Welcome, to a blog that I hope will provide some help to sisters and brothers involved in Christian ministry. If you have experiences share, wisdom to contribute or corrections to guide, please do send them in. I really do covet reader participation.
Identification or Appropriation.
‘Though he was the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death - even death on the cross’ (Phil 2:6-8).
Jesus’ full identification with humanity becomes the template which is to inspire all Christian ministry: ‘I have become all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some’ Paul wrote (1 Cor 9:23). For Christian ministers today - for the most part from a fairly ‘standard’ English culture – how can we become identified with neighbours of other cultures in a way that they experience as authentic, warm and genuine? We will not have the total degree of identification that Jesus had. Just as Paul was still a Pharasaically trained Jew in the midst of ministering to a wide range of Gentile identities, so we never will or should cease to be people marked by the culture that has produced us, but we should be seeking to be at home amongst other peoples to the extent that they feel at home with us.
A negative response to attempts to traverse cultures is by raising the spectre of ‘appropriation’, that is superficial or patronising attempts to take on board aspects of another culture. At its most crass this is treating other cultures as merely giving us a pleasing frisson of ‘otherness’, or simply being cute and amusing. Barak Obama described the discomfort he and his sister felt at seeing their white mother revelling in rather kitsch Latin American music – she was identifying with a tourist product not an authentic presentation. Similarly, in ‘Seeing a Colour-Blind Future: the Paradox of Race’ Patricia J Williams records her sense of outrage at the ‘racial voyeurism’ of tourist busses pulling up to pay fleeting visits to black churches in Harlem to savour a few ecstatic gospel songs (pp 19-23). Treating the heartfelt expressions of other cultures as mere entertainment for us to enjoy was Israel’s experience in Babylon: ‘For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’’(Ps 137:3). It becomes a temptation for ministers when they want to exhibit their cultural ‘diversity’ without engaging with the roots of that culture’s experience. If we convey a sense that we are somehow being ‘daring’ or ground-breaking when crossing cultures, and that those cultures are either ‘dangerous’ or ‘cute’ rather than ‘normal’ within their own contexts, then our inauthenticity will soon betray us.
But, as Williams suggests in the passage referred to above, such thoughtless intrusions lead to defensive line-drawing. A few years back ‘appropriation’ became a hot issue as lines got tightly drawn, especially in the USA, where, for example, students wearing Mexican sombreros was seen as caricaturing and so implicitly mocking Hispanic identity. A campus culture was broke out at Yale in 2015 over dissent about the administration’s attempt to regulate what should be worn at Halloween celebrations (Douglas Murray: ‘The Madness of Crowds ‘ p132 ff).
Ministerial attempts at identification with parishioners of other cultures can therefore back-fire. They can be seen as a gesture of familiarity which hasn’t yet been earned - fist bumps that load an imposed camaraderie on a hapless victim. Wearing the clothes of another culture (saris are an obvious example) can be valued either as an early attempt at bridge-building, or resented as an impertinent claim for an identity that has never been properly understood or worked for, or maybe received as an authentic expression of deep belonging.
‘Appropriation’ then can falsely claim a level of rapport that doesn’t exist. ‘He thinks he gets me because he has worked in a black area’ was one black person’s negative assessment of a colleague. Cultural and social differences are multi-dimensional and if we are tracking only superficial differences of clothes, food or place of residence then we can clumsily stumble unawares into deeper and more significant areas of difference. Clergy in cross-cultural ministry need to hear Kierkegaard’s words: ‘The two ways. One is to suffer; the other is to become a professor of the fact that another suffered.’ Too easily our ‘identification’ is only with the more interesting or enjoyable aspects of another’s culture, not with ‘the fact that another suffered’: of racism, rejection, or poverty. We are merely ‘professors’, not actual sufferers. Thus the odium in which ‘experts’ can be held amongst ethnic minorities.
Like children we can lick the sweet icing off the cake of other cultures but not engage with the more demanding and perhaps less welcome task of eating the less appetising but more nutritious cake. Jesus did enjoy the companionship of his disciples and the conviviality of the meals and social events he was invited to, but he also shared physical hardship, mockery by his contemporaries, and wept over the future he foresaw for Jerusalem. ‘He took the form of a slave’ Paul wrote. Identification is costly. As well as the pleasurable identification of ‘rejoicing with those who rejoice’ we also need to engage with the painful calling to ‘weep with those who weep’ (Romans 12:15). The historical and continuing injustices that underlay the construction of our multi-ethnic society give ample cause to share in the weeping.
Identifying with other cultures is a holy task, central to the call that ‘through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places’ (Eph 3:10). Ethnic diversity is now so diffused through our society that every minister has a responsibility to develop their ‘Cultural Intelligence’ without falling into the traps that come with the superficial ‘appropriation’ of other cultures.
What are some guidelines that help us do that?
1. Play away from home.
Visit, visit, visit is central. Safeguarding issues have made the casual dropping in on people by clergy a lot more cumbersome than it used to be, but it is being comfortable in people’s homes that is central to building up an internalised sensitivity to other cultures. It is an important, concrete way of indicating that we take people seriously; that we seek to develop a relationship with them as they are and on their terms. As discomfort and strangeness are overcome, instinctive rapport develops. Immersion in another culture is central to being shaped to minister cross-culturally. Too often leaders in both society and church comment on issues of ethnic diversity without having sufficiently internalised the experience of close relationships with other ethnic groups.
The stress in churches now on hospitality and welcome has a very important place in church life and needs to be intelligently developed. But Jesus didn’t give hospitality, he received it. In so doing, control is put into the hands of the other person; the agenda directed by them. I know for myself that the first experiences of being the only white person at a party, a meeting or a service can generate a sense of holy and unsettling vulnerability, but it is essential not only for our own growth in confidence but also because it helps us imagine better how someone else feels when they are the only person of an ethnic minority in an otherwise all white group. It is important to note that Jesus was the sort of person who was welcomed by tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners. It is not so much a question of how welcoming we are , but rather how welcomable we are. Any discomfort there might be, should be ours not theirs.
2. Understand background.
Identification is a relational process, that comes from spending time with people. Nonetheless the process can be speeded up and unnecessary mistakes avoided if we are also studious private scholars, reading as widely as we can, surfing the internet, being alert for tv programmes or films. On its own such work can indeed make us ‘professors’ of the suffering of others, but when such knowledge is in dialogue with personal experience then both can be enriched, extended, or countered by the other. (One perk of cross-cultural ministry is that it gives strong reasons for international travel - at the level of working relationships, not tourism).
3. Enjoy.
Crossing cultures enlarges us. We experience embarrassment, hostility, even revulsion at times. But also love, discoveries and new understanding. We ought to be changed; and feel incomplete if we have to live monoculturally. We are entering into the abundant richness of humanity created in God’s image, and into the diversity of gifts being brought into his worldwide community. Praise be to God.
Previous blogs relating to this topic:
# 31 Becoming a Culturally Intelligent Minister.
# 77 Steps to Being Welcoming.
# 136 Love.