Imagine being disinvited from an exclusive club. Membership standards have changed and you no longer meet the requirements. Imagine griping about this to a friend who had never qualified for membership in the first place—and then imagine your friend’s confusion and frustration in response.
The Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide has provoked a sense of exclusion among many Christians who had previously taken their place in the mainstream for granted. While there have been previous cultural shifts in the past, this seems to have been the moment many felt the door of cultural respectability slamming shut behind them.
Christians with a different skin color rarely experience the cultural respectability so many of us took for granted.
Though our theology might play a role in our exit from the mainstream, for predominately white churches, what enabled our admission into the mainstream was not theology, but race. Churches and Christians with a different skin color rarely experience the cultural respectability so many of us took for granted.
The Not-So-New Normal
I’m no expert on the sustaining practices of these outside-the-mainstream churches, but I am close enough to some to know that flourishing is possible whether or not culture sanctions it. I pastor a diverse church in an African-American neighborhood in Chicago. My partners in ministry are African American clergy with long memories of God’s faithfulness in the face of a city’s racist policies.
As we work and worship together, I hear testimonies: underfunded schools are adopted by churches, neglected streets and neighborhoods are prayed over and patrolled by faithful saints, and disenfranchised young people are challenged by their elders and offered tangible redemption through volunteer and work opportunities. Human trafficking is dangerous and a threat in our neighborhoods, and our neighbors, unsupported by government agencies or non-profit organizations, organize to raise awareness and advocate for victims.
While the Christian church’s invitation to the mainstream may have been rescinded, a far better invitation awaits us. Accepting this invitation begins by acknowledging how minority members of our Christian family have faced greater cultural exclusion than we’ve ever known.
The Already-Exiled Ethnic Churches
We don’t have to look to slavery, legal segregation, or white flight to see minority Christians excluded from mainstream culture. On any given Sunday, as mostly white churches gather for worship, our black and brown kinfolk are gathering under the duress of corrupt economic, education, and housing policies.
The prelude to the 2008 recession is just one recent example. The Justice Department has found that banks charged higher fees and rates to minority borrowers and in some cases directed minority borrowers to “costlier subprime mortgages when white borrowers with similar credit risk profiles had received regular loans.” It’s not surprising that as a result, “blacks and Latinos were more than 70 percent more likely to lose their homes to foreclosure.”
Or consider the children and teenagers in our church who attend schools that are funded by property taxes, a system that provides little hope of improvement for schools located in the midst of relative poverty. These kids face educational futures determined largely by their Zip code.
Coming to grips with our new location as cultural outsiders has the potential to lead us toward a growing sympathy toward those who have always existed in this place. How did race, ethnicity, and culture become dividing lines more powerful than the gospel we hold in common? How could we be zealous for world missions and global justice while nurturing a blinding apathy toward our Christian neighbors?
Flourishing in the Margins
As we become accustomed to our new landscape, these questions will be harder to avoid. We’ll find no exonerating answers. An honest confession will prompt repentance. The way forward will be painful. It will require acknowledging the benefits we’ve inherited from unjust systems that affect basic things like housing and our kids’ education. Repentance – confessing our sin and turning from it – is never easy.
But we know that confession and repentance are acts of grace. Forgiveness and reconciliation are always within the view of those who are held together in Christ. We can see this in the courage of the Episcopal Church in Rhode Island confessing its role in the transatlantic slave trade. Or in the example of the Lutheran church in Pennsylvania that was compelled to add “Black Lives Matter” to their sign after the massacre in the church in Charleston. This small act opened up a community discussion led by the congregation.
Or maybe our initial steps toward reconciliation will be smaller and quieter: a phone call to a local pastor of a different race; a potluck with leaders from diverse area churches; a sincere question to an immigrant neighbor about the impact of the current vitriol about immigration.
Acknowledgement of and repentance from past sins will open the doors to relationships with those for whom cultural acceptance was never an option. As these multi-racial friendships develop we might be surprised to learn that cultural exile has never been a hindrance to God’s mission or his flourishing church.
The neighborhood pastors and leaders who have befriended me over the years have shown me that God’s power is not tied to what politician is in office, what law has been passed, or which way the societal wind currently blows. These things matter, but for those with eyes to see, God’s power can often be experienced more plainly on the margins where flourishing is genuinely dependent on God’s faithful presence.
There’s a story about Rev. Dr. King that both haunts and thrills me. Harry Belafonte recalled that toward the end of his life King began to wonder if he had been advocating for integration into a burning house. What’s the point, he seemed to ask, of making the goal of integration a standard that was deeply corrupt?
If we accept this invitation and submit to the tutelage of faithful outsiders, I’m convinced a day will come when we no longer care about belonging to a mainstream whose respectability has masked a deep corruption.
May we be dissuaded of an idealized past and, unlike the engagers and escapers, we will be free to make common cause with the outsiders.
David Swanson is the pastor of New Community Covenant Church on the South Side of Chicago.
