Identity Ecclesiology: Regarding Willie James Jennings’ ‘Can ‘White’ People be Saved?’, and a Positive Alternative in a Biblical Theology and Ethic of Unity
Introduction
In a previous discussion, I
suggested that our Western tribalism[1] in late Postmodernity has
entered Christian studies in the form of ‘identity ecclesiology’.[2] The notion of the ‘multicultural church’
refashions Christian identity around racial categories. Rather than removing ethnic classifications
from our concept and practice of Christian community, this notion—like racism
itself—reintroduces them. There is,
however, a much more sinister notion of identity ecclesiology than
multiculturalism. The latter, at least,
does not denounce some ethnicity or ethnically related identity. It might celebrate ethnic diversity per se
rather than focus identity in Christ, but it cannot be said to be itself
racist. The new form of identity
ecclesiology, vociferously denying the accusation, is itself racist.[3] One author pressing this view is Willie James
Jennings in his ‘Can White People be Saved?
Reflections on the Relationship of Missions and Whiteness.’[4]
Language Games and Speech Acts
Jennings, as some others in the
book in which the article is found, creates a category of ‘whiteness’ that is
socio-political. In a more recent work,
Jennings offers this definition of ‘whiteness’:
[‘Whiteness’]
does not refer to people of European descent but to a way of being in the world
and seeing the world that forms cognitive and affective structures able to
seduce people into its habitation and its meaning-making.[5]
In other words, ‘whiteness’
becomes a socio-political term that can be expanded historically,
pedagogically, historically, philosophically, and culturally. Yet it is, after all, both in its literal
meaning and in the socio-political sense a racial term, and Jennings’
protestations against taking it as such seem not only hollow but inconsistent
as he explores the European identity of his ‘white’ antagonist. Speaking of Western pedagogy, for example,
Jennings says,
theological
education vacillates between a pedagogical imagination calibrated to form white
self-sufficient men and a related pedagogical imagination calibrated to forming
a Christian racial and cultural homogeneity that yet performs the nationalist
vision of that same white self-sufficient man.[6]
So, Jennings simply cannot avoid
the identification of the literal meaning of ‘white’ with the symbolic meaning
he gives to the term in his own personal language. Moreover, everything about the extended
meaning is negative: self-sufficiency, male, ‘Christian racial’, ‘cultural
homogeneity’, ‘nationalist vision’, ‘white’.
Instead of avoiding a racial definition of a term of race and colour, he
compounds the racial term with every dimension of the identity of a generic ‘white’
race (collapsing all white identities into a single concept).
This personal meaning given to
the word ‘whiteness’ reminds me of Humpty-Dumpty’s refusal to use words the way
in which they would be taken by any native speaker of the language (Through
the Looking Glass). When Alice
questions the private meaning Humpty-Dumpty gives to the public word ‘glory’,
he retorts, ‘When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean—neither
more nor less.’ He adds, ‘The question is
… which is to be master—that’s all.’
While Ludwig Wittgenstein sensibly argued against private languages (Philosophical
Investigations) in 1953 because language must follow rules that are publicly
accessible, something more sinister is going on in Jennings’ use of
‘whiteness’. It is more helpful to turn
to speech-act theory to understand his language game. While words have meaning, they are also used
to do things.[7]
Jennings does not explain why he
misuses the word ‘whiteness’, but its misuse is meant to do something. His initial comment is that asking the question,
‘Can White people be saved?’ will be deeply offensive to some. He later adds that people feel guilt or
become angry. (In Speech-Act theory, his
illocutionary act is offensiveness, and his perlocutionary acts are the
production of guilt and anger.) So, why
do this? It hardly strikes one that we
are dealing with the ‘meekness and gentleness of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 10.1)
or Christian virtue (1 Corinthians 4.21; Galatians 5.23; 6.1; Ephesians 4.2; 1
Timothy 6.11; 2 Timothy 2.25; 1 Peter 3.15).
