Listening to America’s Ethnic Churches: An Important Message for All Christians

When it comes to children of other races and ethnic groups, it is easy for white Christians to sing, “All are precious in his sight.” However, it is far harder to listen to what mature Christian leaders from those same groups have to say about themselves—and Anglo America. The words may sting: that white Christians are too much head and not enough heart; that they have refused to give ethnics the breaks they need; that their “kindness” has often kept people of color dependent.

Last fall, as a joint venture of World Vision and the Christianity Today Institute, 15 leaders of ethnic minority Christian ministries gathered with 10 white Christian leaders and journalists at the Forest Home Conference Center in California. The purpose? Partly to let these leaders learn from one another not only how to survive, but how to grow in an often unfavorable cultural environment. And it was partly to tell Anglo Christians what they can learn from minority Christians, and where ethnic America is growing.

Eighteen magazine pages cannot hold the wisdom, the emotion, and the power experienced at Forest Home by these church leaders. What appears here is only a sampling. Contributing to this supplement:

Stanley K. Inouye, Monrovia, California, founder and executive director of Iwa, an organization devoted to furthering evangelism, church growth and planting, and spiritual renewal among Asian-Americans.

Wing Ning Pang, chairman of the research committee, Chinese Coordinating Center for World Evangelism-North America, Alhambra, California.

J. Alfred Smith, Sr., pastor, Allen Temple Baptist Church, Oakland, California.

John E. Maracle, pastor of the Mohawk Assembly of God, Akwesasne/Saint Regis reservation, and chief of the North American Native Christian Council.

Jesse Miranda, superintendent of the Pacific Latin American District of the Assemblies of God, La Puente, California.

Kenneth S. Kantzer, dean of the Christianity Today Institute.

Kenneth H. Sidey, assistant editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

How the church can fully reflect the divine image

Stanley K. Inouye

The story of humankind may be thought of as the story of a mirror—a mirror that is created, shattered, and restored. It is the story of how cultural differences originated and how Christ’s coming brings us back to unity. Three related lessons from Scripture help convey this story: Jesus’ role in Creation, the account of the Tower of Babel along with its reversal at Pentecost, and Christ’s entry into history as a human being. From these lessons we can formulate a biblical rationale for why Christians from different cultural heritages need each other and should reach out to one another across racial and ethnic boundaries.

Christians believe human beings were created in the image of God. Most theologians have taught that the image of God is some static quality or faculty, such as rationality. But several key theologians, including Martin Luther and to some extent John Calvin, have recognized that the image is not some human faculty, but is rather a relationship, an orientation of the life toward God. And some theologians have compared this relational understanding of the image of God to a mirror: When human beings are in right relationship with God, they (like mirrors) reflect his glory; but when through sin they focus on something else, they no longer reflect his image.

The idea that God created us to be like a mirror first occurred to me as I was reading Genesis. I used to interpret this portion of Scripture individualistically: Each person is created fully in God’s image and likeness. We were each created to be a mirror, each possessing the capacity to reflect completely our creator.

In time, however, I began to see that God created humankind in his image. Genesis 1:27–28 clearly speaks of God creating the man and the woman together—not just the man—as reproducing, culture-forming, world-shaping beings in his image. As individuals, we are able to reflect the image of God only partially. But as a race, we can reflect the image of God like a giant mirror, each person mirroring only a small portion of the image.

Here I move beyond the explicit sense of the text—but not beyond common sense informed by Scripture: God is reflected only when the individual pieces of the mirror, each of us, faithfully reflect their unique portions of God’s image.

All of the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—was involved in our creation. Yet it was the Son’s unique role to do the shaping. Himself the image of God (Col. 1:15), he shaped us in the image of God as well.

The Colossians passage also says, “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in” Jesus. On the other hand, Ephesians 4, in discussing our common growth into Christian maturity, talks not about the fullness of God, but about the fullness of Christ: It says we are to be “built up until we reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (v. 13).

Now the fullness of God dwelt bodily in Jesus, but it is impossible for all the fullness of God to dwell in any of us individually. The fullness of God that was in Christ can only be realized in us by building up and edifying all the separate parts of Christ’s body, which is the church. We, as individual believers, can only partially experience and reflect God’s and Christ’s fullness on our own. We cannot be whole alone, nor can we understand or serve God fully alone. Only together can we possess, experience, and reflect God’s fullness and therefore fully reflect the image of God as it is in Christ.

The Shattered Mirror

We usually think of the body of Christ as a New Testament analogy. But a precursor of this analogy can be found in Genesis 11 in the story of the Tower of Babel. The birth of the New Testament body of Christ came at Pentecost, with the breaking down of the Babel barrier through the gift of missionary communication across ethnic and language barriers. Thus before Babel and after Pentecost there is potential for a unified human culture that could reflect fully the image of God.

In Genesis 11, it says, “The whole world had one language and a common speech.” At that time, there was only one world culture. But the one world culture, the giant mirror, moved away from reflecting God. These people decided to centralize their power by building a great city and a mammoth tower to symbolize the tremendous power of a united humanity.

Scripture says that they were trying to “make a name” for themselves, an identity apart from God. They who had been created to reflect the image of God were now saying, “God, we have no need of you!” And this tower was the exclamation mark on their rejection of the Creator.

The Lord knew the power of a unified human race. He created it thus. But that power was to be used for God’s purposes and to bring glory to his name. Since they now rejected him, the Lord confused their language and scattered them over the face of the Earth. Thus the myriad cultures in the world were born.

Before this dispersion, the one great culture of humankind was as a global mirror, which reflected the image of the Creator. But when the mirror shattered, the broken fragments were strewn to the ends of the Earth. Each piece was a different culture, separated from its source of being and its meaning in life. As author Jim Sire puts it, “A mirror without anything to reflect is emptiness itself.”

Each culture of the world is an equally valid and yet equally unbalanced, incomplete, and distorted fragment of the much larger mirror we were meant to be—the mirror of God. We were meant to reflect his image, which is also the image of Christ.

Our Lord’s purpose for coming is best understood from his prayer in John 17:23: “Father, … may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” Jesus came to mend the mirror, to unify us so that we might once again reflect the total image of our Creator, who is Christ himself.

Celebrating Our Differences

It would be wonderful if we could report that in Christendom today, Christ’s prayer is being fulfilled: that the mirror has been mended, the cracks eliminated, and believers from every culture and walk of life are working together in harmony; that the world is being convicted that this unprecedented unity could not be possible without Christ. Why is this not happening?

Three primary problems prevent us from achieving this unity. The first is our natural tendency to define belonging as sameness. Formally and informally, we construct complex sets of criteria for membership in the groups to which we belong. Often, these criteria simply describe who we are, and the people most welcome to join our groups are those who are most like us. We respond with suspicion and defensiveness when we are approached by people who are different from us.

This human tendency has pervaded the Christian church since the first century. We have put ourselves in the position of judging one another according to our theological interpretations, ecclesiastical traditions, and particular ministry practices. We have exercised the dubious right to determine who belongs and who doesn’t.

This wrong assumption is the reason the apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12, goes to such lengths to establish the fundamental basis for membership in Christ’s body, the church. According to Paul, the only essential and nonnegotiable characteristic of membership in the body of Christ is that the Spirit of Christ dwells in us. This is given to us. We are the chosen, not the choosers.

Beyond this essential way in which we are the same, the church is best characterized by difference, not similarity. Our differences have a God-ordained purpose within the body of Christ, and they are parts of the mirror that humankind was meant to be.

We should welcome our differences and thank God for them. We should not overlook, avoid, tolerate, or passively accept our differences. We should accept one another, not in spite of our differences, but because of our differences. We should nurture our differences so that we have the most to contribute to one another.

