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The Emmanuel Research Review is a publication of the Emmanuel Gospel Center. The Review features articles, papers, resources, and information that we believe are helpful and relevant to urban pastors, leaders, and community members in their efforts to effectively serve their communities.
As the destructive conflicts and divisions across the world continue to manifest in a multiplicity of ways in countries far and neighborhoods near, some Christians are especially determined to rediscover the significance of the ministry of reconciliation and its significance in God’s World Mission. In this issue of the Emmanuel Research Review, we step back for a global perspective on the subject of “Race and Reconciliation” as seen from the perspective of author John Runyon and his colleagues, after their two-year experience with the Issue Group on Reconciliation, organized by the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization. We do this with the hope that such a perspective will provide a practical, theological momentum impacting the way the gospel of reconciliation touches the ground in our own backyards and on the streets of our cities.
Runyon’s article, Reconciliation: Hope for Tortured Histories , is followed by his suggested list of links and resources. Next, for those who would like to dig deeper into the subject, our section on the Lausanne Committee's Issue Group on Reconciliation will point you to their major paper, as well as their story of how it came to be. We also offer a list of resources for further study on reconciliation from the ERI files. We hope you find these helpful.
You may also be interested in information about the Emmanuel Research Institute. As always, your feedback is welcome. If you enjoy this publication, tell someone you know, or send them a copy by email.
by John Runyon, ThM
Associate
Director of Enrollment
Center for Urban Ministerial
Education
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Boston
No matter who is engaged in conversation on the issue, racial reconciliation is a fairly controversial topic. One would think that Christians would be all for it; yet, in many places, Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour of the week.
Christians might try to explain the phenomenon in several ways:
And the list of reasons goes on.
The truth of the matter is, whenever we get people from different backgrounds into the same country, organization, or family who do not have a overriding purpose and reason for being there, we have the natural tendency to drift toward what is most comfortable for us. We also have the natural tendency to build our identity over and against others in our lives.
For example, we define ourselves by how different we are from others, and this can quickly become prideful and divisive. “I’m different from this person because I do this differently” can easily become “I’m better than this person because I do this in a better way.” When those differences are also marked by different skin color or gender, it makes it easy to set up one’s own ideas, culture, or ideologies over the other person’s, and to generalize, stereotype, and create prejudices.
This practice of categorizing and placing people is particularly useful when one has something to gain from it even beyond identity, such as status, power, and/or money (and these are all things which get mixed into identity creation anyway, making it all hard to separate). So when Europeans needed to conquer and build a new world, they needed to do it as cheaply and quickly as possible. There’s no labor like free labor, so why not find some easily identifiable free labor of a different skin color—easier to control and easier to somehow create an ideology that allows Christians to oppress someone else.
Roots of relational breakdownWhere did this practice of oppressing others come from anyway? It all started in the Garden of Eden and shortly thereafter, when Adam and Eve decided that God wasn’t in the know about what was best for them. They thought that their own idea was better, and set themselves up over God as the ones who really knew what was going on. This identity confusion started a big mess that created tension between every relationship known to humankind—their relationship with God, each other, and the world. Cain took it to a new level: instead of working out his relationship with God on his own, he became jealous of Abel’s relationship with God and judged that Abel no longer had the right to live. Although Cain could have worked it out with God and been blessed in his desire to please God, he chose to oppress his brother. Unlike Abraham, Jabez, and David, Cain did not have faith that seeking God and his righteousness first would, in God’s time, add to him all those other things he sought.
Throughout the generations, oppression and broken relationships became a way of life. In the 1600s, some Europeans experienced religious oppression and sought a better life in the new world. Not surprisingly, even the Europeans, in their newly “discovered” world (at the expense of Native Americans), found ways to oppress their African brothers and sisters so that they might seek first their own glory and advancement rather than work out their existence and their prosperity between themselves and God. The curse of original sin, and our tendency to alienate or dominate each other, plays out down through the centuries in every land.