However, Jennings uses offensive speech because, he says, we are engaged
in many struggles. Deconstruction
involves undermining existing hegemonies—as critical theory insists. Jennings does not mention critical theory or
critical race theory, but his entire essay provides an example of this Marxist
analysis.[8] Indeed, this is not unlike Liberation
theology, with its Marxist analysis of socio-economic conditions in terms of
rich and poor. The common denominator is
to use groups for the analysis of society and individuals. People are reduced to whatever grouping they
fit or are made to fit. Critical race
theory examines the world in terms of racial groups and in terms of which
groups are understood to hold oppressive power over other groups, and an emancipatory
social analysis is explored in one way or another.
The first struggle Jennings
identifies is that against ‘aggressive nationalism’. He immediately explains this as ‘the fusion
of Christianity and whiteness,’ a fusion he hopes to end. This fusion, he continues, includes several
other struggles: racism, white supremacy, ‘some aspects of sexism’, patriarchy,
and exploitation of the planet.
Reminiscent of Marxist analysis, Jennings seeks to locate social
activism in ‘the struggle’ and interprets various struggles in terms of ‘the
struggle’. He believes he has reached
deeper insight into the struggle as a combination of Christianity and whiteness. They are ‘two mutual (sic)
interpenetrating realities, the one always performing itself inside the other.’
Why Reject Jennings’ Private
Language of ‘Whiteness’?
There are several, crucial
reasons to reject Jennings’ private language of ‘whiteness’. First, it locates sin parochially by focusing
on race and then focusing further on a particular race—or colour. The force of this is of the same sort as the
Pharisee who prayed, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men….’ The tax collector, however, prayed, ‘God, be
merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Luke 18.11-13).
Sin, however, is universal, rusting the entire metal of the human condition. A Biblical analysis of emancipation begins
with everyone in exile for their sins, not just one group.
Second, Jennings’ choice of ‘whiteness’
for a particular social injustice focusses on a natural characteristic (people
are born ‘white’) while making of it a voluntary choice for which people—individuals
and groups—are culpable. People,
including white people, are told to give up their ‘whiteness’. They may be born into ‘white’ culture, but
they are expected to deconstruct it. This
intentional confusion of nature and culture has the effect of stagnating
identity in ways that go well beyond the typical missiological discussion of
how the Gospel can translate into any culture.[9] It requires the demise of ‘white’
culture. While it may be that some
cultures fail and should be discarded (something of a Lord of the Flies argument),
identifying a culture with a natural characteristic (‘whiteness’) and
denigrating it has the ring of eugenics about it. Why were Jews targeted in Nazi Germany? They were both a culture and an ethnic group—nature
and culture were combined and condemned, and individuals were identified with
the group. Jennings has managed to cast
the problem of racism in stark terms by combining nature and culture.
Third, Jennings’ focus on social
injustice itself marginalizes Christ and the Church. When social justice is discussed without
Christ as Lord, it devolves into a balancing of equalities and freedoms between
groups. It has a measure of justice, but
it is disseminated in group identities rather than centralized under our
Sovereign and the new identity we have in Christ. Social justice without the Church is pursued
socio-politically in one way or another, such as in racialist ways. In Marxism, freedom of the people is pursued
by the exercise of totalitarian measures.
In the name of the great struggle, inordinate evils are unleashed to right
the wrongs of social structures by force.
One might think of the murder of thousands of Kulaks in Ukraine in the
time of Josef Stalin—persons who owned too much property when collectivization
of the farms was Stalin’s goal. Concern
for social injustice—perceived or real—can lead to an activism that is immensely
unjust. Read Plato’s Republic. Socrates pursues a line of argument that
would establish a just state. It is,
however, anything but a utopia. The
Church offers an alternative social reality that involves justice apart from,
even despite, socio-political realities.
This is not to say that the Church can ignore society. Rather, it is to say that the focus of any
Christian discussion of social justice must be a focus directed first at the Church.