A Faulty Standard

The second problem that prevents us from demonstrating our unity to the world has to do with those of us who are minority Christians—those who are poorer, less powerful, and fewer in number. We tend to measure ourselves according to what the Christian majority promotes as the standard of what makes someone truly Christian. Because minority Christians or their churches fail to fit neatly into the majority’s mold, they assume that they themselves are the ones who do not match up. Therefore, minority Christians judge themselves and their churches to be inferior, even to the point of questioning the legitimacy of their faith and walk with God. They may even feel that they are not really part of the body itself, but only colorful ethnic clothing that the body puts on.

This is exactly what Paul was referring to when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 12:15 that the foot might be tempted to say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body.”

Just because minority Christians don’t see themselves as part of the body, they are nevertheless members of the body of Christ. If they share the same Spirit, they are a part of the same body, like it or not. If we are Christ’s, we are stuck with one another.

Using the mirror analogy, we are still parts of the same mirror, and only by bringing together the pieces can the mirror reflect the complete picture. It is our responsibility to fulfill our God-ordained function as part of the whole. Minority Christians cannot do that if they see themselves as inferior Christians, question the legitimacy of their Christianity, or question the legitimacy of majority Christianity.

Too often, minority Christians think they do not have anything worth contributing. And thus they deny majority Christians a valuable opportunity for growth and change. As a result, what people think of as “Christianity” remains “majority Christianity.”

The minority Christian is as much at fault as the majority Christian. The sin is the same. They both define belonging as sameness and therefore do not contribute to each other or work together as they ought.

The Needy And The Needed

The third problem that prevents the unity Christ desires concerns the Christian majority’s lack of felt need. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:21, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ ” Minorities already know they have needs. They might not accept help and may even say, “I don’t need you!”—but they know they need help.

Majority Christians, however, are far less likely to realize they have needs that cannot be satisfied without help from minority Christians. “We are the needed and they are the needy,” majority Christians are apt to think. “What need have we of them, apart from the blessing we receive when helping them?”

But the majority Christian has just as much need for what the minority Christian has to offer as vice versa. In 1 Corinthians 12:22, Paul writes, “On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.” Although majority Christians might not have the same needs as minority Christians, we must learn to depend on each other for help to meet the needs we cannot satisfy ourselves.

What can the poor and powerless minority Christian offer the rich and powerful majority Christian? Although the majority Christian can give money and resources, the minority Christian can give lessons in needing and depending—two essential ingredients for an authentic walk with God. How does a rich man learn to pass through the eye of a needle? From someone who is earthly poor but spiritually rich.

Back To Wholeness

The question we must now ask is: What must we do to get the body back together again, to mend the mirror? The answer involves understanding our roles in restoration. Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 12:24–25 helps us to understand these roles: “But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other” (NIV).

Recently, this has begun to happen. By fostering communication between representatives from diverse parts of the church, we are attempting to connect the members of the body. Those who have been obscure are beginning to receive recognition, and their unique contributions are being understood and appreciated.

It is hoped that needs within the Christian community might be made known, and the divisions that have existed because of isolation, insulation, or ignorance might be mended. Many organizations are attempting to develop interdependent relationships—ones not based on bringing together the haves and the have-nots, the needed and the needful, but based on the knowledge that each of the parts realizes its need for each of the others, so that all might contribute equally.

Without a sense of equal need and equal contribution among Christians, there can be no equal concern. All the parts must see themselves as God intended: that they be both givers and receivers, needed and needy. When we begin to see ourselves as equally needed parts of the mirror that reflects our Creator, we will move closer to complete unity and will reflect more clearly the image of Christ to the world, in all his glory, power, and love.

Wing Ning Pang

The Chinese-American population is the largest Asian group in the United States, according to the 1980 census. Yet only 7 percent of that group are Christians. Several important historical factors, including white prejudice and the more recent “suburbanization” of the Chinese church, have played a major role in creating an opportunity for the evangelization of a people.

Coming To America

During the Gold Rush of the midnineteenth century, peasants from southern China left political and economic upheaval behind to work the mines of the American West and labor on the construction of transcontinental railroads.

Despite their contribution, they suffered rejection by white society, which dubbed them “the yellow peril.” These sentiments culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which put an end to the free immigration of Chinese laborers.

In response, some Chinese returned to their homeland. Others were persecuted and driven into urban ethnic enclaves—“Chinatowns” that provided a network of kinship, familiar language, and customs as well as an economy geared to serving one another. In this milieu, even highly educated Chinese were confined to jobs that did not reflect their qualifications.

Chinese-American contributions to World War II helped reverse white antagonism. In 1943 the Exclusion Act was repealed, and soon the Chinese population regained its former size. American-born Chinese (ABCs) took advantage of postwar opportunities to become scientists, engineers, doctors, and other professionals.

After the Communists took over China in 1949, a new wave of refugees entered the U.S., including scholars and students, increasing the proportion of economically mobile Chinese-Americans. Ultimately, Chinese-American professionals moved out of the Chinatowns into the suburbs and were recognized as a “model minority.”

In 1965 Congress abolished the national origins quota system. Thus the Chinese-American population nearly doubled between 1970 and 1980, increasing from 435,000 to 806,027. In 1985, it was 1,079,400.

After the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Chinese-Americans experienced upward mobility and access to fields hitherto closed to them: literature, the arts, business, health sciences, education, law, and government. And since the midsixties, Chinese-American college graduates have revitalized their ethnic consciousness, forming pressure groups to safeguard their rights and interests.

Today, ABCs work in much the same occupations as white Americans—with a greater degree of success. Thirty-three percent of ABCs are managers, professionals, or executives, while only 24 percent of whites have attained those categories. But while only 12 percent of ABCs work in low-paying service occupations (restaurants, garment factories), a disproportionate 49 percent of foreign-born Chinese (FBCs) are found in these jobs. Income levels, of course, follow the same pattern, with ABC families having a median income of $22,560 in 1979, compared to the $19,900 earned by American families in general. (This is partly because of the greater number of workers per household among Chinese.) Incomes of FBCs lag way behind those of their American-born counterparts.

Challenges For A “Model Minority”

Chinese may be a “model minority,” but several subgroups still face special challenges.

Professionals. Lingering racism continues to hinder Chinese-American workers. Many are thought of as “high-tech coolies.” While Asian-Americans make up 8 percent of all private-sector professionals and technicians, they make up only 1.3 percent of all managers. Overt discrimination is also reappearing, with violent attacks due to resentment against the rise of foreign Asian involvement in the U.S. economy.

The young. Children and youth among recent immigrants face difficult adjustments largely on their own. Their parents often work long hours in a hostile environment. And these parents fail to understand the school system and the American way of life to which their children are adapting. As the young learn English, they lose their Chinese, and communication breaks down.

Older children find it harder to learn English and adapt to a new culture. Thus teen unemployment is high and juvenile delinquency and crime have increased sharply over the past two decades. The schools have failed to help immigrant children as there are not enough Chinese-American teachers to serve as role models, and many other teachers lack the sensitivity needed to deal with the problems of immigrant students.

Foreign students. On the fringe of the Chinese community is the large group of college students from Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, and Southeast Asia. Their sojourn is often characterized by loneliness, language problems, and culture shock.

The elderly. Large groups of senior citizens reside in Chinatowns. Almost all have incomes below the federal poverty level. The common problems of older people—illness, health, loneliness, hopelessness—are intensified by language barriers and culture shock. The suicide rate among the elderly in Los Angeles’s Chinatown is considerably higher than the national average.

The Gift of Two Cultures

Moses was one. So was Paul. “Biculturals,” says Stan Inouye. “They were uniquely equipped by God to play a special role in the transition and expansion of his kingdom.”

