. The Pharisees wanted their seat to reflect their supposed importance. In the middle of all the networking and posturing, Jesus gives this advice:

“When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Lk. 14:8–11, NIV).

At first, it seems Jesus is giving the Pharisees a new trick-of-the-trade, the kind of advice expected from Dale Carnegie or Tony Robbins. We know that can’t be the case because of what Jesus says to/of Pharisees in other instances. “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat … But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach … Everything they do is done for people to see … They love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues … Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” (Matt. 23:1–13). If Jesus is so strongly against the Pharisees status-hungry posturing, there is no way He is telling them how they can more easily obtain status. Instead, Jesus is making a powerful point about status. Status should be dismissed into the hands of the master of the meal. In other words, status should be disregarded, for honor, the recognition of one’s power and dignity, is never taken but bestowed.

If the Pharisees heard Jesus and missed his point, I’d imagine they all raced to the worst seat at the table, turning their eyes to their host waiting for him to assign the proper seating arrangements. That would be a sad sad scene, if that was in fact what happened, but Jesus’ next words suggest he stopped them just before they moved to reposition themselves at the table. This time, He directs Himself to their host:

“When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Lk. 14:12–14, NIV).

Jesus’ words reveal the naked truth about this entire dinner. The guests were only present to either gain more or demonstrate their existing status. To be invited to the house of the ruler of the Pharisees to dine with the most influential and popular new religious leader, Jesus, was sure to boost their profile. And, all the guests there were looking to elevate in that way. But, there host was playing the same game. If they were invited to that dinner with Jesus, it was because the host believed he was gaining some leverage on them by having them there that night. The entire event was a display of Nietzschean power dynamics (see description in my previous article) played out by people competing for their own interests, for their own power, for their own status.

The Dinner Table and Charlottesville

Unfortunately, many people, including the alt-right protestors, vie for status. In fact, anyone who works in an office setting with any number of meetings has likely seen a microcosm of the posturing on display at that dinner with Jesus. It’s no surprise that books like Survival of the Savvy: High-Integrity Political Tactics for Career and Company Success are growing in popularity, even in Christian institutions. Note the first word in that title: survival. In the last office I worked for, this was the dominating sentiment. Meetings were often perceived as miniature Hunger Games where uneasy alliances were made in hopes to survive and retain one’s status at the table. This pathos is at the core of the protest in Charlottesville, but the world does not have to be this way.

Someone asked me, after reading my previous post, to comment on the counter-protestors. My hope is that this exploration of Luke 14, power, and status starts to make my position clearer for everyone. My suspicion is that some counter-protestors still live in a world where power is a limited resource exchanged in zero-sum transactions. Success for any counter-protestor who believes this might look like a reversal of roles, where the underprivileged, low-status, and disempowered assume all the status available to today’s elite and use it to dominate space. This is no victory for anyone! And here is where Jesus’ response becomes most important.

After calling out the guests and host, Jesus transports them to a greater banquet by telling them a story. In this narrative, a man gave a magnificent banquet and invited many, but by the time the meal was prepared, guests made excuses and did not attend. Each excuse Jesus retold was rooted in the acquisition of new wealth, either relational or monetary. In frustration, the host of the banquet commands his servant to bring the poor, the crippled, and weak. This had already been done, so the servant is commanded to compel people on the streets to come to the banquet because there was still plenty of room at the table. At this banquet, the real world is clearly envisioned for Jesus audience to consider. There is room sufficient at the table for the wealthy and poor, for the strong and weak. This banquet host gives no regard to previous status, but simply makes room for the dignity of everyone who comes to the meal as invited guests.

Conclusion

The seminary I attended had a meeting dedicated to discussing issues of reconciliation called Mosaic Gatherings. I’m very proud when I think of these gatherings because of one particular story. While the group of students sat discussing privilege, the minority students were dominating the conversation. A white student asked with sincere consideration, “What place at the table do I have to talk about this issue?” The conversation turned, to my surprise, to the acknowledgement that this student belonged in the conversation along with his minority peers. Only together could Christ’s church be made visible in this small group, and only together could their power multiply for the service of others. It was a powerful moment.

There is a vision of the world that suggests power is limited, and people must fight to control it if they are to retain their dignity. Jesus promises a different way around “the table” all together. In the world He creates, power is multiplied and servants are honored. His people disregard their own status and have no problem taking the lesser seat at the table, for this makes room for others to flourish. His people make connections with the weak, knowing this does good and not harm to everyone. While he didn’t know it, a Pharisee trying to clear the air after Jesus’ uncomfortable speech was right when he said, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God!” (Lk. 14:15).

Indeed! Blessed is everyone who leaves the Nietzschean world for the world of Christ.