History
Some clarity as to what all this
means comes when Jennings attempts to give historical, cultural, and missional analyses. One problem with Marxist historical analysis
is that it is, as social groupings themselves, too simplistic. We might recall the Hegelian roots of
Marxism, with its repeated, linear progression from thesis to antithesis to
synthesis. Even so, Jennings’ simplistic
understanding of European history in terms of whiteness reaches a new level of simplistic
analysis. It is equally erroneous, and
to answer him point by point would require a lengthy history lesson. He begins his ethnic bigotry by saying that
the ‘early Europeans’ ‘self-designated’ (an obvious anachronism) or developed
their identity without the benefit of the voice and vision of people in the New
World. One wonders if he has ever read
ancient Greek and Roman historians or geographers. There is in such works an ethnic interest and
awareness that defies a monolithic understanding. This includes interest in the historical,
cultural, geographic, religious, moral, physical, and legal differences between
ethnicities. There was no ‘European’
identity—no singular ‘voice and vision’—but a consideration of Phrygian,
Thracian, Germanic, Lacedaemonian, Jewish, etc. distinctions. There was also interest in north African,
black African (south of Egypt—today Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea), and Indian
identities. While people who would later
be designated ‘Europeans’ did not, of course, identify themselves with respect
to people of the New World, they certainly did not ‘self-designate’. Moreover, slavery in the Graeco-Roman world
was not at all based on race.
Without any reference to the
centuries he has in mind, Jennings locates the next ‘horror’ of European historical
development in their grouping different clans and tribes in terms of race. At some point, this did occur—although not
without diverse views on the matter and much, much later. Clarity is important—making sweeping
statements about a race is racialist, and viewing this racial analysis
negatively is racist. Jennings is guilty
of the very thing he criticizes.
In fact, the history of the North
Atlantic slave trade clarifies some of Jennings’ misinterpretation. As the Portuguese entered the slave
trade—initiating a practice for seafaring colonial powers—it did so as part of
its general involvement in global trade.
It engaged the developed West African kingdoms in trade—kingdoms,
particularly the Songhai Empire in now Mali and Niger, that already practiced
slavery. When Mansa Musa (c. 1280-c.
1337) made his pilgrimage to Mecca, he was accompanied by 12,000 slaves.[10] The slave trade in West Africa—and other
parts of Africa—had continued throughout the centuries of Islam’s presence. European merchants did not show up to start
slavery from Africa but to engage in a pre-existing slave-trade that blew into
a massive industry as the need for plantation labour grew in the New World.
Moreover, it was not race that
characterized slavery for some time but religion. Islam, for example, held that a Muslim could
not enslave another Muslim. Christians
took the same sort of view, and the initial discussion had to do with enslaving
indigenous people of the New World—not black Africans. This discussion of whether to enslave one’s
own or not dates right back to practices in ancient Greece.
Jennings also misreports the
settlement of America in a singular, negative narrative. He says that indigenous peoples were ‘forced
to think of themselves in disorienting ways, to think of themselves away from
land and away from animals and into racial encasement, that is, into
races.’ There are several ways in which
this is frightfully simplistic, but it is also in some cases false. Roger Williams disputed the treatment of
Amerindians by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and fled out of their jurisdiction
to establish a settlement in Rhode Island that had honourable treaties with the
natives and that forbad slavery. James
Oglethorpe, an opponent of slavery, founded the settlement in Savannah. In both cases, economic pressures redirected the
slave-free colonies into a practice of slavery.
The debate among Christians, however, continued until the end of
slavery. Jennings’ racialist view and
his simplistic history fail to tell the truth about Western history. Instead, we get a facile view of ‘whiteness’
that encourages rather than discourages racism.
The history of the North American
slave trade soon focussed on black Africans and allowed Europeans to hold
Christian black slaves. Even so, this history
cannot be told as a single voice and vision, to use Jennings’ own phrase. The actual history of European involvement in
the slave trade entails the Church reacting either positively or
negatively to trade practices. Eventually,
Christian voices that opposed the slave trade won the argument against slavery
in the 19th century, with the United States settling the matter by
war.