What the bicultural person brings, says Inouye, a fourth-generation Japanese-American, is the ability to view two cultures with “objectivity, and yet with deep, personal familiarity.” For example, as a Jew, the apostle Paul was thoroughly familiar with the Jewish ritual of circumcision, Inouye explains. But as a Christian, and because of his Greco-Roman culture, he could see beyond the cultural meaning and was able to translate that Jewish form into something equally meaningful to Gentiles. He became a “cultural bridge,” a role Inouye believes bicultural Christians need to play today.

The so-called hyphenated Americans—Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Native Americans—find themselves the products of two distinct, sometimes competing, cultures. Such backgrounds inevitably create personal tensions. But those tensions can be productive, Inouye says. “The secret is to see them as a gift, not a curse.”

Recovering a Japanese self

As well as being a fourth-generation Japanese-American, Inouye is a fourth-generation Christian (his great-grandfather came to the mainland with a missionary vision to minister to a Japanese immigrant community in northern California). While he experienced cultural tension growing up, he identified most with mainstream American culture. As a student at the University of California-Berkeley, he was in a white fraternity, his friends and dates were white, and the campus ministry he was involved with—Campus Crusade for Christ—primarily represented the dominant culture. “My idea of self was not very Japanese.” he says.

However, when he joined Campus Crusade’s full-time staff, he soon began to encounter differences between his “Japanese-ness” and his “American-ness.” For example, while his fellow staff members used “The Four Spiritual Laws” and other approaches to evangelism effectively, he found himself uncomfortable with those approaches and asked why.

“Initially, I was down on myself—I was not effective; I was not spiritual.”

Inouye’s experiences made him ask, “What role does my ethnic background have in all this? What about my background is Japanese? What is American, and what is Christian? It’s difficult to identify where one aspect [of my upbringing] began and another left off.”

What helped Inouye begin to clarify the cultures and the faith within him was further work in intercultural and international ministries with Campus Crusade. During his eight years with the organization, he observed and participated in relationships between the ministry’s national leaders in other countries and its U.S. leadership. The positive struggles with ethnicity, faith, and ministry he saw in the organization mirrored his personal struggles.

Seeking more answers, Inouye left Campus Crusade to study intercultural dynamics at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission in Pasadena, California.

“How do you guarantee that what you are primarily accountable to is not culture, but is the Word of God and the Lord himself?” Inouye asks. “Answering that is one of the biggest struggles any Christian has.” What he learned about the acculturation process has helped him, he says, to know when and how to step back in objectivity and examine beliefs and actions.

Cultural bridge

To “step back in” and fulfill his role as a “cultural bridge,” Inouye in 1981 founded Iwa (Japanese for an immovable rock or cliff, shaped by the natural elements surrounding it) to further evangelism, church growth and planting, and spiritual renewal among Japanese-Americans and Asian-Americans.

Inouye and the two other staff members of Iwa recently completed the first phase of their work, a seven-year study of their audience and the Scriptures, developing culturally relevant and biblically accurate models and approaches for ministry.

Bicultural people “fill nooks and crannies” in the church, Inouye says. “As long as we don’t understand what’s going on within us, as long as we look for a way to relieve the cultural struggle within, we will never be at ease with ourselves, nor will we contribute all we can to God’s kingdom. Being bicultural is a gift … a gift given to us and to the church.”

By Kenneth H. Sidey.

From Mission To “Transplanted Church”

When the number of Chinese arriving in America became significant, white American Christians felt a concern for their spiritual welfare. In 1852 William Speer opened a mission to the Chinese in San Francisco. Subsequently, several mainline denominations set up missions to convert these “heathens.”

The Chinese welcomed the medical and educational services of these missions but showed little interest in the gospel. The ministry was hindered by the missionaries’ lack of cultural understanding, and the Chinese did not seem to notice that the church was one of the few groups to speak out against unfair treatment of Chinese laborers. Eventually, the Exclusion Act and anti-Chinese movements arrested this Protestant outreach.

Around the turn of the century, leadership within the Chinese church was gradually transferred to qualified Chinese Christians. Church-sponsored social services expanded and soon became the central ministry focus, particularly during the twenties and thirties when liberal theology held sway in American Protestantism. Consequently, evangelism was curtailed. As Chinese parents became concerned that their children would lose their roots, the churches sponsored schools to teach Chinese language and culture. Through attendance at these schools, students grew up in the Chinese churches, which provided them fellowship and nurture.

The transfer of church leadership to a new generation was disrupted after 1949 by a new wave of immigrants. Leaders among the refugees took charge and focused the ministry on new immigrants. And college students from Hong Kong and Taiwan brought the fire of revival that swept the campuses of their homelands during the fifties. Chinese foreign students and new immigrants responded to the gospel, even as ABCs now excluded from leadership began to drop out of the “transplanted church.”

Growth Spurt

Following the 1965 liberalization of immigration laws, Chinese churches went through amazing growth. For example, the average growth rate of the churches between 1980 and 1985 was 79.3 percent, more than two times the growth rate of the Chinese population. And a major portion of growth was due to conversions.

The “transplanted” church pattern is still prevalent: the majority of congregations are foreign-born and Chinese-speaking. Most members are middle-class professionals and managers and their families. And as the Chinese-American church is suburbanized, there is a growing gap between the churches and poor Chinese. Almost all of the churches established in the last five years are located in suburbs or affluent areas. The Chinese church is abandoning its traditional role of leadership and community service.

Nevertheless, in recent years parachurch organizations have been formed to serve a variety of Chinese Americans, from students on university campuses to working-class people in Chinatowns. In addition, four nationally known seminaries provide specialized training for Chinese Christian workers, and Chinese Christians have established two seminaries that teach mostly in the Chinese language: the Christian Witness Training Institute and the Chinese for Christ Seminary.

The New Immigration

Immigration will continue to be the most important influence on the size and character of the

Chinese population in America—and on its churches. The political fate of Taiwan, China’s attitudes toward emigration, and the reversion to Chinese rule of Hong Kong in 1997 will all shape the Chinese church. The Chinese population in the U.S. will increase to over 1.2 million in 1990. By 2000, there may be as many as two million Chinese in America.

Most of the incoming immigrants will be from China, and they will have little education and limited English. These disadvantaged immigrants will reside in the Chinatowns and will need language classes, vocational training, social services, housing, and public assistance. The Chinese community will be hard pressed to meet the demand.

Concerned Chinese Christians must return to the Chinatowns to minister to the many needs and to plant churches. But in the rush to reach the new immigrants, the needs of ABCs must not be neglected. New attention must be given to English-speaking Chinese, not only to prevent them from dropping out, but to train them to evangelize others like themselves. New churches for English-speaking Chinese should be planted, and new structures are needed to allow diverse groups to worship, serve, and be nurtured.

In ministering to foreign Chinese university students, Chinese churches should link themselves with existing campus fellowship groups. And to meet the needs of elementary and high-school FBC students, churches can involve these young people in their youth programs and provide them guidance and support while they are away from home.

Although the Chinese church has grown rapidly among affluent, foreign-born families, it will have to change in order to carry out its mission.

J. Alfred Smith, Sr.

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe, nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids, and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.”

—Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Almost 20 million black Christians in the United States are concentrated in seven black, and in eight or nine predominantly white, denominations. Some live in rural slums. Still others in urban ghettos. Yet almost all experience a common culture, a common identity, and a common experience of racial oppression.

Because these black churches are “invisible” in the sense of Ralph Ellison’s definition, Afro-American Christians, even those in the white denominations who make up less than 20 percent of the total, have experienced relative isolation from the white majority since the Civil War. Not surprisingly then, the effective pastors and lay leaders who evangelize and minister to these believers are treated as invisible persons at the national conferences that seminaries and churches sponsor on the art of urban ministry. And yet, while the mainline churches of white Protestantism merge, and finally die if they fail to flee to suburbia, Black Pentecostal, Baptist, Methodist, and Roman Catholic groups wield an increasing influence in the social, political, and religious life of America.