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Books Cited:

Crouch, Andy. Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2013. Print.

Unger, Merrill. The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Bible Intitute, 1984. Print.

Does Justice have to be a Zero-Sum Game?

Alejandro Alvarez/News2Share, via New York Times

A Question for the Protesters at Charlottesville

“You will not replace us!” shouted the torch-bearing crowd of white men and women who marched on the University of Virginia over the weekend. Mr. Kessler, the event organizer, said in an interview that his goal was to “de-stigmatize white advocacy so that white people can stand up for their interests just like any other identity group” (italics mine). Both Kessler’s comments and the crowd’s declaration struck me as a deeply emotive commentary on justice and privilege. It appears, from their words, the protestors believe that current practices of affirmative action and diversity initiatives are mostly at their expense. In supporting the increase of power for a particular minority group, this country is taking, indeed stealing, the power of the majority. The alt-right marchers want with visible protest to retain their power. “You will not replace us!”

The events of this weekend prompted a question I’ve discussed with one of my conservative white friends. We’ll call him Steve. To be clear, Steve would never have participated in nor does he share the ideology of the protestors in Charlottesville, but together we’ve discussed the assumption underlying the weekend’s protest. I’ve asked Steve a question I now ask in response to the protester’s angry shouts: Does justice have to be a zero-sum game? In other words, do initiatives to provide power for one group always result in the reduction of power for another? If so, are these initiatives truly just? Is that what justice demands?

Early this summer, I read Andy Crouch’s magnificent book Playing God: Redeeming The Gift of Power. Much of my thought here originates in my engagement with Crouch’s book. I’ll be quoting it, and let me say in advance that you should consider reading the book for yourself. I hope to represent his ideas well, while also developing my own position in response to Charlottesville. I don’t pretend to give a definitive treatise on this weekend’s events but to frame them around the question I believe is at the core of what transpired. Some people fear they are in jeopardy of losing a good thing: power. Yes, power is a good thing, and the fear of losing or not having it has led many to acts of desperate violence. That is what I think we saw this weekend, and the conversation around power is a good and necessary one.

Crouch’s book begins with an exploration of definitions of power. He notes that many of us assume the proverb, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Crouch, 44). While power is a corrupting agent, many of us still think it necessary for existence. However, we believe this to be true in a very Nietzschean way. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:

“My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (its will to power) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement (“union”) with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on” (as quoted by Crouch, 46).

The events of this weekend exist in a Nietzschean world. They make sense if we believe power is limited and space must be mastered by one body forcing out another. The uneasy union described by Nietzsche was on display in the alt-right crowd, a mix of KKKs, Neo-Nazis, and White Supremacists. For the time, their interests are “sufficiently related,” so together they marched for power. “You will not replace us” reveals that this collection of people believes it is being “thrust back.” They are, in their view, literally losing ground, and the Robert E. Lee statue that inspired the march is their proof. Thus, they use force (or, in their view, “power”) to regain their space. But, what if Nietzsche was wrong about power? What if it isn’t a corrupting force that should be wielded to dominate all space? What if the Nietzschean world isn’t at all the real world?

Redefining Power

Nietzsche’s vision of the world requires force, coercion, and assumes a limited amount of space and resources. It also assumes that all exchanges of power, a word that in this framework is synonymous with force, are zero-sum transactions. Zero-sum transactions are transactions where one person’s wealth increases by exactly the amount decreased in the wealth of the other person involved in the exchange. Exchanges of money are easy examples of zero-sum transactions. When making a $50 purchase, my wealth decreases by that amount while the person I am buying from is $50 wealthier. The total amount of wealth stays the same, and the only change is its distribution. While this mode of transaction defines the exchange of money, it is not a functional description of power transactions.

Crouch argues true power transactions are positive-sum transactions. Rather than use his example, let me reintroduce Steve.

Steve and I met in college. At first, I thoroughly disliked the guy, thinking him an obnoxious upper-middle class white guy who was clueless. Through a series of unexpected connections, Steve and I became close friends. I learned that he wasn’t at all who I believed him to be, and when we graduated from college my connection to him was a saving grace. I grew up in a family with no money management skills. My parents often spent more than they had, never kept an accurate budget, and often guessed at their ability to maintain payments on major expenses. I grew up learning those habits, and it made my time in college significantly more difficult. Steve, on the other hand, grew up in a family that taught him a great deal about financial planning and how to maintain economic health.

