The first entry in Merriam-Webster defines Diversity as, “the condition of having or being composed of differing elements : VARIETY especially : the inclusion of different types of people (such as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization.“
In today’s American culture wars diversity is considered by many people to be something evil that should be avoided at all costs. After all, if we achieve true diversity then White-Protestant hegemony would end. We can’t have that.
But, that’s a topic for another post.
This morning in the quiet hour before I had to get ready to go to work I considered diversity as it relates to our various faith communities. The reality of Euro-American dominance in the world raised its head and looked at me with its blood-red eyes.
I have written about this as it relates to world missions before.
The predominantly white North Atlantic Church has arrogantly forced its own cultural brand of Christianity on a world that neither wanted nor needed that. Yet, that Church still considers itself to be the Only Real True Church. Even today we send groups out into other cultures in order to form the people who are indigenous to those cultures into little versions of ourselves. Because we know best.
Well, we actually don’t.
We have lenses that color our vision. We only see what we want to see. People who are lacking. People who are missing out. People that We. Need. To. Save!
I think that there’s a better way.
I had the pleasure of studying under the Director of Black Church Studies at Ashland Theological Seminary, Dr. William H. Myers. Besides New Testament classes that I had with Dr. Myers, I also had the opportunity to study Womanist Hermeneutics with him. That is a way to read and understand the Scriptures taken from the point of view of African-American women.
That class stretched me. I was the only white person in that class. So, it was a total immersion experience for me.
And, it was uncomfortable.
Not because of who I was. But, because of the lives of the women I met in that course. Women who lived as slaves in the U.S. South. Women who survived that hell only to find themselves buried neck deep in Jim Crow America. Women who raised families.
Women who found peace and solace in the White man’s Jesus.
How they did that was an amazing feat of faith and trust in God.
They learned that God was not the provenance of the dominant culture. They learned that God sets captives free and leads those who love God to the Promised Land.
They learned that God was above the status quo.
They learned that God loved them.
Diversity.
I also learned about a man named Randy Woodley. He is descended from the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee. Dr. Woodley has spent his life discovering the Creator God of all people. He is also a follower of Jesus who is learning how to understand the God of the Colonizers in a way that those who were colonized can love.
He, and other Native Americans, work to, as Dr. Richard Twiss, himself a Native American, “Rescue the Gospel from the Cowboys.”
These faithful followers of Christ have found that Jesus isn’t White and doesn’t wear a clerical collar.
Diversity.
I mention these things for one reason.
The Church needs these voices.
We will die from inbreeding if we don’t listen to them.
They have truth that the hearts and minds of the dominant culture simply don’t have.
If we want to have life, and that abundantly, we must push back against those small minded culture warriors who think that there is only One Way to Live.
Their way.
That’s a lie from the pit of hell.
There are as many ways to live as there are people and cultures.
And, there are just as many ways to follow Jesus.
Diversity.
Not a dirty word.
It is Grace and Life.
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