Even this overview is, of course,
far too simplistic a history. Yet the point is that a racialist, monolithic
history of the European peoples such as offered by Jennings is fraught with
error. His history of Europe involves a
categorical denigration of Europeans and their history. It also fails to tell the truth about European
Christianity (a very mixed history, to be sure). Inasmuch as he means to provide a social,
cultural, and historical view of ‘whiteness’, he would also have to compare and
contrast this category of his with other categories (equally simplistic, one
might suppose). What of ‘African’ or
‘Asian’ or ‘Amerindian’ socio-ethnic constructs?
Missions and Earth Care
Jennings also offers a criticism
of missions—or European missions. He envisions
an encounter of Christianity with other cultures that will appreciate
non-Christian worldviews. This subject
is at the heart of missiology, of course, and discussion of contextualization,
enculturation, or translation of the Christian message involves a variety of
views on Church and culture.[11]
Jennings’ opposition to
traditional Christian missionary work involves critiquing its challenge of
animism. He frowns on the very
designation. This raises questions of
what he actually understands the Christian worldview to be, let alone the
Gospel itself. He says,
As the taking of
land and animals was being done, European Christians challenged to its core the
vision shared by many Native peoples that both their identities and their sense
of well-being formed and flourished through constant interaction with specific
places and animals…. The place was in
them, and they were within the animals, sharing life and vision, joined together
as family. Such a vision for most
missionaries was demonically inspired confusion, later in time to be called by
others animism, and still later to be called cultural primitivism.
Understandably, Jennings seems to
oppose a human-centred view that subjugates rather than cares for
creation. However, for him, ‘whitness’
is all about domination. His view comes
across as an appreciative syncretism of animism and Christianity. Moreover, he seems to understand traditional
religions as earth-protecting and earth-appreciating religions in which the
supernatural is not even a factor. He
says nothing of the fear and oppression in and the real evil of demonic forces
on African and Asian peoples in their traditional religions. In this, he has a very ‘Western’, i.e.,
non-spiritual view of the world himself.
At least Jennings does not fall
into the paternalistic view in some naïve missionary discussions that see
culture as static or only positive (as long as it is not Western!). He even allows that the ‘transformation’ of
culture is ‘not inherently evil’. He has
little to say about this, however.
A Definition of ‘Whiteness’
Jennings defines ‘whiteness’ as a
‘deformed building project’. As such, it
is not supposed to be a racial concept.
Yet it is because he has in mind Europeans and their socio-cultural
history. It is not socio-cultural
history as opposed to race but this along with the white ‘race’. (While he criticizes Whites for defining the
world in terms of White and Black, this lies at the heart of his own critical
theory.) In this, Jennings’
interpretation manages to be both racist (‘whiteness’) and racialist (a racist
interpretations of white, ethnic populations through history). He says we have
to ‘understand how whiteness informs the intellectual, artistic, economic, and
geographic stage on which vision and voice are realized and performed.’ He says, toward the end of his essay, that
whiteness is not white biology. It is a positivist
view of social history, an evolution to a mature eutopia, that is actually a devolution
through abusive power and exploitation that destroys. He says,
Whiteness is an
invitation to a form of agency and a subjectivity that imagines life
progressing toward what is in fact a diseased understanding of maturity, a
maturity that invites us to evaluate the entire world by how far along it is
toward this goal.
Jennings’ discussion continues a
little further at this point, although the concept of ‘whiteness’ has by this
time already been defined along the lines of abusive power, privilege, and exploitation—and
it has been connected with white Europeans from the beginning of a European
history. His view, then, is a racialist
Liberation theology, not unlike Black Theology of several decades ago.[12]
Finally, Jennings discusses the
‘feeling’ of ‘whiteness’. He means by
this that what we have feels normal.
