For those who are just joining the conversation, here’s a brief:
- Soong-Chan Rah wrote about the emergent church in his book — a characterization to which I and others objected.
- He has now written an article on the subject for Sojourners Magazine.
- I said I didn’t like the cover image and title — I still don’t.
- I made some assumptions in the original post about Rah’s article which I have since amended and have apologized to Rah.
- Some commenters have made suggestions as to how the EC can battle its diversity problem.
- I responded that those suggestions don’t really fit what the EC is. I was afraid that my second post would come off as defensive, and I’ve been told I was right.
So, I write this post both chastened and wanting to make a constructive contribution to this problem. Surely it’s true that the EC is too white — as are so many collections of people in our culture. We need to combat this, and I both have tried to in the past and will try in the future. To that end, I offer these suggestions:
To Emerging Church Leaders
Diversify the leadership of the movement: I think this is being done. For instance, when founders of the movement like Pagitt, McLaren, Seay, Cecil, Conder, and Jones stepped off the leadership team of Emergent Village, we were replaced by a more diverse group, including Shroyer, Bray, Smith, and Rosario-Cruz. (Unfortunately, that group is introduced but not listed on the EV website.) While I hold no sway over EV or any other group in the EC, I hope this trend continues.
Invite diverse speakers to events: Doug and I have tried to do this with our new event company, and I believe that EV is planning to do this in 2010 with their annual Theological Conversation. I encourage other events to follow suit.
Let The Wild Goose Festival be a standard of diversity: A come-one-come-all event is being planned for June, 2011, and it has the opportunity to be uniquely attuned to matters of diversity. (In fact, I happen to know the planners, and I’m convinced that it will be…)
To White EC Leaders: Examine ‘white privilege’: It seems to me that the issue at the root of the EC’s “whitness problem” — if not in Rah’s article — is the issue of white privilege, real or perceived. Most of us cannot get through graduate school without being forced to confront our own privilege, as I know I did. While we don’t have the structure to undertake the coordinated assessment that Lisa Sharon Harper suggested in earlier comments, each of us needs to take it on ourselves to look in the mirror and confront our own blindnesses.
To Persons of Color in EC Leadership: Let your voice be heard: Clearly, the EC isn’t a bastion of whitness, or you wouldn’t be here, so tell us why you’re here. What about the issues that concern the EC overlap with with your own experiences of God and church? Bring these issues to the fore of the conversation.
To Non-White Leaders in the Church
Give the EC the benefit of the doubt: Trust us, we’re on your side, and moreso than most. We’ve been heavily influenced by theologians of color, and we’ve tried hard to diversify the conversation (not that we’ve always succeeded). Work with us.
Recognize the limits of the EC: Unlike most of the ecclesial orgs with which you work, be they denominations or non-profits or NGOs, we aren’t structured like that, so you cannot expect us to act like those orgs. There’s no headquarters and no discrete group of leaders and no one who can decide to give you a place at the table. Instead, there are lots of autonomous groupings who are relationally connected to one another. Become a part of one of these, and join the conversation.
Look for moments of intersection: Those of us who are white are often told that the issues that concern us in the EC are exclusively the problems of white, middle class Christians, and that tends to sap our motivation for cross-cultural communication. So if you see issues of import to you in the EC, let us know what those are so that we can talk about them.
Stop stereotyping us: It is clearly unacceptable for me to write about the hairstyle of an African-American church leader or the eyes of an Asian-American person (indeed, Soong-Chan recently took the lead in protesting a Christian product that played on such stereotypes). And yet it seems acceptable to write about EC practitioners:
From Rah’s article:
- “a blond-haired, 29-year-old, white male, replete with cool glasses and a goatee”
- “trendy clothing, sporting cool hairstyles and eyewear”
- “younger people of European descent and stylistic flair”
- “this ‘emerging,’ postmodern church was simply the pierced and tattooed offspring of its older, modern parents”
From Rah’s book:
- “yet another workshop led by yet another blonde-haired, perpetually twenty-nine white male with a goatee”
It’s probably clear that if I wrote similarly about the hair color, skin color, facial hair, and clothing of an Asian-American church leader, I would be excoriated. And rightly so. So let’s stop doing it in the other direction as well.
In conclusion, we’ve all come a long way, but we’ve got a ways to go. For my part, I commit to continue to pursue the diversity of the EC from my little corner of the world.
