Over the years, I have facilitated numerous focus groups at K-12 Christian schools, asking families why they chose faith-based Christian education. As I compiled data, I noticed an unmistakable yet predictable trend: Every student and parent conveyed overwhelming enthusiasm that the school’s biblical and theological commitments were integrated into the curriculum. However, not everyone shared the same enthusiasm when it came to the school’s culture or its engagement with current events.
While most families shared the same theological convictions, their differing sentiments about the school’s cultural environment were shaped by a key demographic factor: ethnicity. Minority parents deliberately decided to put their kids in schools where they would be grounded biblically—knowing their children might struggle culturally. This underscores these parents’ serious commitment to and prioritization of doctrinal alignment.
In many cases, parents provided other venues for their children to engage with the minority culture, so their kids could worship God in more familiar forms and engage with apologetic issues left unaddressed in school. Evangelicals of color use this eclectic approach not only in education but also in ministry and church, where each institutional affiliation serves a specific role in their spiritual formation.
This eclectic approach to discipleship did not emerge in a vacuum. It has marked the experience of Black believers for 300 years—since no single Christian institution could fully meet their needs. This is partly the result of Black Christians being welcomed to participate in faith-based institutions while having limited power to shape them.
In the antebellum period, enslaved African Americans were made to attend plantation worship services, which largely used Scripture to cultivate docility. But they also worshiped God in the “invisible institution,” away from their masters, singing the spirituals and rehearsing biblical narratives. Prior to their emancipation, Black slaves also joined the Underground Railroad, delivering countless to freedom in a joint effort with white abolitionists like William Loyd Garrison, who elevated African American voices in his antislavery newspaper, The Liberator.
This institutional eclecticism continued in the 20th century, as African American Christians remained spiritually anchored in Black churches but also partnered with organizations like the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, where people of all faiths and ethnicities could pursue the shared interest of Black flourishing together.
Despite the headway made toward fostering unity and belonging among Black believers, we keep looking for institutional shoes that fit our feet—ones that include doctrinal affinity, missional alignment, institutional culture, and cultural engagement. In the 21st century, this eclecticism continues, especially among those who consider themselves Black evangelicals, as well as those who hold to evangelical theology without identifying with the evangelical name.
Today, the African American evangelical diaspora is present in historically Black Protestant denominations; in traditional evangelical denominations; and in predominantly white ministries, organizations, and sending agencies, with varying authority to shape these institutions to meet their needs. Many Black Christians share the eclectic impulse to engage with various established institutions to facilitate their Christian growth and service to the Lord.
One example of an institutionally eclectic Black evangelical from a historically Black church context is Eric C. Redmond, PhD, who is a professor at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and an associate pastor at Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, Illinois. He came to faith in Christ at First Baptist Church of Highland Park (which he referred to as “the Park”) in Landover, Maryland, which was affiliated with the Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC) and the NAACP.
This church featured a pastor whooping and singing at the end of the sermon. In addition to experiencing distinctive expressions of Black worship, Redmond testified,
Most significantly, the Park had a strong emphasis on classroom Bible teaching, through the PNBC Congress of Christian Education, the local minister’s conference, and the continuing education program at nearby Washington Bible College in Lanham, Maryland. Because the Park emphasized teaching and studying the Scriptures, it was through this church of people of African-American heritage and descent that the Lord prepared my heart for studies in the Scripture that would change how I viewed church and the world forever. For through one of those courses, I would become a Bible college student—with my church’s blessing.
The Park’s partnership with Washington Bible College (acquired by Lancaster Bible College in 2013) highlighted the church’s diverse affiliations, even as it stayed rooted in the denominational tradition established by Gardner C. Taylor and Martin Luther King Jr., among others. Both institutions shared a commitment to Scripture, and the church backed the college’s mission—but students like Redmond felt culturally at home in the church in a way they didn’t at the school.
