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For 500 years, immigration has shaped the culture of North America. Recently, and not for the first time, the arrival of a generation of immigrants has sparked national debate. Fortunately, an increasing number of Christian leaders are working to bridge cultural differences. Many of these leaders have been nurtured by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an evangelical organization that has gone farther than most in living out the biblical example of interracial partnership on America's university campuses. Orlando Crespo, a second-generation Puerto Rican American who is director of InterVarsity's LaFe ministry with Hispanic students, exemplifies this commitment to both ethnic distinctiveness and multiethnic partnership, themes he explored in his 2003 book, Being Latino in Christ. Because multiethnic reconciliation is all too rare in mainstream culture and in the church, and because it is so evidently crucial to the flourishing of the common good in the United States' third century, Crespo is an ideal person to respond to our big question: How can followers of Christ be a counterculture for the common good?

In April 2006, a British producer named Adam Kidron launched a musical volley into the heated American debate over ethnicity and immigration: a new Spanish-language version of the national anthem called Nuestro Himno. The song's release provoked condemnation from conservative commentators and a disavowal from President Bush—even though his first presidential campaign frequently featured Spanish-language versions of the anthem. "I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English," he said, according to The New York Times. "And they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."

What do Christians have to contribute to debates like these? The Spanish word himno can be translated as anthem, but it also can be translated as hymn. Is there a uniquely Christian perspective—a Christian hymn, nuestro himno—that could serve the common good of a uniquely multiethnic society like America? As the child of Puerto Rican immigrants and as a child of God in Christ, I've become convinced the answer is yes.

At the core of a biblical understanding of ethnicity is the question of whether ethnicity—the specific and diverse human traditions of culture and language—is a regrettable mistake, an inconsequential accident, or a result of God's creative intent. In recent years, Christians have begun to recover the biblical emphasis on culture. They have looked at the so-called cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28—"fill the earth and subdue it"—and asked whether it could have ever been fulfilled without the accompanying cultural diversity.

As Richard Mouw writes in When the Kings Come Marching In, "God intended from the beginning that human beings would 'fill the earth' with the processes, patterns, and products of cultural formation." Kinship groupings would inevitably form as the human race grew in number, along with varying cultural traditions. On the vast earth, with its varied climates and conditions, cultural diversity would flourish naturally, allowing humanity to fulfill God's intent in a variety of ways.

Yet very quickly in Genesis human culture becomes distorted by the Fall. Instead of "filling the earth," people huddle in Babel, where they hatch the plan of building a tower so as not to be "scattered over the face of the whole earth." But this attempt to seek human unity at the expense of filling the earth draws God's intervention. The resulting profusion of languages has often been seen as purely judgment, but it is also grace—the provision of a way to return to God's original plan.

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August 2006, Vol. 50, No. 8