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I just want to second what Susan said in #42 – the point about the racial stereotyping Rah/Mach engage in is not that it’s going to hurt the feeling of white hipsters. The point is that it ignores the actual contributions of all those in the EC who do not in fact fit the stereotype. It downplays and devalues and marginalizes all these important voices. By focusing on only the white hipsters, and claiming that they are representative of the EC as a whole (and failing to note that most of the emergent leaders they interviewed for the article were in fact non-white and non-hipsters), they themselves are actually contributing to the very problem they are trying to critique – i.e. the tendency of evangelical observers of the EC to only focus on the white, hipster males and ignore all the rest.
In other words, the problem is not that they are stereotyping, but that their stereotype is demonstrably false, and it ends up serving as a further tool of marginalization.
Please refrain from using the term non-white. In the South African context it is a term from a painful history. It may be coterminous with the “N” word.
I am sure the term evokes the same sense and sensibility in those who lived in the brutal apartheid era in this country, especially the southern part.
Errol – my apologies. I am entirely unfamiliar with how this kind of terminology functions in your country. However, as I was referring to circumstances here in America, where the term “non-white” has no such connotations and is an entirely neutral way to refer to persons who don’t happen to be white, please rest assured that I meant no offense by it whatsoever. In the future if I happen to be writing in regards to a South African context, I will be sure to avoid this terminology and I thank you for calling my attention to it.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you, Special Communion for taking the time to hold me / us accountable to the body of Christ in constructive, grace-filled ways. You have offered gifts and a blessings in your contributions here.
@Errol — can you offer suggestions for more appropriate / less offensive language? What words are helpful when we seek to acknowledge our common humanity and distinctive personhood?
Black for non-white will be safe. It goes down well here in south side Chicago as well Africa.
I have no suggestions for Asians, Hispanics or Orientals.
Blacks or I resent being defined against white. I am black -black not non- white.
I suspect whites would not want to referred to as non-black- maybe in a few years from now when power shifts perhaps.
Non-white is a term from Christendom or colonialism.
I hope this is helpful. I did not mean to be typically pedagogic. I am a teacher though.
I would also suggest that when writing in the emerging context, remember that the context is global not regional.
So when we write, be mindful there is such a thing as the global internet, the printing press, the screen and automobile.
Humanity is gracefully being coerced into change all over this globe.
The mystic world in John’s gospel is reference to the this earthly village and the universe.
What name shall we give to the people on Mars whom we have not yet met personally.
Indeed Errol, and yet my comment was actually very specific, in response to Rah’s article and referring to very particular people – all of whom are Americans and many of whom are not in fact white (actually representing several different minority groups, thus I couldn’t simply say “black”). At any rate, I chose the term “non-white” in order to directly contrast Rah/Sojo’s use of the term “white,” and also because I was talking about more than one race. Since race is not quite so simple as merely black and white, I used the term “non-white” in order to be inclusive of much broader diversity, not to imply any sort of colonial intent. And as I said, not knowing the South African context, I was unaware that this term would carry any negative connotations whatsoever. Again, my apologies.
I was on vacation when the article was published, so I feel really behind and I certainly haven’t read all of the comments, but a couple of things occurred to me as I was reading many of them: 1) what Rah and Mach are critiquing about EC and its Western focus seems to be not only a critique of Western Christianity et al, but of our still Anglo/Eurocentric attitude. Many of us in suburban/rural/metro America are struggling to get our parishioners to look to earlier parts of the church than the 20th and 16th Centuries, to even open their minds beyond the 10 mile radius of the worship space and their visions of the perfect 1960s.
2) Christian history before the late 19th Century was Europe and North America with outposts in Latin America and Africa. Adapting to Phyllis Tickle’s understanding of history, the race/culture/ethnicity/nationality conversation is a long-view one begun with the growth and expansion of Christianity into places that do not have a Euro/NA-centric worldview as well as the growing awareness in the West that it has been racist. I think we ought to be further along, but man, in terms of Christian history, we’re talking about the tiniest of moments.
And lastly, for crying out loud, can’t we move past the skepticism and the need to call out the one gathering of people (EC) that is actually hosting and participating in these conversations? I know we’re easy targets, but it just feels like un-”friendly fire”.
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