Redmond continued his institutional eclecticism by serving as pastor at both historically Black and predominantly white churches, as a second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as a council member of The Gospel Coalition. Redmond’s ministry journey typifies the Black evangelical. His doctrinal convictions are shared with many white evangelicals, yet he has faced skepticism from Black Christians for his Reformed convictions, education, and partnerships, as well as sociopolitical suspicion by the majority evangelical world.
Drawing from multiple intellectual traditions not only serves Black Christians’ needs but also enriches their evangelical expression of faith—especially its cultural relevance.
Jasmine L. Holmes began her Christian journey in an evangelical church where she felt as if she were “the only Black girl in the room.” Because mainstream white evangelicalism did not foster constructive dialogue on healing the unique social and psychological wounds of African Americans, Holmes had to look elsewhere for ideological frameworks that fostered Black identity, dignity, and beauty. Holmes realized she had not been equipped with a restorative biblical approach to the challenges she faced as a Black woman—a void in discipleship that became a source of shame. As Holmes recalled in an interview:
Me taking hold of my faith really started when I was pregnant with my firstborn. I ended up going to therapy for perinatal depression and with my therapist, it was the first time that anybody had ever been like, “Oh wow, your upbringing seems like it brought on a lot of shame and it seems like it brought on a lot of things that you need to work through.” And I was like, “That’s so interesting, I never thought about it like that, but that makes sense.” And that started the journey of me trying to separate some of the ways that I had been taught and some of the ways that my surroundings had taught me, from my personal faith.
Grounded in her Christian convictions, Holmes did the courageous and taxing work of reading widely and identifying the common grace found in non-Christian authors as well as locating obscured Christian heroes on her journey of biblical self-understanding.
While the story of American Christianity, as told in most evangelical institutions, features figures like Jonathan Edwards, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham, Carl F. H. Henry, and James Dobson, it often omits or discounts the legacies of countless others who represent the depth and breadth of God’s people. The typical historical accounts tend to undermine the dignity and significance of people of color, portraying them as perpetual learners with nothing to contribute to the faith of white Christians.
This historical vacuum is what drove Holmes to chronicle the lives of ten Black Christian women in her book Carved in Ebony—which not only expands the traditional narrative but also dignifies those alive today who resemble these women. Holmes’s eclectic journey beyond classic evangelical institutions was necessary for her to understand her unique dignity and beauty as a Black Christian woman.
In the introduction to Carved in Ebony, Holmes juxtaposes the Victorian standard of beauty typified by a white woman—who needs protection, tender care, and leadership of the men in her life—with the powerful speech of Sojourner Truth. Although she met none of the dominate cultural standards of beauty, Truth asked the leading question, “Ain’t I a woman?” Not only were Black women not seen as beautiful, but Holmes also argued that the standards of chastity in contemporary purity culture are often racialized and inadvertently exclude Black women from being worthy of sexual dignity.
In an evangelical culture that prefers colorblindness, Holmes draws upon her eclectic intellectual formation. She wrote Mother to Son as an open letter to her son, insisting, “You are not more beautiful because you are black, but part of your unique beauty comes from the rich heritage that the Lord has woven into your melanin. He made you a little black boy on purpose. He stuck you into this particular moment in history with intention.”
Unlike the melancholy that might be fostered by Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me—which inspired the format of Mother to Son—Holmes’s historically rooted, authentic, and relatable account of parenting in a racialized America is drenched with gospel hope.
Rooted in historic Christian doctrine and equipped with the ability to preserve an indigenous culture that nourishes their souls, Black evangelicals look forward in hope that evangelical institutions will use their influence to elevate the wisdom of a cloud of witnesses from every tribe and tongue.
That said, institutional eclecticism is not a phenomenon confined to Black evangelicals.
M. Daniel Carroll Rodas, PhD, is a professor of Latin American descent who has taught at distinguished evangelical institutions, including Denver Seminary and Wheaton College, but he has also cultivated affiliations with Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana and the Hispanic Theological Initiative to equip Spanish-speaking ministers. Likewise, Terry LeBlanc, PhD, is a theologian of Indigenous descent who teaches at Regent College in Vancouver but also founded NAIITS An Indigenous Learning Community, which is committed to developing and articulating Indigenous perspectives on theology and practice.