As black churches face the challenges of the demonic in the twenty-first century, their historical roots compel them to confront redemption and racism, justification and justice, hell and housing, edification and economics, the hereafter as well as the here and now. However, because of the exclusion of the history of black church denominations by classical Anglo church historians, students can graduate from major Anglo seminaries and theological schools without learning anything about the history, polity, theology, and practices of the black church. Since black seminary graduates trained at Anglo seminaries are not called to pastorates or to teaching or staff positions in Anglo church structures, they are consequently ill-equipped to serve in the black community. The exceptions are those seminaries that have black persons on the faculty or centers for black church studies, such as Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Vanderbilt School of Theology, and Fuller Theological Seminary.

Therefore, much work needs to be done to correct this omission. Black churches need the assistance of white colleagues in meeting the demonic challenges facing the black community. The technological expertise and resources of Anglo parachurch groups and denominational groups could form a partnership in assisting black Christians to evangelize Third World communities in America and abroad.

Anglos As Enablers

The very nature of the challenge to the black church demands that the role of Anglo church leaders be an enabling role. This posture is not an inferior one. It only allows for principles of contextualization to operate within the specificity of the indigenous, urban black setting. Persons within this setting know best what has and has not been successful in bringing healing. And based on these experiences, they are willing to work with those leaders whom they have authenticated and identified as being responsible and empathetic in applying the principles of the gospel of the kingdom of God to their community.

Such a gospel is larger than simply promoting the numerical growth of congregations without an accompanying growth in kingdom ethics to provide a counterculture to nationalism, militarism, ethnocentrism, racism, consumerism, sexism, and materialism. “Prosperity Christianity” and baptizing the United States as being God’s chosen nation are distortions of kingdom ethics. They represent a heretical interpretation of the doctrine of election and a sub-Christian display of the affluence and arrogance of American power.

If the Anglo church structures that control power and policy making promote a paternalism rejecting the servant role of enabling the black church to serious, responsible ministry in the hurting places of urban America, those black congregations with a long, unrecognized history as “suffering servants” will carry forth their ministry with resiliency, even if they must limp at times.

Still, anger, hostility, fear, and many other self-destructive emotions, feelings, and attitudes are the bad news that is pitted against any good news that the black church can proclaim. Thomas Moore, in “The Black on Black Crime Plague” in U.S. News and World Report, argues: “The stress of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, poor schools, inadequate housing and broken families obviously makes people more likely to take out their frustrations through violence—no matter what the color of their skin.” This answer is not one that the black church can settle for. There are numerous individuals in impoverished situations who have not resorted to murder, but whose victory over their oppressed circumstances can be traced to their testimonies of living in fellowship with the lifting and liberating presence of Christ.

Some churches in the black community go beyond simplistic evangelistic methodology to deal with the societal causes for aberrant behavior. For these churches, it is not either the Jesus story or social programs, but both.

Side by Side

At first glance, Allen Temple Baptist Church and Shiloh Christian Fellowship in Oakland, California, would seem to have more than enough differences to keep them apart. Separated by four miles of urban landscape, the two churches knew little about one another—until a little over three years ago, when their pastors literally walked side-by-side through the city’s streets, and a new relationship was begun.

The occasion was a “March for Righteousness”: 12,000 people demonstrating against drug abuse in their neighborhoods. J. Alfred Smith, Sr., the black pastor of Allen Temple, and David Kiteley, the white pastor of Shiloh Christian Fellowship, a multiracial charismatic congregation, led the parade. Since then, the two men have walked, stood, sat, prayed, and sung together many times in a relationship that exemplifies mutual respect and ministry.

During the past three years, the two churches have traded and shared many ideas and activities. In addition to joint Communion services, they have “taken their faith to the street,” Kiteley says, in a variety of ways. For instance, this year Shiloh Christian will join in Allen Temple’s Project Impact, a tutorial program for students of all ages. Previously, Allen Temple adopted Kiteley’s church program of “block parties,” in which members of both congregations help bring medical care, clothing, food, and anticrime programs to targeted blocks in the city. The day-long event leaves lasting effects: One notorious neighborhood has been free of drug pushers for two years since one block party was held, Kiteley says.

At the heart of such cooperative efforts is the relationship between pastors Kiteley and Smith. “There is mutual trust between us,” Kiteley says, “mutual respect, and that’s transmitted to the people in our churches.”

“This is what it means to be part of a family,” Smith says. “We all contribute, we all receive. We realize there is no development or security for any of us except in the development and security of all of us.”

Saving lives, saving souls

Allen Temple, located squarely in Oakland’s inner city, has grown to a congregation of more than 2,000 since Smith arrived 18 years ago. An aggressive program of “holistic ministry” includes housing for the elderly, a job information center, a credit union, and computertraining courses, as well as evangelism and discipleship programs that turn laypeople into the “ministers” of the church (on a recent Saturday, more than 300 took part in evangelistic, door-to-door calling).

“We don’t slice people up and say, ‘This is your soul, and these are your school needs, these are your economic needs, these are your domestic needs,’ ” Smith says. “No, we are trying to serve the total person.”

That holistic approach, Kiteley says, changed his outlook on ministry and gave new and much-needed direction to his church. Several years ago, Shiloh Christian Fellowship, located in a transitional neighborhood, was losing hundreds of members to the suburbs. “We were trying to run a suburban church in an urban setting,” Kiteley says. The church had to change, or move. But in Allen Temple, it found a model of urban ministry. “We’ve gone from an emphasis on saving souls,” Kiteley says, “to saving lives.” With a congregation of about 1,200, the church is now thriving. And recently it was commended by the governor of California for its crime-prevention efforts.

Too often, Smith says, church alliances like the one between Allen Temple and Shiloh Christian Fellowship take on a “superior/inferior” relationship. “ ‘What can they give us?’ churches ask. I’m not asking for anything from them but prayers. We don’t need welfare. We can contribute; we can help the church.”

“It’s a two-sided thing,” Kiteley says. “We each have something to offer the other. Our relationship grows because of our differences.”

By Kenneth H. Sidey.

Being And Doing “Good News”

Across America many black churches are coming alive in creative, evangelistic responses to the blackness of the harvest. The churches are responding with a three-dimensional proclamation of the gospel. This means that churches must:

1. Be good news in terms of the essence of their character;

2. Do good news in the expression of the ministries; and

3. Tell good news in the communication of the message that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.

In being good news, efforts and activities are directed toward living, breathing, preaching, praying, teaching, walking, and role modeling the righteous life, without pious snobbery or shows of superiority. This act of being the good news is a commitment to righteousness that offers options to the cultural unrighteousness that is a part of advertising, commercials, newspapers, magazines, and all of the many sub-Christian expressions that set the norms for acceptable behavior in a society of secularism.

Doing good news is as varied as the needs of the people. While treating Christian ethical and moral values, laypersons are trained to work with compassion and love to those who have been victimized by AIDS. Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matt. 5:7, NIV). Helping people become responsible stewards through economic-development seminars, job-information centers, the sponsoring of federal credit unions, and sponsoring nonprofit, low-cost housing projects are some of the ways that black churches are doing good news. Scholarship programs, tutorial projects, field trips to college campuses (especially black Christian campuses in the South in the wake of neoracism against blacks on northern, eastern, and western state university campuses), and the sponsorship of Christian alternative schools are ways that more and more black churches are doing good news. Cooperating with other agencies in serving families, in developing family life, and in counseling through organized centers is still another black church expression of doing good news.

