Love. # 136. 31/10/2023

Out of Many, One People

Welcome - to the most central issue of Christian living, and the most vital quality of any multi-ethnic church.

Love.

After 135 blogs, finally one on the most important subject of all: love; or more precisely loving our neighbour; or more precisely still, loving our neighbour of a different ethnicity. As with all my blogs, this is written from the perspective of a white Christian minister, but I hope much of it applies to relationships which are marked by different characteristics.

1. Imagination –‘ you know the heart of a stranger (Exodus 23:9)’.

Being a stranger was part of Israel’s historical experience, but in their present reality they needed to imagine back both into their past and then on to the experience of aliens presently in their midst. Many of us will not have had that social and cultural sense of being strangers, but for all of us entering the Christian faith meant a dislocation from the ‘world’, the realisation that here ‘we have no lasting city (Hebrews 13:14). That should mean we have a head start in developing loving relationships with people of other ethnicities, but who share the commonality of entry into the new kingdom, where all other ethnicities are relativised. Thus ‘there is no longer . . . nor . . . , for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal 3:28). But for that theological unity to be manifested in practice (especially given that our cultural differences are in many ways more substantial than was the case in the Galatian church) then we need our imagination to work at entering the hearts and minds of our fellow, but very different strangers, the more so in our present context for those of us who are white; for example to imagine:

  * what is it like to experience moving to and settling into a new and very different culture;

  * what is it like to be visibly different, possibly marked as an ‘outsider’,

  * what is it like to live with the risk that your abilities and qualifications will be devalued.

The call to love is always in a context. Paul’s great passage in 1 Corinthians 13 is often read in a variety of situations as a ‘stand alone’ example of universal wisdom. But rather it stems from its context - a letter to the church in Corinth where he has just had cause to rebuke the comfortably off members of the church who ‘show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing’ at their communion meal (1 Cor 11:22). The expression of welcome, respect and mutuality in the midst of substantial social difference is a true outworking of love. Thoughtful attention to the important differences of context and background of the very differing members of a multi-ethnic church requires of us the imagination to start feeling our ways into their contexts, past experiences, thought worlds, contemporary pressures. Only then can we express love that doesn’t patronise but starts to attune ourselves to the life experiences of someone who may (or may not) be very different to us.

Paul could only become ‘all things to all people’ (1 Cor 9:22) because he had imaginatively internalised what it was like to be both an Athenian philosopher and a Lycaonian farmer (Acts 17:16-33 & 14:9-18).

2. Appreciation – ‘in humility regard others better than yourselves’ (Phil 2:3).

Ethnic diversity is a gift, an enrichment. To live well in a multi-ethnic society there must be ways in which we find delight. That may well be through particular outputs of other cultures – quite obviously food, or we come to appreciate reggae or Bollywood films.

As we encounter specific cultures more and more, we simply value them for being themselves and for their distinctives. We value the Tamilness of Tamils (including distinctive head movements); the Jamaicanness of Jamaicans (including distinctive phrases). There is something positive for me in the way our Polish builder uses the distinctive hand gestures that Polish men used in the factory I worked in sixty years ago. And yet also there is joy in seeing change and successful adaptation as young people from migrant backgrounds, settle, integrate, achieve and contribute in English society. Of seeing people I have known from birth adapt, move between two cultures, marry or become parents. Observing first-hand what has been and still is a major historical epoch in our society is a privilege we have been given.

In a recent church service a young African woman read the lesson with a standard English accent, plus a few posh inflections. The next day I heard some elderly African women in a church kitchen talking in strong Nigerian accents. There is something good both about people growing to fit into this country and good about people retaining strong elements of their place of origin.

But more deeply we enjoy those cultures not just as spectators but because we find our spirit and our very being fed by them (see blog # 130). We learn to value the readiness to celebrate, the humour, perhaps above all the warmth of human bonding. Especially in the church we ought to be cherishing the spiritual gifts brought to us from other cultures: spontaneous and authentic sharing of faith, earnestness in prayer, openness of grief and sorrow. We are helped to discover more of the ‘multi-coloured’ wisdom of God through belonging to multi-ethnic churches. Paul’s injunction to the Philippians can be extrapolated from personal relationships to that between cultures: we need to develop a sharp awareness of how God wants to bless through gifts that have thrived in other cultures.

Therefore we ought to work at speeding up this process of appreciation by doing our homework. Attending to the cultural productions of other cultures, reading books, listening to music, watching tv programmes; discovering the history, the geography and politics of countries of origin. Especially hearing people’s stories – of challenges faced and possibly overcome; of pain, hurt, rejection, humiliation; of achievements and discoveries; quite simply of what their journey across cultures has meant to them. The aim of this is not only increasing knowledge but internalising deep personal awareness. ‘There are some things you need to know, and then forget that you know them’ a black youth worker said to me many years ago. It is that ‘unconscious competence’ that enables us to relate and love across cultures – simultaneously feeling at home, yet stumbling since we can never fully enter into the life experience of someone with a different background culture and a much more disrupted level of social acceptance in our society.