Given that institutional eclecticism is broadly applicable to evangelical minorities, the insights from Black evangelicals could be extrapolated to other minority groups. While there are various implications worth our consideration, let’s focus on the opportunities available today—both for majority culture leaders entrusted with stewarding institutional authority and for minority culture evangelicals themselves.
Evangelical leaders are well positioned to lessen the urgency for cultural minorities to approach their institutions with an eclectic disposition. While there is more to say here than space allows, here are four principles which I believe can guide pastoral efforts.
First, identify the immediate needs minority culture participants are meeting elsewhere; gauge your institution’s capacity to meet those needs; and pursue strategic, achievable goals that will cultivate an environment of communal belonging. This could include establishing a biblical motivation to pursue unity, extending corporate prayer beyond dominant culture concerns, bearing cross-cultural burdens, and prioritizing face-to-face engagement over online debate amid cultural tensions.
Second, bear in mind that most Christ-ian institutions tend to assume that something in addition to Christ is serving as a common foundation in order to provide a sense of belonging—such as political affiliation or cultural conformity—which can be a stumbling block to those who do not embody that characteristic or subscribe wholly to an ideology. The way any institution improperly embodies or presents the gospel can be a stumbling block both for its cultural insiders and those who feel like cultural outsiders. Yet those who belong to the majority culture are less likely to question whether the institution’s expression of the gospel is held captive to cultural distortions because it aligns with their own assumptions. These assumptions may need to be sanctified.
Third, explore how your institution’s exegetical, theological, and ministerial efforts can engage with cultural influences and conversations. This will not only benefit minority culture members but anyone who desires to serve and relate to the whole people of God.
Last, remember that people who invest in your institution will be primarily driven by a sense of shared belonging. The more you can cultivate that sense, the more willing they will be to invest their time and other resources.
The more eclectic someone’s disposition is, the less committed to any specific group they will seem because they are cobbling together spiritual resources; your institution might be one of several in which they are invested. Above all, keep in mind they are deliberately participating in your organization because it aligns with them doctrinally, despite the chance of feeling culturally othered in the process.
Black evangelicals share the gut feeling of being family yet not having found a single true home, a state that brings both challenges and blessings. And while I have mostly surveyed the challenges, I would be remiss not to summarize the benefits of their predicament—by sharing some of the wisdom and blessings that all believers might learn from.
First, eclectic Black evangelicals often value institutions for their shared doctrinal affirmations and the role they play in their Christian growth without demanding cultural homogeneity. Instead, institutions embrace an openness to diverse expressions of spiritual growth—allowing every member to participate in institutional life that requires the numerically dominant culture to be healthy and inviting. This places Christ alone at the center of institutional belonging, rather than any other shared affinity.
Second, by necessity, Black evangelicals have recognized that no single institution can fully meet all of their needs. While this realization is discouraging, the same principle is true, although perhaps to a lesser degree, for majority culture Christians as well. This recognition can lead to more realistic expectations of what any one Christian institution can actually provide for its members.
Minority culture evangelicals often share a sense of wandering in the wilderness in search of a promised land. This institutional homesickness may foster envy for the comfort and belonging of our dominant culture brothers and sisters. Yet it is worth remembering that this contentment is in some way an illusion, since Scripture often reminds us that this world is not our home—we are all waiting for an everlasting city that is yet to come (Heb. 13:14).
For this reason, believers should feel a metaphorical pebble in our shoes, a spiritual discontentment reminding us that our true home is not here and now but in God’s fully realized kingdom—when the Lord Jesus himself holds all institutional authority. Until then, we all exist in imperfect institutions that both direct us to our King and keep us longing for eternity.
Walter R. Strickland II, PhD, is the author of Swing Low, Vols. 1 & 2. He is a pastor at Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, and teaches theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