Finally, a church that is good news and does good news can—with integrity—tell good news. A basis for this message of hope is illustrated in the signs of the kingdom of God in Shiloh Christian Fellowship, a predominantly Anglo congregation in Oakland, California (see “Side by Side,” p. 33). By choice, pastors Dave and Violet have kept their congregation in the city. Their love for and commitment to the city are unquestioned. They have been slandered by militant anti-Christian black groups that despised the effectiveness of the Shiloh church in the war against drugs. They have supported black Christian leaders who have fought against injustices in city government. Shiloh Christian Fellowship is an example of the ability of Anglo Christians who can work in an enabling and supportive way with ethnic congregations without a posture of superiority. Surely there are other Anglo congregations prepared to work with ethnic churches on a kingdom of God agenda.

The unresolved issue of past Anglo-black Christian relationships has prevented the church from being truly authentic in reconciling action. American churches must be reconciled with each other before they can effectively introduce an unreconciled world to the reconciliation of God in Christ:

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting [our] sins.… And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18–19, NIV).

John E. Maracle

Native Americans are the fastest-growing cultural group in the U.S. Despite the ravages of history, there are approximately as many Indians in North America today as there were when Columbus landed—around 3 million—of which nearly 1.5 million are living on federally recognized reservations, and just over 700,000 in urban areas. (The remainder includes people whose tribe or nation does not have federal recognition.)

Approximately 701 aboriginal tribes are known, but about 100 have become extinct since the advent of Europeans on American soil. More than 255 aboriginal languages are still in existence. Each tribe is distinctive because of its customs, religion, language, and form of government. Some groups are linguistically similar (as are Europeans who speak Spanish and those who speak Italian), but there can be as much difference as between Japanese and Norwegians.

Despite this diversity, these peoples have been lumped together and called “Indians.” With time, this term acquired a cultural and social reality, perpetuated by the government, the communications media, and the church. But most souls called “Indians” share this identity to only a minor degree. Most think of themselves as belonging to a particular tribe or nation.

Non-Indians often do not understand that Indian nations are sovereign nations with inherent powers to determine citizenship; levy taxes; regulate marriage, divorce, and adoption; establish a monetary system; make war and peace; and form alliances through treaties. The Supreme Court has stated that the power of the tribe to establish courts to enforce its laws is not dependent on any federal law—it is inherent in the tribe’s sovereignty. In recent years, Indian nations have told churches to leave their reservations. And they have had to leave, since most Indian tribes do not fall under the Constitution of the United States or the Bill of Rights but have their own constitutions. These constitutions predate those of the U.S. and Canada, and those who framed the U.S. government used the pattern of the Iroquois Confederacy.

The Native American people are the only special political group specifically identified in the United States Constitution. Some people mistake this as a racial rather than a political distinction. But because of their status as sovereign nations, Native Americans are not merely a racial minority. Their relationship to the majority of Americans is political as well. Other minority groups have at times sought to be engulfed in the “melting pot.” But from the beginning, Native Americans have sought to remain Native Americans.

The earliest and best illustration of this is the Six Nations (as the English referred to them) or the Iroquois Confederacy (as the French called them). Their commitment to independence is demonstrated by the Two Row Wampum first given to the Dutch, then to the English and French, and finally to the 13 colonies. The Two Row Wampum illustrates two boats or societies traveling along the river of life, each having its own laws, governing its own people, and living in harmony with each other—but not meeting or interfering with the other.

The United States and other nations have recognized the inherent sovereignty of Indian nations and their right to self-government. But it is important to remember that all the sovereign powers were once held by the Indian nations, and that whatever power the United States or Canadian governments may exercise over Indian nations is received from the particular tribe or nation—not the other way around.

In their current desire for self-determination, Indian nations have begun to exercise their sovereign rights by participating in international activities. (In 1977, Indian nations were even granted a formal representative to the United Nations.) And today they realize that the best way to prevent interference in their internal affairs is to take firm control of those governmental functions that are crucial to their continued survival.

Looking for a Chance

John Maracle, a Mohawk Indian and Assemblies of God pastor in Akwesasne/Saint Regis reservation in upstate New York, Ontario and Quebec Provinces, is ready for anyone who offers him the Hollywood Indian greeting, “How.”

“Chance,” Maracle responds, and waits for a puzzled look. “We know how,” he says. “All we need is a chance.”

Native Americans, Maracle says, are the “forgotten Americans.” As often as not, when minority groups in the U.S. are listed—black, Hispanic, Asian—Native Americans are left out. The omission may be unintentional, but, Maracle says, it points out the “invisible” status of America’s indigenous people. And at many other times, the oversight—even in the church—has more serious causes, and consequences.

“I’ve seen men and women who have phenomenal abilities, perfectly qualified to teach, to be administrators, to lead,” he says, “overlooked for someone with fewer qualifications and skills, who was Anglo. I’ve seen good men and women hurt.” Maracle, an Assemblies presbyter for New York State, measures his words carefully when he speaks of the injustices he has seen. They bother him deeply, yet he has also seen how quickly those who speak out can be labeled a “radical” or a “rebel.”

“Use the leadership that is already present in the American Indian church,” he says. “Give them a chance.”

Back to the reservation

Maracle, whose native name is Thohate (pronounced Djō-HA-deh), was led to the Lord by his grandmother when he was five. His education included study at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, and graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, and Saint Lawrence University. Turning down an athletic scholarship to attend a church college, he earned his way through school by working the “high steel”—skyscraper construction—a talent for which Mohawks are noted.

Maracle’s plan was to serve in non-Indian churches for several years to build his experience and credibility before returning to work with his people. He worked successfully as a youth pastor and pastor at both Indian and non-Indian churches, on and off reservations, and seemed to be on track with his plan. But in 1975, problems erupted on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin. Warriors there took over a monastery and a priest was killed, prompting the national guard and the FBI to take control of the reservation. White missionaries were asked to leave, so Maracle’s denomination sent him to its church on the reservation. In five years, Maracle built the church into a self-supporting congregation and installed another Indian pastor before he left. He has served churches on reservations ever since.

A voice for native Christians

To give young Native-American Christian leaders the chance they need, Maracle helped form the North American Native Christian Council (NANCC) in 1986. Its executive and planning councils, of which Maracle is chief, include 30 representatives from evangelical denominations and fellowships, such as the Assemblies of God, the Southern Baptist Convention, Church of the Nazarene, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and the American Indian Crusade; and from many tribes and nations—Chippewa, Navajo, Oneida, Sioux, and others.

NANCC’s purpose includes gathering and publicizing information about the Native American community and church, serving as their voice, and encouraging evangelization. So far, perhaps the biggest obstacle the council has faced is others’ misunderstanding of its objectives. Some non-Indian church leaders fear it “wants to subvert the work of denominations and other fellowships” among Native Americans, says Maracle.

To the contrary, “Our purpose is to strengthen each in its own setting,” he says. “But it is absolutely essential that indigenous Native Christian leadership be developed. The American Indian world remains a mystery to the non-Indian. But the Native American world offers so much. It offers approaches and solutions not just to our own problems, but to those of the non-Indian world, too. We could learn a lot together … if we have the chance.”

By Kenneth H. Sidey.

A Monumental Challenge

Yet despite the will to self-determination that rules the Native-American consciousness today, serious social problems exist.

Economy. On reservations, the unemployment rate ranges from 45 percent to a high of 81 percent. Some state governments appear to be trying to keep it that way by illegally attempting to infringe on Indian governments and business. Some groups are still playing “Cowboys and Indians”—only the weapons are now economic.

Education. Approximately 35 percent of all adult Native Americans have less than an elementary school education. More than 50 percent have never completed high school. A mere 3.5 percent of American Indian men and 2.5 percent of Native-American women have completed four years of college. On reservations, 50 percent of all adults have less than an elementary education, less than 25 percent have been graduated from high school, and 1 percent have completed four years of college.

Social values. The moral structure is decaying at every level, from the modern urban Indian to the traditional reservation native. Lack of education, alcoholism and drug use, suicide and alcohol-related deaths occur at rates six times the national average. The poverty rate is 2.5 times higher than for all U.S. families. Pornography and inadequate housing also contribute to the decay in the social structures of native communities. Common-law marriages and cohabitation are found in all native areas.