In my last semester, I landed a job that would pay me more than I had ever made. The prospect of managing that money while still properly handling my school debts terrified me. So, I called Steve and proposed to pay him (a zero-sum transaction) to teach me how to manage money. After discussing it, we agreed on a small amount and worked on managing my money together for 6 months. Today, at the age of 27, I have more saved for retirement than either of my parents, I am nearly debt free, and have a relatively healthy financial life. At the start of our friendship, Steve had significantly more power than me by simple means of his cultural and educational background. He grew up with a wealth of knowledge inaccessible to me through my more limited connections. However, in teaching me to manage money (a transaction of power) my power was greatly increased while his was completely undamaged. The overall power of financial stewardship was multiplied not just redistributed. This, like any other form of education, is an example of positive-sum transactions.

This suggests something about the nature of power. Power is not a force meant to be applied to gain and defend “blood and soil.” Power is also not synonymous with violence (Crouch spends some time dismantling this view promoted by C. Wright Mills in the book The Power Elite, 133–39). “Power is the ability to make something of the world… a universal quality of life; Power is for flourishing” (Crouch, 17, 37). True power multiplies capacity and wealth. In other contexts, we accept this idea more readily. For instance, the book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, a best-selling book on management and leadership, posits as its central thesis that the best leaders (known in the book as “multipliers”) make the people they lead smarter. Their teams increase their capability of solving harder problems and adapt to changes more quickly. In contrast, the diminisher (the term used for poor leaders) “see intelligence as static” (Wiseman, 19). Most of us can quickly think of such leaders in our work experience. We can recall the leaders that empowered versus those who assumed we were incapable. Indeed, in discussions on leadership we seem to recognize the positive-sum quality of power, and we desire for more leadership of that ilk; leadership capable of making all of us more powerful.

Power, Trust, and Love vs. Poverty, Fear, and Hatred

The distinction between true power and the Nietzschean version of it deepens on two more points. True power and the multiplication of it doesn’t come free. “There is a kind of suffering required to enter into the virtuous circle of creative power, and the suffering is required of both student and teacher” (Crouch, 42). When I approached Steve about my money problems, I had to confess a deep need and reveal the poverty, not only economic, of my upbringing. As my teacher, Steve had to endure patiently the times I called him after foolishly spending my money on unnecessary purchases. The point is that true power was developed within the context of a trusting relationship.

Secondly, my acquisition of power was only possible through love. Like Crouch, I know how silly this sounds, but it isn’t silly when compared to the events of this weekend. We are much more capable of acknowledging the presence of hate than of love. The events of this weekend were, at base, motivated by hate, a deep desire to impoverish another for one’s self-benefit. In contrast, Steve acted from love, the desire to empty oneself to make room for the full flourishing of another. “Love transfigures power” (Crouch, 45). Crouch goes on to write:

“The power to love, and in loving, to create together, is the true power that hums at the heart of the world. The power to conspire, dominate and eventually become single, isolated, lonely god is lifeless and ultimately powerless. True power comes from the very creativity and love that Nietzschean power would extinguish” (Crouch, 52).

Both love and trust guide power to its proper end. I referred to the diminishers earlier as “poor leaders.” I think it’s important to say something about poverty. As I said earlier, a series of unexpected connections led to my friendship with Steve. Those connections enriched my life and gave me more power. The same is also true of Steve. Through me he gained access to others from which he can learn and whom he can teach. “Poverty is the absence of linkages, the absence of connections with others” (quote from Jayakumar Christian, as quoted by Crouch, 23). The “diminisher” and the alt-right crowd have this in common. They are both impoverished by their belief in a static amount of power in the world. This belief keeps them from loving and trusting relationships with the “other” in their world. As Crouch reminds us:

“Because the ability to make something of the world is in a real sense the source of human well-being, because true power multiplies capacity and wealth, when any human beings live in entrenched powerlessness, all of us are impoverished” (Crouch, 19).

Conclusion

While the protestors believe they are protesting the loss of power, I believe they fear a loss of privilege. “Privilege is the ongoing benefits of past successful exercises of power” (Crouch, 150). Privilege is, as Crouch notes, indifferent, if not often blind, to whether the original acts of power were creative (true power) or oppressive (Nietzschean power) (Crouch, 153). Steve bears witness to another way, a different world, one not ruled by the beliefs of Nietzsche. In the world occupied by Steve and me, there is freedom. Steve, indifferent to his privileged status, humbly taught me to count my pennies rightly. Given my line of work, it’s possible I may one day exceed Steve in wealth. We both don’t worry about that because we know it means there is simply more power for us to pay forward for the flourishing of yet another. In this, we see a glimpse of justice. So, does justice have to be a zero-sum game?

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Footnotes:

Crouch, Andy. Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2013. Print.

Wiseman, Elizabeth. Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010. Print.

Banner Photo Credit: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/white-nationalists-rally-charlottesville-virginia.html

All internet sources were hyperlinked.