‘Polyphonic God: Exploring Intercultural Theology, Churches and Justice’, a Review. # 210. 26/08/2025

Out of Many, One People

Welcome. I don’t relish reviews that burden me with a sense that here is yet one more book that I really ought to read, but here is a review of one more book that you really ought to read. I think it is of enormous value to any church leader in a multi-ethnic community (now virtually all of England).

My next blog will be on 16th September because of holidays.

‘Polyphonic God: Exploring Intercultural Theology, Churches and Justice’, Edited by Israel Oluwole Olofinjana, David Wise, and Usha Reifsnider. A Review.

This book is a goldmine. Several of the contributions are brilliant, none are without merit. Church leaders in multi-ethnic communities will find the book invaluable, despite its fairly hefty price.

Contributions come from a very wide range. There are fifteen chapters by sixteen different authors (including two married couples) from Nigerian, Latin American, Korean, Chinese, Caribbean, Tamil, Gujerati and white British backgrounds. Their experiences are geographically varied – London, Manchester, Derby, Glasgow, Belfast and Cardiff; so (deliberately?) all four parts of the UK. Denominationally they are mostly independent/charismatic. On my count there were only three Anglicans, none of them directly describing congregational life, indicating that despite many words at senior level, on the ground we have far less innovation. Jessie Tang, explorating her identity as British Chinese, is perhaps the only author who could be called young.

All in all, ministers in multi-ethnic areas will have the bracing and exhilarating opportunity to read about understandings, situations and initiatives that connect with and may often illuminate or challenge their own experiences. The editors deserve our thanks for gathering such a comprehensive range of contributors/

Highlighted contributions.

‘The Metaphor of Tapestry: A Theological Framing for Inter-ethnic Congregations’, by David Wise.

Inspired by Colossians 2:2 (The Message) ‘I want you to be woven into a tapestry of love’, plus Ephesians 2:10 on being God’s workmanship, Wise developed the metaphor of the church being God’s tapestry to form the life of Greenford Baptist Church. It served as a powerful guide for the whole congregation to see how their life together should be shaped, recognising the need to counter the ‘diseased social imagination’ of white superiority that the American theologian Willie James Jennings has depicted. Not only do a wide variety of colours have their place, but even the smallest addition of a colour enriches the whole. For me, it emphasised the importance of churches having a clear and fertile metaphor to guide their life.

‘You are Home! The Family Metaphor and Its Impact on Understanding Church and Intercultural Communities in Ephesians’, by Oscar Jimenez.

Essentially this is a thoughtful exegesis of Ephesians, the letter’s message summarised as ‘In love, king Jesus has incorporated believers into the Father’s household as beloved children’; going on to an astute, well-grounded contrast of the easily assumed ‘Church as Business’ model over against what it means to live out ‘Church as Family’, meaning to ‘see one another first as siblings in Christ, rather than as representatives of different cultural backgrounds’ (p 66). Simply as an account of the theology of Ephesians it stands well on its own. One can speculate on whether the author’s Latin American cultural background gives a richness beyond that of a writer from a north Atlantic culture.

‘Re-tuning Worship: Biblical Principles for a Culturally Diverse Age’, by Ian Collinge.

By any account this is an A* article. It is clearly organised, theologically shaped, and practically very useful, giving an astonishingly far-ranging guide to the resources available to those who want to expand the cultural range of their worship, mostly but not entirely musically.

‘Feeling Welcomed and Accepted: A Case Study of Greenford Baptist Church’, by David Wise.

Wise (the only contributor of two articles) gives a description of what a ‘full fat’ intercultural church might look like: a two and a half-hour service, with an informal 25 minute ‘connection time’ in the middle; the unabashed use of ‘first languages’ in music, prayers, readings and speaking; the liberal use of dance, flags and other multi-ethnic visuals. The aim is that each culture should be confident to express itself as itself in the midst of the whole congregation. Ought this to be the goal of every church? Or how far should we be shaped by leadership capabilities (and therefore long-term continuity), available resources (especially musical), and inherited accountability to traditions?

‘Laying Form Foundations for a Healthy Intercultural Church’, by Adam and Katrina Martin.

Narratives make good reading. This is account of a family moving into inner Derby and through hospitality and serving the needs of new arrivals form an informal intercultural congregation, which then folds back into their large, mainly English sending church, raising issues of language, power and cultural difference, including the elusive issue of different cultural emphases over guilt/innocence, honour/shame and fear/power.

‘Just Leadership: Developing Racial Empathy to Break Systemic Strongholds’, by Kate Coleman.

My early suspicions of wokeness were assuaged by the spiritual and experiential richness of this article (in fact taken from her book ‘Metamorph: Transforming your Life and Leadership’). The often-used account of the Hellenic widows’ grievance over food distribution in Acts 6 here threads through the chapter with a superb richness of texture, creatively bringing it to bear on current situations. Overall, her use of New Testament passages is frequently refreshing and original. There are helpful phrases: ‘radical empathy’: ‘an understanding of the lived experience of marginalized groups’ (p 205); and ‘radical solidarity’: ‘It is only as we listen, read, watch, and learn that we become better equipped to use our influence to change things where needed, especially if we are senior decision-makers and members of dominant groups. Unless radical empathy finds expression in radical solidarity, it is of little use to anyone’ (p 212).

Discussion of Specific Issues (based on the three foci in the book’s sub-title, plus a miscellania section).

Miscellania.

* Most chapters have a bibliography/resources section, often running to over a page. We are guided to a life-time of further reading.

* My guess is that at least half the contributors refer to Revelation 7:9. Quite right too. (See blog # 183 on the verse).