Low self-esteem springs from and fuels the vicious cycle of these economic, educational, social, and moral problems. Together, these factors provide a monumental challenge to the native Christian church and the church as a whole.

Friends Or Enemies?

Despite its willingness to help, the Christian church has had a difficult time being accepted by Native Americans. This is because missionary societies over the last 200 years have been used by the government to try to dissolve Indian culture. Non-Indians believed that Indian culture, social institutions, and governmental forms were inferior to those of European immigrants. They hoped that after enough “education” and “religion” Indians would abandon their traditional ways, and Indian governments would wither and disappear.

The failure of the Christian denominations to evangelize effectively the native peoples of America can be traced to some general attitudes and practices: reliance on stereotyped images of Native Americans; failure to understand the distinctiveness of different tribes and nations and their varying languages and cultures; use of standard techniques rather than biblical indigenous church-growth principles; lack of indigenous leadership role models and leadership development. To the Anglo community, Indians have remained socially inferior, no matter how Christian were their confessions of faith and their moral practice.

Some “friends” can be greater obstacles to Native-American evangelization than our so-called enemies. These friends show indifference to Native-American ministry, especially in metropolitan areas. They advocate a paternalistic atmosphere from within their own denomination. They want to “go down there and do ministry for the Indians.” They promote structures that require Native Americans to think and act like Anglos in order to be equipped and qualified for ministry. And they expect Native Americans to use the same materials the rest of the church uses instead of encouraging the production of indigenous material.

Strategies For The Long Haul

There are no quick fixes to the problems of Native-American evangelization. A long-term commitment is required that will include the following initiatives.

Planting new churches in both urban and reservation settings. Educational and employment opportunities have lured many from their traditional territories and reservations. As Native Americans move into America’s urban areas, the potential for establishing new churches is tremendous.

Developing strong lay leadership within tribal communities and urban centers. Encouraging small group Bible studies, extension seminaries, lay leadership programs, and youth and children’s programs will form a foundation for future native Christian leadership.

Fostering education to encourage more native youth to seek higher education. Financial aid will be crucial. We must also encourage the preparation and placement of more Native-American administrators and teachers in native Bible colleges and seminaries. And we must develop more campus outreach programs to native students at non-Indian schools.

Developing training and support structures so that Native-American ministries can become self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating in the cultural manner of the particular tribe, band, or nation they serve.

Establishing an international and intertribal network among Native-American evangelical Christians. This network can unite in prayer for the effective communication of the gospel throughout the tribes and nations of North America. It can research the Native-American realities as they relate to needs and opportunities for evangelization. It can discuss models and methods that have been successful in evangelizing Native Americans. It can coordinate the development of Native-American foreign missionaries. It can speak as a legitimate Native-American Christian voice to the whole church, to the nonchurch public, and to the governments on issues of common concern. And it can sensitize U.S. and Canadian churches to the possibilities of developing a truly indigenous American Indian leadership.

Establishing rapport and showing and earning respect are perhaps the most important aspects in evangelizing Native-American peoples. One way to do this is to follow the counsel of the mature Native-American leadership that already exists both inside and outside the church. In fact, new churches are being planted by some evangelical denominations that have and continue to use native leadership. Cultivating these native Christian leaders is one of our greatest needs. This generation is a strategic one. If we do not act now, we could miss the harvest.

Jesse Miranda

There is no nationality group called “Hispanics.” There are only Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Guatemalans, and others hailing from the various Spanish-speaking countries of the world. Hispanic is only an adjective describing a historical, cultural, and religious common denominator of a growing population in the United States. By accident of history, we or our ancestors were born in Mexico or Puerto Rico or Cuba or elsewhere in South America, Central America, or the Caribbean.

How we got here, and what we did after arriving, varies. Some arrived recently, while others can point to a family history that rivals the descendants of the Pilgrims. Some waded across the border, while others came by air. Some have come for economic reasons; others, for political ones. Some have fled oppression on the Left; others, persecution on the Right.

Our common heritage stems from the relationship between our European forebears and the indigenous populations of the New World. That relationship was grounded in conquest and exploitation. It was a relationship between people of color and those who perceived color as downgrading. This relationship was continued in the interaction between our forebears and the United States with its doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

The history of our common heritage is marked by relationships of unequal power. If the church desires to share Christ and to participate with Hispanics in their cause, this history must be understood and accepted. The church can neither evangelize nor serve effectively a people whose culture it rejects as inferior.

Big Growth, Little Success

Despite our different origins and recent experiences, we are all “Hispanic,” and we are growing daily in social, economic, political, and religious significance on the American scene. Politicians are now talking of a “Hispanic factor” in certain states. Marketers are recognizing the economic significance of Hispanic consumers. And competition among universities for successful Hispanic students is increasing.

In March 1988, the U.S. population of Hispanics was estimated by the Census Bureau at 19.4 million. This is a 34 percent increase since the 1980 census. Hispanics now make up 8.1 percent of the population—and these figures do not include millions of undocumented aliens. In spite of the recent growth rate, Hispanics are concentrated in a few states: mainly New York, Illinois, Florida, Texas, and California.

Contrasting with the population growth are discouraging social and economic indicators. Unemployment rates for Hispanics and non-Hispanics have been decreasing since 1982, but the rate for Hispanics remains consistently higher. The statistics for 1982 through 1986 show a difference of from 3.5 to 4.5 percentage points each year. Similarly, the median family income of Hispanics remains consistently lower than the family income of non-Hispanics. The dropout rate is also alarming. The 1987 Census Bureau data show 50.9 percent of Hispanics completed four years of high school, compared to 77.3 percent of non-Hispanics.

The condition of Hispanics represents a challenge for society in general and for the church in particular. How long can a country survive with a permanent underclass? How can the body of Christ be built to maturity when within it lives a large number of underdeveloped members?

Up From Insignificance

In 1970, a comprehensive study of Hispanics stated: “Mexican American Protestants are quantitatively as insignificant in Protestantism as Protestantism is generally insignificant to the Mexican Americans.”

But much has changed since the 1960s. Traditionally, active Catholics and Protestants each made up 10 percent of the Hispanic population. The remaining 80 percent were nominal Catholics. But during the 1970s, an estimated five million Hispanics joined Protestant churches. In New York City today, there are more than 500 Hispanic Protestant churches, and in southern California, more than 1,100. At present, 70 percent of Hispanics are Catholic, while the remaining 30 percent are non-Catholic, Pentecostal groups having made the most significant gains.

A Hispanic commitment to Christ presages a new era for the church in America. As Hispanics take an active part in “their” church, they will bring freshness, vitality, and a wide range of gifts. But they seek to share ecclesiastical power and resources as well. Well-trained indigenous leadership remains the key to the establishment of the kingdom of God within the realities of the Hispanic community and an increasingly multiethnic America.

One model of success in Hispanic communities in North and South America is the autonomous congregation found among Pentecostals. Pentecostalism offers a model that is self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. It offers the empowerment and ownership Hispanics historically have sought.

Successful models in the Hispanic community will emphasize a practical theology that encourages the participation of all. It will conceive of evangelism as a lifestyle and not an option. It will offer a unified social ethic that reflects an orthodox and historically sound mandate for involvement. It will have a church government that does away with the division between the dominant and the dominated, that eliminates the structures of dependence.

The Alchemy Of Assimilation

But the Hispanic experience of the church has not always been so bright. At best it has been a story of spiritual neglect, and at worst of military, economic, political, and spiritual violence.