In Africa, for example, colonizers in Rwanda identified the Hutus and the Tutsis, creating ethnic groups out of what was to the Africans economically-related names similar to “farmer” and “cattle-herder” rather than true ethnic groups. It was to the benefit of the colonizers to set the people against one another by elevating the Tutsis to privileged status, indicating that they were supposedly more intelligent and better equipped to help the Europeans rule their lowly Hutu brothers and sisters. Years of tension created by this ideology resulted in a Hutu takeover and then reverse discrimination where the Tutsis were viewed as less than human. No one really knows if it was a set-up or a Tutsi act of defiance that resulted in the assassination of the Hutu president in 1994, but the blame went to the Tutsis and the aftermath was genocide—eight-hundred thousand in three months. The spirit of Cain is still found lurking.
Today in the American church
What do we do with this problem when it shows up in our neighborhood or our church? Here in the United States of America, we join our fellow humans worldwide, from Adam and Eve to the present, who have in some way oppressed others and are reaping the consequences even today. The church either wants to ignore it or isn’t quite sure how to deal with it.
Most white Americans don’t want to be held accountable for the sins of their ancestors, and indeed, the Bible says that the children should not be put to death for the sins of their parents. The Bible also teaches, however, that the sins of the fathers are indeed passed on to the children. In other words, you might not get your hand removed because your father was a thief, but “like father, like son,” you are quite likely to have developed some unhealthy behavior patterns that would lend to thieving tendencies in you. Thus, if left unchecked in your life, you will probably find yourself viewing others as having possessions of which they need to be relieved in order to properly balance the universe. In the same way, if our parents or grandparents consider a particular skin color to be representative of humans who are not quite up to our par, then we would tend to develop those same attitudes.
Is racism rampant in America and rampant in the church? We don’t want to confess it, or even consider it a problem. We claim we don’t have prejudice, or that we aren’t racist, but then we act in ways that are decidedly racist or prejudiced. Are we completely blind to the truth? When it is finally brought to our attention and we start to recognize it in ourselves, we then feel like we are walking on eggshells to make sure that we don’t offend anyone by making ignorant comments. It’s an identity upheaval. It’s a conversion experience, a drastic change in thought process that leaves us bewildered and grasping for new ways of expression that are “kosher.” “It’s too hard,” we cry, not long into the revelation.
Yet Christ calls us out of ourselves, to consider others better than ourselves, to be ministers of reconciliation, to forgive as we have been forgiven, to work for unity in the body of Christ and for peace in the world around us, to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. While there may be times of disagreement where Paul and Barnabas go their separate ways with different foci of ministry, these partings should not be done out of ill-will or desires to be elevated above another. Instead, we must, each one, work out between ourselves and God the ministry we have been called to discharge, and commit to living out that gifting in its fullness.
Are there solutions for the church?There are no cut-and-dried solutions. But there is a starting point. We begin by educating ourselves, listening to one another, and trying to understand. Then we confess what has been our part, knowing or unknowing, and forgive others their sins as we too have been forgiven.
Through it all, we call on the Holy Spirit to show us how we are to walk from now on, whether hand-in-hand in separate churches, heart-to-heart in the same church, or even living together for a time to really gain understanding, insight and learning from our brothers and sisters in Christ. Whatever the path, we are called to walk in it faithfully no matter the cost, living our lives patterned after Christ who emptied himself and became human to show his immense love for us by crossing chasms of division caused by our sin, experiencing death that we might be reconciled.
It is no wonder that Paul calls us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, to forget what is behind and strive toward what is ahead, to know Christ more and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, so as somehow to experience the power of his resurrection. In this way, walking like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose, we will shine like stars in the universe as we hold out the word of life—reconciliation with an almighty God which leads us to be reconciled to one another and live a life of true love, even when it hurts.