* Less commendatory are the two applications to contemporary Britain of Martin Luther King’s observation of 1960s USA that Sundays at 11am is the most segregated hour of the week. As well as being dispiriting and witness-blemishing this is simply untrue. Can people list the white-only churches in multi-ethnic areas? I haven’t known of any since the 1990’s.

Theology.

This is an SCM Press book that could have been published by IVP! Its overall theology is basically evangelical, at times marked by a particular richness in biblical understanding and interpretation (Jimenez and Coleman). Mairi MacPherson’s fascinating account of her ‘Nations’ work with Edinburgh City Mission in the demanding and frustrating work (in my experience) in attempting to build functioning relations with diasporic or ethnically focussed congregations notes ‘that we seek to promote Christianity in the midst of theological diversity’ (p 141) but there is no contribution from a prosperity or hyper-supernatural church background in the book. At the other end of the theological scale, Sharon Prentis rightly notes that ‘Contextual theologies emerged in response to the marginalisation of certain voices from mainstream theological discourse’ (p 218), but there is no call for a radical re-ordering of the political world that has marked the more liberal versions of contextual theology (see further on ‘Racial Justice’ below).

The most theologically exploratory chapter is the final one: Usha Reifsnider on Antiracist Mission in Postcolonial Britain, exploring the weight and meaning of the three terms in her title, but to me it read as a condensed version of a thoughtful and provocative thesis which needs more space for full exposition.

Church.

This is essentially a practitioners’ book. Time and again readers will find it connecting with real-life issues encountered in ministry in multi-ethnic areas. In this respect I find abstract the distinctions between ‘multicultural’ and ‘intercultural’ that run through the book unhelpful. Too often it is setting up straw man definitions that are then easily knocked down. Rather, we are all working at the many and varied ways that ‘out of the many’ peoples in our area we live as ‘one people’ in Jesus Christ. Several authors speak of the need to learn from mistakes, to adapt, to improvise – all of which mean that handed down definitions of multi/intercultural are external constraints rather than invitations to explore.

Instead, we all face questions of how particular ‘peoplehood’ should be expressed in the one church. Greenford Baptist Church aims for ‘difference to be experienced in the context of unity’(p 45) so that all the ‘peoplehoods’ are freely expressed in the one assembly, but as MiJa Wi notes in Intercultural Church as a Direction of Travel: Exploring the Journey of a Korean Diaspora Church (KDC) minorities can feel the need for security in meeting primarily with their own people. MiJa also bravely enters the forbidden ground of discussing the allure of the Homogenous Unit Principle in facilitating church growth. It is a tension that Dominic and Catherine De Souza recognise: ‘While there is value in homogenous gatherings, it is also important to nurture cross-cultural relationships beyond the usual silos of culture and ethnicity’ (p 259).

The constraints arising from sympathy with people’s felt need to worship in the familiar context of their own culture can be extended in other directions. Not only older people but also those carrying heavy everyday responsibilities can need the spiritual nourishment of a familiar worshipping routine, including in my experience people from overseas with traditional Anglican backgrounds. Several contributors refer to the need for ‘risk-taking’ but such assessments need to bear in mind our solemn responsibility for caring for peoples’ souls. Can the need of the ‘weak’ (Romans 14:1) be damaged by our exciting innovations.

To push the question further, if it is acceptable to exercise restraint in accepting that ethnic minorities can validly worship within their own culture, then what place can there be for expressing the culture of disadvantaged, educationally and economically struggling English people? Are they too at present a ‘muted’ voice that is not being heard in the conversation about expressing diversity in worship and church life? (See blog # 16, ‘Ethnicity and Asymmetry’).

Racial Justice.

One blessing of the book for me was to rehabilitate the concept of ‘racial justice’. Too often, both in Church of England leadership and national debate, it is seen in bureaucratic terms, thus statistical ethnic proportionality in the choice of significant figures, or in terms of reparations, or in the removal of objects found to be offensive. Dominic and Catherine De Souza argue that ‘The church has a vital role to play in advocating for broader social change’ (p 261), but clear-cut examples and narratives are absent from the book. This may properly be because, particularly since the Sewell Report, the nature and extent of structural or institutional racism is contested. Given the success of very ‘traditional’ approaches to the education of ethnic minorities, such as the Michaela Academy in Wembley, what does ‘racially just’ education look like? Given the major impact on life chances of growing in a stable two-parent family, ought not the advocacy of national ‘marriage friendly’ policies be a strong element in social justice advocacy?

Rather, in the book contributors in various ways emphasised the positive ways that intercultural churches further racial justice through providing genuine encounters, not merely by being in the same place at the same time, but by a process of listening (frequently emphasised), sharing stories and being changed by the encounter. ‘A conscious effort to engage with another to create interdependence’ in Sharon Prentis’s words (p 230). Though it would also have been helpful for attention to be given to the negative – how and when should implicit racism be encountered and possibly rebuked in those who feel they are free of it. Looking back on my own ministry it is the lack of effectiveness in addressing such attitudes that challenges me most.

Kate Coleman’s article is particularly helpful in delineating the sort of spirituality that generates racial justice. White Christians ‘will need to get used to make a conscious effort to engage with perspectives outside their own racial experiences’ (p 206). Her use of the crucial word ‘immersed’ points to what is a crucial lack in the experience of Anglican leadership.

The book helpfully illuminates ‘racial experiences’: the unsettlement experienced by Nathaniel Jennings in The New Northern Irish as racist rioting underlined his precarity (and determination to stay and work). Since he wrote both in Northern Ireland and now across Britain the vulnerability of minorities to racial hostility has been underlined.

And therefore the importance of the maturing of intercultural churches to be beacons of the love, life and light of God in a fragmented world.