In 1848, Mexico ceded the vast Southwest to the United States. This act gave birth to a new people, the Hispanic-Americans. They have become modern-day Samaritans, striving to overcome an identity crisis. The crisis began when the church allied itself with the political expansionism and cultural chauvinism of American colonists. Missionaries planted the good seed of the gospel among them, but planted as well were the tares of racism and paternalism, which limited the Hispanic harvest. Poverty, population shifts, inadequate clergy, patronizing missionaries, and inconsistent stands on social issues such as slavery have limited the North American church’s ability to assimilate Hispanics.

In America, assimilation, acculturation, and accommodation to the ways of the dominant culture have often been equated with progress. As Time put it: “America is a country that endlessly reinvents itself working the alchemy that turns them into us.” But the demand for assimilation has been stronger in religion than in any other aspect of American life. Protestantism is still seen by many as an agent of acculturation.

Hispanics experience belonging and participation in the family (familia) and the neighborhood (barrio). Within these settings, Hispanics express familism, community, and a sense of personal dignity.

Language remains a sensitive symbol of Hispanic identity. We have a “death fear” about losing our language and, in turn, cultural traditions and identity. Such a loss, we fear, would increase the alienation we have suffered throughout our history. When Catholic nuns insisted on English-only in parochial schools, many Hispanic Catholics went to Protestant churches that used their mother tongue.

The church has often been molded by its North Atlantic heritage. As one official said: “Church affairs are not that different from business affairs. They are handled with logic and reason, not dreams.” But Hispanics are dreamers. We dream of a world of justice and righteousness. We dream the American Dream; also the quest for freedom and the conquest of poverty. We dream of a church empowered by God’s loving compassion. We dream of a church with a wider range of options: from head to heart, from order to ardor, from the demand to assimilate to the right to remain different, from the fringes of church life to center stage, and from a somber ritual to expressive joy.

One of the most important issues facing the church is Anglo-Hispanic relations. An example may illustrate the problem: Too often, an Anglo church, in its desire to salvage an inner-city property, seeks Hispanic involvement, a tenant’s involvement. This is a relationship Hispanics understand. The Hispanic congregation may be expected to shoulder increasing fiscal responsibility, but it may not be allowed to share in the governance as an equal participant. In the final analysis, the relationship appears much like what we have known for too long: The Angio-European in a dominant position continues to “call the shots” in exchange for gratitude. Hispanics must decide to accede or depart. If they depart, they are called “ungrateful and uncommitted.”

This example raises the question of the administration of power and resources. A biblical example is found in Acts 6, where a dispute arose between the Hellenistic Jewish Christians and the Hebraic Jewish Christians over the distribution of resources. The apostles responded by giving control to the minority Hellenists. The preaching of the gospel was more important to them than retaining control. Are we willing to grant equality and, more, to model equality?

Mixed Reviews for the Melting Pot

Whatever became of the great “melting pot” of the United States? For an older generation of immigrants, the idea fueled their desire to “fit in” and become “Americans.” But for younger ethnic group members—the second and third generations who have seen their parents fail to achieve equality—the idea is a lie they want no part of. Such different outlooks create deep divisions within ethnic communities, divisions that reach into the church as well.

“We love the Anglo church,” says H. O. Espinoza. “We call it the ‘mother church.’ ” Espinoza is the director of PROMESA, an organization run by and for Hispanics to train and provide resources for evangelism and discipleship to local church leaders. While he does not offer unqualified praise to the “mother church,” Espinoza does willingly play the role of “bridge builder” between Anglo and Hispanic churches and cultures. He has helped launch several Hispanic ministries around the country, as well as consulted with well-known evangelical parachurch organizations to help them launch Hispanic ministries. (More than 16,000 people were touched by the outreach or training of PROMESA last year.) The task calls for familiarity with both cultures, which is a characteristic that Espinoza came by at an early age.

The son of a Nazarene pastor and evangelist, Espinoza was born in Monterey, Mexico. American missionaries were frequent guests in his home. “I learned English from them,” he says. “MKs were my friends. So I grew up with an Anglo mind and a Spanish mind.”

Rejecting the dream

Such “dual citizenship,” however, is not as agreeable to younger Hispanics, such as Alvaro Nieves, chairman of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Wheaton College. “The melting pot didn’t work,” he says frankly. His Puerto Rican father was a cab driver in New York for 35 years, moonlighting to support his family. “He bought the notion of the day that if you work hard, you can become a success, you can be ‘an American.’ ” But because he wasn’t Anglo, Nieves says, his father never made it.

“On the one hand, he was told to be white, and on the other hand, told he couldn’t be,” he says. Younger Hispanics today reject the dream of assimilation. They seek instead to maintain their customs and language. “The question is,” Nieves says, “How much do we accept the Anglo stereotype of us?” The answer has changed with the generations.

Such different approaches to race relations also shape church relations, and even views of the church’s mission. The “mother church” that Espinoza loves is in Nieves’s eyes a domineering parent. “The Anglo church sees its role as bringing the Hispanic church ‘up to its level,’ ” he says, a view he is quick to criticize as inherently degrading.

Discussion of evangelism brings to the surface other differences. Espinoza emphasizes “preaching the gospel” as the primary task at hand; much of PROMESA’s work involves training in such “traditional” evangelical courses as Bible study and discipleship.

Nieves calls for a more holistic approach that touches social as well as spiritual needs. He fears the evangelical church has lost its legitimacy to speak to Hispanics by ignoring social needs. “Our conception of the gospel wasn’t big enough.”

What both men agree on is the need for Hispanic churches to become full and equal partners with their Anglo counterparts. “Make us feel we are a part of you, and you are a part of us,” says Espinoza.

By Kenneth H. Sidey.

Let The Fiesta Begin

The siesta is over. For the Hispanic church in America, mañana is now. In Megatrends, John Naisbitt predicted the celebration of ethnics in America. Let the fiesta begin.

At a time when many view the sun setting on church and society, ethnic minorities offer freshness and untapped resources. Hispanics bring many gifts to enhance both nation and church. To a nation with a low birthrate and an aging population, Hispanics bring the vitality of youth. To churches struggling for survival, ethnic ministry brings hope.

The hope of Hispanics lies in the repentance of the church and the correction of past failures. The church can ally itself with the growth mentality of the nation, as it has done before. Or it can seek to develop a Christian world view based on the biblical principles of compassion, justice, and righteousness. The church can follow the nation’s pattern of cultural self-preservation. Or it can work to dissolve race prejudice and to reconcile social antagonism. The church may offer the world a privatized, personal, and “spiritual” brand of Christianity. Or it can provide leadership toward a more just and humane society exemplifying the kingdom of God.

Kenneth S. Kantzer

Sitting through this three-day conference with representatives of America’s ethnic minorities, I could not help thinking of my own immigrant heritage.

Although he spent most of his youth and all of his adult life in the United States, my grandfather always thought of himself as a German. At age six, he had been brought to north central Ohio by his father in order to escape recurring potato famines and, perhaps, to avoid the military draft in post-Napoleonic Europe. He remained in the German community, and worshiped in a German-speaking church. During the Civil War, he kept out of a struggle that he did not perceive to be his. German was the language of his inner circle, the tongue in which to address God, family, and friends. English was a business language, a tongue to address those outside the circle.

By contrast, my father considered himself thoroughly American. He went to English-language public schools and chose an English-speaking church. He married a girl whose ancestors had been Americans for several generations. Except as a joke or to tell Grandma a secret, he never spoke German after he left his parental home.

In the anti-German feeling that spread throughout the United States during and after World War I, he was specially careful to hide his German roots. He wanted to be American, and he wanted his children to be thoroughly American.

I have never thought of myself as anything but an American. But, not unlike many other third-generation Americans, I turned to my ethnic roots to help understand who I am. It was I who reintroduced into the family the Advent wreath and the celebration of Saint Nicholas’s Eve. I learned German the hard way—as an adult. Later I fulfilled a life’s dream by going back to Germany with my family to spend a year studying in the land of my ancestors.