This seems to be a version of Marx’s ‘opiate of the people’. He calls for ‘resistance’. Specifically, he calls to resist losing life
in a place, being designated racially (which he actually does!), being
commodified, a global system of exchange, debt, and money, and ‘relentless
systems of education and evaluation that [support] these things’. Such a call to resistance is vague enough to
be filled in later with various agendas and activism in the name of social
justice. He does, however, give further
discussion to ‘place’, which turns out to be an opposition to segregation,
which affects work, money, education, etc.
He understands the call to redress this situation to involve Christian
communities, and in this he at least does not defer to government and its use
of power to change society. A focus on
intentional communities of Christ offers something positive in the article,
even if it likely does so by remaining rather vaguely discussed.
A Better Way: A Biblical and
Theological Basis for Christian Unity
Earlier, I suggested that a
Christocentric and ecclesial focus is fundamental for a Christian discussion of
social justice. There is much to say
along these lines, but all that can be said in this space is that such a
discussion would be quite the opposite of social justice discussed under the
category of Jennings’ ‘whiteness’. I
can, however, outline a Biblical and theological basis for unity. Note that the Biblical virtue of unity is far
preferable to raising diversity up as a virtue.
Unity is a repeated virtue in the
New Testament, expressed with such related virtues as love, patience, kindness,
humility, gentleness, etc., and fostered by practices such as compassion,
forgiveness, mercy, reconciliation/peace-making, etc. Biblically, unity builds on rather than
balances virtues of purity or holiness and righteousness (e.g., 1 Corinthians
5.7-8; 2 Corinthians 6.14). Therefore,
unity results or derives from life in Christ and through the Holy Spirit (1
Corinthians 6.11). It can be explored as
a Trinitarian virtue. It follows that
unity is not a virtue that stands apart from Christian life, as though other
religions or societies would mean the same thing as Christians do when speaking
of ‘unity’. As a Christian virtue, unity
stands apart from other renditions of unity.
Postmodernity, with its opposition
to totalizing metanarratives and replacement of objective truth with local
constructions of truth, raised diversity to the status of a cardinal
virtue. With inclusion as an ancillary cardinal
virtue, it has privileged previously marginalized convictions, ethics, and
practices, and socially it has identified marginalized communities—most notably
sexual and racial, but increasingly religious and atheist—that must now be
given new, privileged status. Yet
Postmodernity has evolved from this initial understanding that made diversity a
cardinal virtue to formulate a new metanarrative of Western tribalism. There is an early and a late version of
Postmodernity.
Marginalized convictions and
groups have been raised to privileged status over against what came before, to
the point that history, laws, and institutions must now be radically altered—cancelled—to
reflect a new power and control. The
pattern is predictable, having been witnessed again and again in revolutions of
the past. First, the revolution pulls in
disaffected groups; then it coalesces around certain groups and excludes
others. Diversity turns out to be a
useful tool in the initial stage of the struggle; it is then limited as unacceptable
ideas, people, and groups are excluded cancelled, or guillotined. The diversity-affirming ‘intercultural
studies’ department (replacing ‘mission studies’) of early Postmodern
seminaries now becomes the culture-cancelling department studying critical
(race) theory, intersectionality, post-colonialism, and other socio-political,
emancipatory ideologies of late Postmodernity.
Evangelism to the nations becomes study of diverse peoples becomes the privileging
of certain groups and cancelling of others.
‘Bearing the name of God to the nations’ becomes ‘appreciative dialogue
between peoples, religions, and cultures’ becomes the struggle against ‘whiteness’. Even Jennings’ term implies the tribalism of
late Postmodernity. Like postcolonial
rule, it has overthrown one master with the joyful enthusiasm of the excluded
only to become the new oppressor—corrupt, violent, and oppressive. Lacking a theological understanding of the
human condition and God’s salvation, it turns to explanations from the social
sciences, such as Marxist critical theory.
