Diversity is our strength
I’m half South Korean and half Irish (with a little bit of Swedish thrown in). I grew up eating corned beef and cabbage one day, and kimchi and bulgogi another—a child of two worlds. The Christian faith never felt more fitting with one ethnicity over and against the other.
One of the strengths of the Christian faith has always been its ethnic, racial, and geographic diversity. Our faith originates from a middle-eastern Jew who lived 2,000 years ago. The faith quickly spread outwards to a gentile physician, an Ethiopian eunuch, and an Italian officer for a start.
The Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys show the Gospel traveling rapidly throughout Asia Minor, into major cities such as Athens, Antioch, and Rome. His plans in the Epistle to the Romans revealed he was hopeful to be on his way to Spain. Tradition holds that the disciple Thomas brought the Gospel into India; the Coptic Church dates itself as beginning in A.D. 42. Athanasius and Augustine were not European Anglo-Saxons, but African theologians.
Today, Christianity is almost evenly spread throughout the inhabitable continents of the globe. The heart of the Christian faith is beating especially fast in the global South and the Far East. China claims as many as 100 million Christians, with missionaries actively seeking to break through new barriers in the 10-40 Window. Nigeria, the African country with the largest amount of Christians, is expected to double by the year 2060.
Here in the United States, one of the most encouraging signs of hope for our nation’s future is that immigrants are far more likely to be Christians than their citizen neighbors. How many ethnic evangelical congregations can you think of right now in the BCNE? In your own town? It is a bright blessing to a country dimming in Christian commitment.
“…immigrants are far more likely to be Christians than their citizen neighbors. How many ethnic evangelical congregations can you think of right now in the BCNE? In your own town? It is a bright blessing to a country dimming in Christian commitment.”
This is also true of race. Simon of Cyrene was likely a black man, as was one of the early teachers in Antioch, Simeon (Acts 13:1). The first gentile baptism was an African. Even this is in contrast not to Caucasian skin tones, but to Middle-Eastern brown. In the United States, African Americans are also more likely to be professing Christians than their white counterparts.
“White progressives who dismiss Christianity because they associate it with white racism are failing to listen to black believers globally. They're also failing to listen to black people in America, who are almost 10 percentage points more likely than their white peers to identify as Christians, and who poll higher on every measure of Christian commitment, from churchgoing to Bible-reading to core evangelical beliefs.” - Rebecca McLaughlin
No doubt racism that has been done in the name of Christ is disgraceful. Christian slave owners of the caliber of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield are part of this tragic evangelical history. But that says nothing of the transcendence of the Christian message, held widely by African slaves and the explicit motivation for abolitionism. The Civil Rights movement was primarily the work of black Christian leaders, most notably Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is not at all to disparage the immense role of European Christianity. Both theological education, as well as missionary work, has originated out of the vast centuries of ministry coming from Continental and British Christianity. The puritans are my favorite go-to source for faithful Christian teaching. This is rather to say that the ideology equating evangelical Christianity with either European colonialism or white nationalism is vapid. Christianity has always transcended these categories.
My encouragement to pastors and church leaders is to utilize this strength. Celebrate the diversity of the Christian church, historically and globally. Even if your local church is fairly monolithic, you can still make clear how much you value this reality. Talk about the mission fields in which your missionaries serve, and people groups yet to be reached for Jesus’ sake. Let our embrace of the whole global, ethnic, and racial spectrum for the Lordship of Jesus Christ resonate from our churches.
The truth of the Christian Gospel rings from every longitude of our blue planet. The idea that it is limited by ethnicity, race, or geographical location is a diabolical one. Heaven’s chorus will be sung “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 4:9).
Rick Harrington is a pastor at First Baptist Church - Haverhill in Massachusetts. He is the author of the books "How to Find a Church: Seven Steps to Becoming Part of a Spiritual Family" and "The Weight of Preaching: Heralding the Gospel of Grace". You can follow his writing on his blog The Lamp Post.
