The Church's First Inter-Ethnic Conflict
Out of Many, OnePeople - # 3- 12/11/20
Welcome. This weekly blog aims to help church leaders develop churches which gather people 'from every nation, tribe, people and language', by means of comments, theology, reviews and news.
Welcome to the third edition. I would be really grateful if you post them on to friends, colleagues, students and anyone for whom this is an important issue. Hopefully we can send the r-factor well above 1. Do feel free to re-publish anything from this blog. And do feel free to comment, criticise, even commend; but certainly further debate.
Bible - The Church’s first inter-ethnic conflict – the distribution of food to widows in Acts 6:1-7.
“Nothing in chapter 2 prepares us for what comes in chapter 6 – except our suspicion that the heaven of Pentecostal “justice” cannot last long on the earth of Babylonian fears and desires”wrote the Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf, in ‘Exclusion and Embrace’ (1996, p 229), his prize-winning book, coming out of his personal experience of the Balkan conflict. He underlines the disappointingly rapid fall from the high-point of Pentecost in Acts 2, which highlights the inclusion of the young, of women, of servants in the new world of the Spirit, then plummeting down to the sad squabble described in this passage.
Acts 6, verses 1 to 7 describes how ethnic tensions arose in the church in Jerusalem between Greek and Aramaic speaking Jewish Christians, because widows in the former group were being overlooked in the distribution of food. It is likely that whilst within the wider context of the Roman Empire speaking an international language such as Greek gave higher status, the Aramaic speakers sought compensation by ramping up their sense of priority in the Christian community as the indigenous people of Jerusalem (see Aaron Kuecker, ‘The Spirit and the “other” in Luke-Acts’, p 149). The distinction between the two groups, John Stott writes, “must go beyond origin and language to culture. . . There had, of course, always been rivalry between these groups in Jewish culture; the tragedy is that it was perpetuated within the new community of Jesus who by his death had abolished such distinctions” (in ‘The Message of Acts - the Bible Speaks Today,’ pp 120-1). Drawing on Social Identity Theory, Kuecker attributes it to the ‘malfunctions’ caused when a sub-group identity (‘Hebrew’ or ‘Hellenist”) becomes more important than the primary identity of being Christian. (I am reminded of a friend who bridled at being told that the ‘Indians’ in the church always prepared the Harvest supper – he sensed that the sub-group identity had become dominant.)
If on the one hand, the Twelve saw the need not to be distracted from their primary work of prayer and preaching by such conflicts, then neither did they see the matter as too trivial to bother with, or even worse as evidence that the two groups 'couldn't get on' and were best left to go their separate ways. Rather they exercised their leadership by taking the problem seriously; by devising an imaginative and practical solution to restore inter-ethnic harmony, that took the needs of the 'outsider' group seriously; and delegated it to wise and Sprit-filled men to implement.
The creation of the seven deacons in Acts 6, has much to say to churches in all multi- ethnic situations. It reminds us that attitudes derived from this passing age will remain with us to create tensions in our churches. Our response is to be neither apathy nor despair but should be an amalgam of spiritual discernment and practical wisdom that creates specific solutions to these tensions. As history unfolds there are a myriad of new possibilities for inter-ethnic tension; in each case we should be looking to God for the wisdom to create adequate responses that preserve the visible and experienced inter-ethnic unity of the church. In all of this, one important point to learn from the Jerusalem church was its instinct to give power to those who felt excluded; thus all seven deacons had Greek names and probably came from the Greek-speaking Jewish community that had seen itself as disadvantaged in the food distribution. It could be seen as an early example of ‘positive discrimination’.
Owen Hylton’s helpful book ‘Crossing the Divide: A call to embrace diversity’ lists eight lessons to be learned from how the apostles handled this situation:
a) They listened – only thus do we give value to those who feel they are discriminated against.
b) They focused on the complaint, not the complainant. It is dangerously easy to write people off as ‘troublemakers’, or ‘have a chip on their shoulder’.
c) They took the complaint seriously – they don’t excuse or deny, or say ‘Yes, but’.
d) They brought the complaint to all the disciples – it was a problem for the whole church, not just the Greek widows
e) They clarified their roles and responsibilities. They weren’t distracted from their work but got others to do the job.
f) They allowed the disciples to be involved in finding a solution.
g) They saw the organisation of such a task as an important spiritual function
h) They chose men who were full of the Spirit and wisdom. (pp 140-141).
The first four on Hylton’s list particularly speak powerfully to churches in multi-ethnic contexts where there is discontent and conflict of interest. What might they say to conflicts or tensions in my church?
Significantly, Luke ends this section by giving us the counter-intuitive information that the apostolic refusal to let the Hebrew speakers claim privileged eminence in the church, rather than diminishing the impact of the gospel on this group, led not only to the word of God continuing to spread, but “the number of disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith” (Acts 6:7). Thus Hebrews benefitted from the preference given to the Hellenists. Kuecker observes that frequently Luke immediately follows narratives of the Holy Spirit’s work of ethnic inclusion by going on to give one of his updates on the growth of the church. When the supra-ethnic unity of the church is worked for, the church’s vitality increases.
Add Ons
Quote of the week: “United worship here and now, rather than a disunited church life in the present and a distant ‘heaven’ after death, was always, as far as Paul was concerned, the divinely intended goal of the Messiah’s death”. Tom Wright in ‘The Day the Revolution Began’ (2016) p 233.
Try to see ‘Small Axe’ by Steve McQueen on BBC 1 beginning this Sunday - five true life stories from the formative period of African Caribbean life in Britain in the 1970s & 80s.
‘Coloured’ v ‘People of colour’. Greg Dyke had to leave his job as Chairman of the Football Association for using the former term. I consider both terms to have unhelpful implications. So why is one term a resigning offence and the other term has returned into fashion? Please send in explanations; I am genuinely confused.