A Biblical correction of this is
not to be found in some attempt to show Christianity as supportive of the Postmodern,
post-Christian struggle by expressing support for the secular notions of ‘diversity’
or ‘inclusion’. A Biblical correction
means replacing ‘diversity’ with ‘unity’ and understanding ‘unity’ Biblically
and theologically. Instead of viewing
sin and salvation through the lenses of cultural Marxism, such as Jennings’ own
racialism, a Christian view offers a view of universal sin and a socio-political
alternative to all human constructs in the Kingdom of God. Thus, a Biblical understanding of ‘unity’ is
the preferred alternative to Jennings’ guilt and anger producing, culture-cancelling
struggle against ‘whiteness’. Eight
Biblical and theological bases for a Christian understanding of unity might be
outlined as a positive alternative.
First, monotheism rather than
polytheism leads to a unity among the various groups of humanity. The central tenet of Biblical faith, that God
is one (Deuteronomy 6.4), is cited by Paul in Romans 3.27-30 to show that monotheism
involves a unity among the peoples of the earth. God created Jews and Gentiles—all the
nations. Therefore, no group can boast
over another in their righteousness.
Second, that all human beings are
created in the image of God is a fundamental reason for the Christian view of
unity among peoples. Jennings’ concerns about
certain views about race and their related practices in European history might
well have been discussed along these lines, rather than isolating ‘whiteness’
as the issue.
Third, the Biblical view of sin
is that it rests upon all humanity. Psalm
143.2 says, ‘No one living is righteous before you.’ Paul, citing Psalm 14, says, ‘None is
righteous, no, not one’ (Romans 3.10).
It therefore follows, fourthly,
that salvation comes to all humanity in the same way. The passage cited earlier, Romans 3.27-30,
also makes this point. There is not a
salvation plan for Jews and a separate plan for Gentiles. Moreover, the plan of salvation is God’s plan,
not a plan for how human groups can compete against each other to obtain God’s
salvation. We are all saved through faith
in what God has done on our behalf to save us.
Thus, fifth, our understanding of
salvation is universally applicable to all people. For example, Paul says,
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people …. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2.1-4).
From this missional concern of
God for all people, sixth, the actual mission of God’s people—from the time of
Abraham to the Church—is outwardly focussed.
God’s choice of Israel from among the nations is a choice of a priestly
servant for the nations (cf. Exodus 19.5-6).
It is a mission to restore all people, not just one tribe, tongue,
people, or nation. If the story of the introduction
of diversity among the nations at the time of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) was
a result of divine judgement, the story of mission to the nations is one of unity
among the nations. The Christian virtue
is unity, not diversity. It is not,
however, unity apart from unity in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Church’s mission is to go to the peoples
of the earth and baptize in the name of the Triune God of Christian faith
(Matthew 28.18-20). Similarly, the unity
of the Church is drawn around the Son’s unity with the Father (John 17; it is
not simply social unity or inclusion), or is expressed as a unity of the Spirit
in one faith (Ephesians 4.3-6). It might
also be called a Christocentric unity: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there
is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in
Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3.28).
Seventh, God’s work of grace is
not only forgiving; it is also transforming.
I have elsewhere noted examples of racist views in South Africa during
Apartheid: some whites even held to the view that blacks were not really human
and could not, therefore, be saved.
Coming to Christian faith—when it was the true faith—transformed this
view. So also, a hatred of whites by
blacks—and there was plenty of mistreatment, not just structural racialism
during Apartheid, to cause this—could be overcome through Christ and in the
Church.[13] The overcoming of hate and dissension takes
place through the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s transforming power. Paul says,
Remind them to be submissive to
rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to
speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show astray,
slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy,
hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving
kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by
us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of
regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly
through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might
become heirs according to the hope of eternal life (Titus 3.1-7).
Eighth, the Church is a new
humanity. It is not a privileging of one
tribe over others, such as Israel over the other nations. It is certainly not a privileging of some
tribes over a failed ‘white’ tribe, as Jennings would have it (whether
literally—which he cannot avoid—or figuratively—which he advocates). Christianity is, certainly, opposed to racism,
which should be defined as seeing individuals totally or primarily in terms of
their racial groups rather than as the individuals they are and the persons
they are before God. Instead, we are
called to see people as ‘new creations’ (2 Corinthians 5.17) and as united ‘in
Christ’ despite ethnic, sexual (male and female), and socio-economic diversity
(Galatians 3.28). Believers are gathered
in unity through the blood of Christ despite their racial, ethnic, and cultural
diversity, as we read in Revelation 7.9-14—a text that has often been wrongly
coopted to press multiculturalism rather than unity in Christ. In this Christocentric and ecclesial identity
of believers, there is an implicit and necessary critique of ‘the world’—its
history, culture, and identity.
