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Jesse Miranda and William Pannell often find themselves the lone representatives of their ethnic groups on evangelical boards and on speakers' platforms. Perhaps, they suggest, it represents the current state of race relations: different ethnic groups and the majority white community have made contact with each other, but as mere aliens visiting one another from far-off planets. What does it take to transform these encouraging but often facile alien encounters into true Christian relationship? The answers are complex. But because Miranda and Pannell have lived in both the white evangelical world as well as the Hispanic and African-American evangelical worlds respectively, their insights are especially worth hearing.

Jesse Miranda is head of the Alianza de Ministerios Evangelicos Nacionales, a national alliance of Hispanic evangelical ministries best known as AMEN, and is associate dean for urban and multicultural affairs for the Haggard Graduate School of Theology at Azusa Pacific University. He also serves on the board of Promise Keepers and is an executive presbyter for the Assemblies of God. Bill Pannell is professor of preaching and dean of the chapel at Fuller Theological Seminary and serves on the Taylor University board. He is also the author of a number of books, including The Coming Race Wars? (Zondervan). They met in Pasadena for this discussion, moderated by CT's Kevin D. Miller.

How would you evaluate the current state of racial reconciliation in the church?
Miranda: I was watching a cable television station that was carrying a meeting of evangelicals on racial reconciliation. I was excited to see this demonstration of Christian unity. But then my phone rang, and a Hispanic leader on the other end asked if I was watching this. When I told him I was, he asked, "Is your TV in black and white? Because mine is; it looks like a rerun from the 1960s. Why aren't we part of this discussion?"

As it turns out, there have been five national high-profile meetings on racial reconciliation since 1994, conducted by evangelical, Pentecostal, and mainline groups. All have been between black and white participants. Another meeting, between the National Black Evangelical Association and the National Association of Evangelicals, is scheduled for 1999. This makes me think of what David Atencio, a Hispanic minister and educator, has said: "If this is as far as reconciliation meetings go in the American church in terms of inclusivity, then the effort toward reconciliation will not only be limited, but limiting as well." One of the reasons we began AMEN is to provide a point of contact for dialogue on this and other issues.

But isn't there a priority to the black/white reconciliation effort given the history of slavery? In your book Race Wars, Bill, you write, "For white American Christians, this issue at gut level and historically is still primarily an issue between African Americans and Euro Americans." How so?
Pannell: For one, the history of whites enslaving blacks does give their conversation a special place in the dialogue on reconciliation, making it something of a family feud. I also think the racial issue became focused as a black-and-white issue because the most objectionable thing in white society from early days on was blackness—not ethnicity, not culture—but color. That still prevails. For example, if darker complexioned Puerto Ricans come to the United States, they face greater discrimination than do lighter complexioned Puerto Ricans, even though they are of the same ethnicity. Ours is a society that talks of democracy while behaving as if were a pigment-ocracy.

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March 2 1998, Vol. 42, No. 3