John Runyon grew up as an MK (missionary kid) in the Dominican Republic. While attending Bethel College, he became involved in the House of Higher Learning, an intentional covenant community at Bethel committed to addressing racism and cross-cultural issues. After college, he moved to Massachusetts and enrolled in Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary for his M.Div. and Th.M. degrees. While in school, he also served as an associate pastor in a Brazilian church in Boston. In March, 2000, John came on staff at the Center for Urban Ministerial Education, Gordon-Conwell's Boston campus, where he serves as Associate Director for Enrollment Management and also as adjunct professor, teaching in the Spanish and Portuguese languages. He currently resides in Lynn, where he and his Brazilian wife, Eliana, are lead pastors of One Voice, a multicultural church plant in that city. John served on the Lausanne 2004 Forum Issue Group “Reconciliation as the Mission of God: Faithful Christian Witness in a World of Destructive Conflicts and Divisions,” which recently launched a new global network on reconciliation. (This links to Lausanne's Reconciliation Issue Group pages below.)
contact the author: John Runyon
Center for Urban Ministerial Education
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Boston Campus
617-983-9393 x32
jprunyon@gcts.edu
Books:
Fredrickson, George M. Racism : A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Harris, Paula and Doug Schaupp. Being White: Finding Our Place in a Multiethnic World. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2004.
Ortiz, Manuel. One New People: Models for Developing a Multiethnic Church, Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1996.
Perkins, Spencer and Chris Rice. More than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel, Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993.
Rhodes, Stephen A. Where Nations Meet: The Church in a Multicultural World. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1998.
Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Abington, 1996.
Waller, James. Face to Face: The Changing State of Racism Across America, New York: Plenum Publishing Corp., 1998.
Washington, Raleigh and Glen Kehrein. Breaking Down Walls: A Model for Reconciliation in an Age of Racial Strife, Chicago: Moody Press, 1996.
Online Resources:
Rwandan Genocide
“Rwanda: How the genocide happened,” April 2004, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1288230.stmSudanese Genocide
“Probe into Sudan genocide claims,” April 2004, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/04/22/sudan.genocide/Lucian Niemeyer, “The Sudan, A Saga of Genocide and Enslavement,” December 2000 (includes photos) http://www.lnsart.com/Sudan%20Slave%20Story.htm
The Genocide of Sudan. The SudanGenocide.org website was created in 2005 by two graduating high school seniors in Boston as their combined senior thesis. See their works cited page for more useful references. http://www.sudangenocide.org/
Other Resources:
“Slavery and the Making of America,” a PBS series. http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=1914330&cp=1412758&parentPage=family (Links to DVD and book combo set at PBS online store.)
“America Behind the Color Lines,” with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=1450796 (Links to DVD at PBS online store. Also available in VHS and in print.)
In 2003-2004, John Runyon, author of our lead article in this issue of the Emmanuel Research Review, was one of 47 Christian leaders from diverse communions who partnered in a journey to discern the urgent call to faithful Christian witness in a divided world. The fruit of their work to date includes a website, a paper, a covenant, case studies, and the beginning of a new global network on reconciliation.
The Paper (pdf file). “Reconciliation as the Mission of God: Faithful Christian Witness in a World of Destructive Conflicts and Divisions.” Produced by the Issue Group on Reconciliation at the 2004 Forum for World Evangelization hosted by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, Pattaya, Thailand, September 29 to October 5, 2004.
This paper presents a theological vision for reconciliation as God’s mission in a broken world. While pointing to signs of hope, the paper analyzes how the Christian community is being caught up in many destructive conflicts and divisions across the world today, including by promoting a defective gospel. The paper issues a vision for placing biblically holistic reconciliation at the heart of Christian mission in the 21st century. Its urgent call is to both personal conversion and social transformation, beginning in a critical re-examination of the very meaning of mission, discipleship, evangelism, justice, and even church in relation to God’s reconciling mission.
The paper starts with the Pattaya Covenant, and includes many case studies on reconciliation.