It took just three generations and one hundred years to transform my family from transplanted Germans to thoroughly assimilated Americans. But what about my brothers and sisters in the human race whose parents may have crossed the Rio Grande illegally? Or those whose ancestors were brought here in chains in the hold of a slave ship? Or those who roamed the forests, Great Plains, and sandy deserts of precolonial America? Or those from Asia who sought economic opportunity or freedom from oppression? In one hundred years will they be melted down as my family has been? And do I want that for them or for myself?

The honest answer to both these questions is yes and no. Yes, a melting will take place. Think how much has taken place already. Over a hundred years ago, many African-Americans were slaves in a legal sense, while nearly all were socially and culturally oppressed. Native Americans and federal troops were winding up an ugly war across the western plains. Chinese-Americans, alternately ridiculed and feared, were labeled “Chinks” and “the yellow peril.” Vocationally, they were relegated to the steamy kitchens and laundries.

A Different Blend

However, I don’t expect the American melting pot to amalgamate its citizens to the degree that it did in the last hundred years. America at the end of the twentieth century is different from what it was in 1889. It is much more pluralistic. The culture and values of today’s immigrants may be far more alien to those already assimilated into American society than were those of the immigrants of the nineteenth century. Although American Protestants of an earlier era were certainly put on the defensive by the arrival of Italian and Irish Catholics, the cultural differences among those now arriving are in many cases far deeper. The melting pot is still working. But what it has to assimilate is far more diverse than formerly, and so it will take longer, and the individual cultures can never blend so thoroughly as they did in the past.

Writing of a previous generation, Will Herberg, in Protestant, Catholic, Jew, argued that the American people had become truly amalgamated. They represented one culture, and this held true even for their religions—Protestant, Catholic, and Jew. But the only way one could enter into this American way of life with its common set of values and world view was through the Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish doors. The only exception, Herberg acknowledged, was a small group of supercommitted religious people (in which category he placed all evangelicals) who walled themselves off from participation in the common life of the republic to preserve their independent values and world view.

It is no wonder, then, that evangelicals have been thoroughly opposed to this sort of melting pot. It is not just that they have not been part of it. They are opposed in principle to such a melting pot that is both too broad and too narrow.

It is too broad because it has melted down things that ought not to be melted down, melting and remolding almost all Americans into a uniform culture in which many valuable distinctives are lost. (Even its common religion was not evangelical Christianity, but the religion of Nathaniel Bumpo, James Fenimore Cooper’s hero of the Leatherstocking Tales.) This is a melting down not into a pot of gold but into a pot of lead where the unique beauties and distinctive values are lost.

And it is too narrow because it rejects our common humanity, a humanity that we share not only with Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, but with the agnostic, the atheist, the Hindu, and the Buddhist. (It is not that I wish a Hindu to retain his non-Christian religion. Jesus Christ is the only Lord and only Savior. He came as a Jew, but he came to save Sephardic Jews, Italian Roman Catholics, Scandinavian Protestants, and Indian Hindus. And he does not ask that they renounce their culture in order to come to him, but only the idolatrous and immoral aspects of their culture. Christ is the only Way; Scandinavian culture is not.)

Evangelicals are committed unequivocally to freedom for all, a liberty limited only where one person’s freedom would destroy the rights of another. They conceive it their duty to battle for equal justice for all—not merely in order that they may have freedom for themselves or so they may be dealt with justly. In that case, they might very well abandon those values if they became a majority.

Rather, evangelicals are committed to freedom and justice for all in principle. It is imbedded in their basic doctrine of God and of humanity. They believe that God made of one blood all nations (Acts 17:26). Every human being was created in the divine image (Gen. 1:26).

We also share in a common fallibility, a humanity ruined by the fall. But the image of God was never effaced. On this rests the infinite value we set on all human life. And God, in spite of our sin, loves and values infinitely every human life. So in Sunday school we sing: “Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight.”

As evangelicals, moreover, we are grateful to God that he has forgiven us our sins, and we rejoice in the one Savior who died for all, rebirths us into his kingdom, and would draw us together in one body. We look forward in hope to a common future—to be like Christ. We look upon every human being as of infinite value, loved by God and to be loved and protected and cared for by us, who is a gift of God to each of us and whom we are to receive as God’s gift.

Meanwhile, God has called us to lives of service, and our highest task is to serve God, our fellow human beings, and one another. This service is always our responsibility as Christians, but, particularly in a democracy, it is our duty to to make sure that the laws of our land insure the freedom, justice, and ultimate good of all human beings—not just of fellow evangelicals.

Yet, I do not wish for a melting pot of all cultures. Each individual person and the culture of which he or she is a part is a gift to all of us. A black community may retain its blackness if it chooses. An Asian community may retain its Asian culture. Native Americans may retain their culture. And Northern Europeans may retain theirs. America will be stronger and better, our society will be richer, if each culture keeps its own distinctives and shares them with the whole, rather than abandoning them to become like the colorless porridge already in the pot. By sharing, we draw the best out of each.

The Danger Of Differences

Yet there is a danger. So long as any group is identifiable as a group, it creates a possibility—and in a sinful world like ours, even the probability—of prejudice. And racial prejudice has certainly not disappeared from this society. Thus we must have open-housing laws. We have legally mandated racial balance in education through busing or magnet schools. We must have laws to insure people’s right to vote. And we must legislate to prevent racial discrimination in hiring and firing.

And now in very recent years new forms of prejudice and discrimination have showed their ugly heads against Asians who have done “too well” economically, whose numbers of well-qualified students far exceed their quotas in higher education. Anti-Japanese resentment has grown as that country produces better-quality televisions, automobiles, and electronic equipment cheaper than we can in the United States.

The reality of this residual prejudice raises a very touchy issue for evangelicals: the homogeneous unit church-growth principle—the dictum that people are won to Christ better through communities that are culturally similar to their own. As an evangelistic tool, the homogeneous church principle is useful. But unless it is carefully hedged and safeguarded, it can quickly become a contributor to racial prejudice. It must be accompanied by constant and clear teaching of the oneness of all who are in Christ. It must be accompanied by full respect for the value and contribution of the gifts of churches of other cultural groups and races.

We must, of course, take extraordinary care that a dominantly white church is never based upon a sense of superiority or on a deep desire that all Christians should really be culturally like us. Even as an evangelistic tool, the separate church must be reckoned as a concession to our finitude and, alas, to our sin. And cultural separation must never be foisted upon those who would choose to be with all their brothers and sisters in Christ irrespective of race or ethnicity or status. Evangelicals are committed in principle to one Lord and one kingdom and one people under God. Even special relationships between sister churches of different ethnicities must be based on mutually felt need and not on one church always being the helper and the other always the helped. In Oakland, California, J. Alfred Smith of Allen Temple Baptist Church and David Kiteley of Shiloh Christian Fellowship have found that working together regularly has been enriching and has increased the effectiveness of their ministry (see “Side by Side,” p. 33). Many more churches could profit from implementing such cross-ethnic links—not just for symbolism, but for service.

Fighting The Good Fight

Where does this leave Anglo evangelicals?

First, we must confess openly, often, and publicly our regret for the racial and minority prejudices of the past. And they are monstrous.

Second, we must search our own consciences for lingering pieces of prejudice in our own attitude, behavior, and vocabularies.

Third, we must openly search out and express our vigorous opposition to all infringements upon the rights of minorities in our land. Especially since we live in a republic (where we choose the rulers), we must recognize that we are morally responsible for the reflections of prejudice within our laws and governmental system.

Fourth, consistent with our calling, we must become actively involved in removing evidences of racial and minority prejudice from our society.

In principle, the evangelical church is based on a fundamental doctrine of God and of humankind that sets it in inveterate opposition to all forms of racial or minority prejudice. As evangelicals we must seek to support the worth of all humans and must seek their good. We must work for fairness and justice and freedom.

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