Conclusion
At each point in the above
outline of a Biblical theology for and ethic of unity in Christ, Jennings’ distorted
discussion of social justice in terms of opposing ‘whiteness’ fails. One does not need to turn to critical race
theory, which is evident in his arguments even though he does not mention it,
to offer a Christian alternative. Holy
Scripture provides a far more robust analysis of the situation and a real
solution. Jennings’ view appears to be drawn
from the waters of Marxist critical race theory, adding to all the failures of
Liberation theology a racialism that ends up in disunity. It trashes the history of the Church in Europe,
distorting and rewriting it in a way that services his deconstruction of ‘whiteness’
and his radical socio-political struggle in the name of social justice. His
analysis is flawed in its understanding of the facts of history, in its
categories for analysis, in its failure to be Biblical and theological, and in
its proving to be, in the end, a racist identity ecclesiology.
[1]
Rollin G. Grams, ‘Some Characteristics of the West’s Postmodern Tribalism,’
(July 14, 2020); online at: https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2020/07/some-characteristics-of-wests.html.
[2]
Rollin G. Grams, ‘The Rise of Identity Ecclesiology,’ (May 10, 2019); available
at: https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-rise-of-identity-ecclesiology.html. Also see ‘Is Diversity a Christian Virtue?’
(October 28, 2019); available at: https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2019/10/is-diversity-christian-virtue.html.
The focus of my critique of identity ecclesiology is on Soong-Chan Rah, The
Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009).
[3]
Note my further discussion in ‘Racism, and an Ecclesial and Missional
Perspective’ (July 18, 2020): available at https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2020/07/racism-and-ecclesial-and-missionary.html.
[4]
Willie James Jennings, ‘Can White People be Saved? Reflections on the Relationship of Missions
and Whiteness,’ in Can ‘White’ People be Saved? Triangulating Race, Theology, and Mission, ed. Love L. Sechrest,
Johnny Ramírez-Johnson, and Amos Yong (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic,
2018).
[5]
Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020),
in ‘Prologue: Secrets’.
[6]
Ibid.
[7]
J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1962); John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1969).
[8]
This is also a point made by Neil Shevni about most of the contributions in Can
‘White’ People be Saved? In his review.
See Shevni’s ‘A Short Review of Sechrest’s Can ‘White’ People be
Saved?; online at: https://shenviapologetics.com/a-short-review-of-sechrests-can-white-people-be-saved/
(accessed 26 September, 2020).
[9]
Cf. Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture,
rev. 2nd ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009); Andrew Walls, The
Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis Books, 1996); Richard L. Haney, Mapping Mission as Translation
with Reference to Michael Polanyi’s Heuristic Philosophy (PhD Dissertation,
Middlesex University, 2014). Jennings is
aware of Sanneh’s and Walls’ work on translation, but also critical of it. He agrees with their point about the Gospel’s
translateablity on the one hand, but then says that this also unleashes ‘horrors’
for the culture receiving the Gospel (After Whiteness, ‘Prologue:
Secrets’).
[10]
John Doleman de Graft-Johnson, ‘Mūsā I of Mali,’ Encyclopedia of Britannica;
online at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Musa-I-of-Mali
(accessed 27 September, 2020).
[11]
See footnote 7.
[12]
Cf. James H. Cone, A Black Theology of
Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990; originally pub. 1970).
[13] Rollin G. Grams, Stewards of Grace: A Reflective, Mission
Biography of Eugene and Phyllis Grams in South Africa, 1951-1962 (Eugene,
OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010).
Comments