For an index of papers on other topics also produced for this Forum, go to http://www.lausanne.org/Brix?pageID=13890.
For an overview of the work of the Forums, (pdf) download http://www.lausanne.org/lcwe/assets/Lausanne_Magazine.pdf.
The Story. The 47 came together as one of 31 Issue Groups at the September 2004 Forum on World Evangelization in Pattaya, Thailand, organized by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. The Issue Group on Reconciliation included Protestant evangelicals, Pentecostals, and denominational leaders, two Catholic priests, and one Orthodox priest.
(See also: The Inside Story, reflections and photos by group member, Chris Rice, Center for Reconciliation, Duke Divinity School, and the Convener of the USA Leadership Team of the Issue Group on Reconciliation.)
The Website. Pursuing God’s Reconciling Mission in a World of Destructive Conflicts: The 2005 Birth of a Global Network of Christian Leaders, Institutions, and Communions.
In addition to the resources listed above, we offer these suggestions for further study.
Books
Publications available onlineBanton, Michael. Racial Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
De Gobineau, Arthur. The Inequality of Human Races. London: Heinemann, 1915.
Dinnerstein, Leonard & David M. Reimers. Ethnic Americans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Elmer, Duane. Cross-Cultural Conflict: Building Relationships for Effective Ministry. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1994.
Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll. New York: Pantheon, 1972.
Hanke, Lewis. Aristotle and the American Indians. Bloomington, In.: University of Indiana Press, 1970.
Hays, J. Daniel & Donald Carson. From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race (New Studies in Biblical Theology). Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2003.
Horton, James Oliver & Lois E. Horton. Slavery and the Making of America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. (also available as PBS video/dvd series).
Lincoln, C. Eric & Lawrence H. Mamiya. The Black Church in the African American Experience. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990.
McNeil, Brenda Salter, Rick Richardson & John Perkins (foreword). The Heart of Racial Justice: How Soul Change Leads to Social Change. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2004.
Okholm, Dennis L. (editor). The Gospel in Black & White: Theological Resources for Racial Reconciliation. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1998.
Pearce, Roy Harvey. Savagism and Civilization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967.
Roley, Scott & James Isaac Elliot. God's Neighborhood: A Hopeful Journey in Racial Reconciliation and Community Renewal. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2004.
Shibutani, Tamotsu & Kian M. Kwan. Ethnic Stratification. New York: Macmillan, 1965.
Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Abingdon Press, 1996.
Woodley, Dan & John Dawson (foreword). Living in Color: Embracing God's Passion for Diversity. Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 2001.
Organizations/WebsitesMayne, Thomas. “Reconciliation: Do We Need It?” (pdf) (http://www.reconciliationnetwork.com/documents/Indigenous%20Reconciliation%2025%20Sept%2004%20Fn%20.pdf)
Bloomfield, David, Teresa Barnes & Luc Huyse (editors). “Reconciliation After Violent Conflict: A Handbook.” (pdf) (http://www.reconciliationnetwork.com/documents/reconciliation%20after%20violent%20conflict%20--%20handbook.pdf)
Swatos, William H., Jr. (editor) “Racism.” (http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/Racism.htm)
Race Matters is a portal for race reconciliation resources, links to articles, websites, tools for studying racial reconciliation. Site contains useful topical groupings. (http://www.racematters.org/tagsmenu.htm)
Antioch Intentional Communities publishes a 14-page pdf file of resources on the subject of reconciliation. (http://www.iantioch.org/_files/Antioch_Resources.pdf)
Who we are:
The mission of the Emmanuel Research Institute (ERI), an applied research and consulting service of the Emmanuel Gospel Center in Boston, is to make information available that builds the capacity of urban churches and organizations to make decisions for effective action. Through research, training, and consulting, we equip urban churches and the organizations that support their work to better understand their urban community systems and serve them more effectively.
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ERI is working to strengthen and enhance its capacity to provide the following categories of products and services, some of which are already available and some of which are in development:
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