3. Repentance – ‘woe is me’( Isaiah 6:5).

Life would be simpler if people of different ethnicities met on a level playing field. But it never happens. We have different histories; the way power has been exercised has affected us quite differently. It is perilously easy for white people to ignore this, both because it may well relativise our achievements by pointing out the unfairly gained advantages that we might have, but more painfully the cruelty, brutality and dishonesty that has been exercised to disadvantage other people. Historical amnesia becomes all too pleasing. Yet such amnesia neuters us from effective and loving engagement with other peoples who have been abused by my people, and almost certainly in some ways by me. Isaiah’s cry of woe, was set in admitting solidarity with his people – ‘I live among a people of unclean lips’ (6:5).

Recognising this means that it is now increasingly common to hear of white people needing ‘to do the work’ of recognising their whiteness. Essentially that means contextualising ourselves as white people amidst the injustices, shame, prejudice and arrogance we are complicit in. Partly this means looking at the historical record, which is inevitably a matter of debate (see blogs # 109,111). Whilst there is legitimate variation on where we place ourselves on what is (disputedly) a balance, nonetheless indisputably ‘I live among a people’ who have carried out the monstrous but profitable evil of the slave trade and enslavement in the Americas, the Opium wars in China, or the oppression of the Kikuyu in Kenya.

But perhaps more serious than the past record of activity overseas is the racist and arrogant treatment of ethnic minority people in Britain, particularly but by means not only in the early years of settlement, but disturbingly prevalent still. The Windrush scandal illustrated breathtakingly, and one might have hoped unthinkable, callous disregard for the rights, security and dignity of long established black Britons. Last Saturdays newspaper recounted both the suspension of members of the MCC for explicitly racist comments to black people, and the generous crowd-funding support to the two police officers dismissed for their mistreatment of two black athletes for stopping their car with no good reason. Racism isn’t all over. There is still a need to ‘weep with those who weep’ (Rom 12:15). And beyond that, to work against injustices to minority ethnic people wherever we encounter it.

To love people of other ethnicities means also building into our own outlook and mindset the history that has shaped, and inevitably mis-shaped us, and has damaged the lives of other peoples. Again, it needs to be internalised, and usually not overtly placarded. In the post-George Floyd era, ostentatious and artificial expressions of repentance, often corporate, have become more common. But such aberrations don’t invalidate the need for contrition of the heart being a necessary part of the make up of white people in a multi-ethnic society.

4. Self-acceptance – ‘honour your father and mother’ (Exodus 20:12)..

Recognising the evils of our past ought not to tip over into white people narcissistically regarding ourselves as uniquely evil. Certainly people with western European origins once were, and to a degree still are, uniquely powerful, but that period of ‘white’ dominance has brought very great benefit to humankind as well as very great curses. (At present we can’t tell which in the long run will be greater).

Meanwhile we can only live in free, loving mutual relationships with people of other ethnicities by accepting ourselves as we are, darkness and light, honour and shame, dignity and depravity. Honouring our parents means not just relationships with our immediate, possibly living, parents, but – as the Old Testament frequently recognises – going back through the generations. They, like us, were not perfect, but each human needs to value and honour the stock they come from.

Such loving of my own ethnic identity is important for living in a multi-ethnic society, because a negative attitude to our family background can mean we relate to people of other ethnicities not so much out of love for them as for evening up old scores and grudges, even shame and anger that we feel about our own immediate heritage. Using minority ethnic people as weapons in a war against the demons in my own internal and domestic struggles can create distorted and unreal relationships rather than loving reciprocity.

Essentially, love comes from our beholding of Christ, and of being in him. But it rarely flows out equally in all directions. As the reality of being a multi-ethnic society becomes a wider and deeper reality in Britain, it is vital that Christians remove the blockages and encourage the flow of that love in our relationships with the numerous and varied ethnic groups in our society.

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Add On.

As we close Black History Month, it is good to remember the story of a black Christian pioneer in this country who I was delighted to read about yesterday. (I falsely assumed from his name that he fitted in the emphasis on the achievements of black women!)

Celestine Edwards was born in Dominica on 28 December, probably 1857. He left his native Dominica in 1870 and worked odd jobs on ships for a few years. He also spent some time in the United States. He then settled down in Scotland, where he joined the Primitive Methodist Church. After his stay in Scotland, he moved to London to study theology at King's College London He then studied medicine at the Royal London Hospital.

During this time, Edwards became a well-known speaker for the Christian Evidence Movement. One of his most famous speeches, "Political Atheism", was published in 1889 by John Kensit.^[4] Edwards also founded two magazines: "weekly Christian Evidence journal" paper Lux in 1892, and the anti-racist Fraternity, "Official organ of the Society for the Recognition of the Universal Brotherhood of Man", in 1893. Edwards' work with Fraternity led him to a successful collaboration with Ida B. Wells during her first anti-lynching tour of the British Isles. He died in the Caribbean in 1894.