To ask someone to clearly define something they have experienced their entire life can be hurtful and demeaning. It comes across as dismissive and asks the person to objectify (or even justify) their pain. Is it possible to believe brothers and sisters when they identify incidences of racism that might be blind spots for you?
To be clear, racism and the pursuit of justice isn’t a Black/White issue alone. At times, Blacks in evangelical White spaces are treated like U.N. delegates—sent to represent the experience of all persons of color in America. This is unfair. And it leads to something I (John) have talked about before—race fatigue. But don’t just take my word for it.
Enduring Race Fatigue for Mission Sake
Race fatigue is a real thing for people of color. As an Asian-American, I (Daniel) am reminded every day that I’m someone else’s “ethnic” other. But I can also relate to the stereotypes of my majority culture sisters and brothers because statistically in America, as an Asian-American, I’m supposedly among the most economically privileged and advantaged.
The learning curve in this conversation about race is steep and more complex than the Black-White binary. And because of that, it can become emotionally exhausting for all of us, no matter what color if our urgency is grounded in social progress rather than God’s promise.
Last night, as I streamed T4G and listened to David Platt, the leader of the world’s largest denominational Christian mission organization, I couldn’t help but think about how multi-national, multi-lingual, and multi-colored the first mission agency was that commissioned the Apostle Paul and Barnabas.
The church in Antioch was more than just a congregation; it was the world’s first global missions organization.
As Platt talked about the need for Christian institutions to diversify their leadership, he specifically mentioned missions organizations like his own. It wasn’t an accident that the Antiochene church was situated in a context that, according to Rodney Stark’s Rise of Christianity, was divided into 18 different and intensely antagonistic ethnic groups with very little social integration. It was within a diverse leadership that not only was a better story being told than the social narrative of its time, but also that the global missions movement was launched.
The conditions surrounding last night’s address from David Platt at T4G and last week’s MLK 50 Conference aren’t just about better preaching and racial equality–although we must seek those things with all urgency and diligence.
The conditions stem from an underdeveloped theology of mission in our time that, to date, is incapable of overcoming a race-based value system that prevents our institutional leadership from authentically diversifying here in America. Much of our missional paradigms come from an expired anthropology which is based on a European encounter of the ‘exotic’ other.
That’s a very different vision from the Antiochene model. In accepting underdeveloped anthropological models, we built modern missions around doing mission to the “other” rather than the Antiochene model that insisted on doing mission with the other and from our collectively “otherliness”.
The Gospel Still at Work
Platt’s T4G message wasn’t just rhetoric around racial equality and diversity. It’s a part of a life-long practice of refining our theology around how God continues to mold culture and ethnicity. It’s also an ongoing correction of outdated (and perhaps inadvertently discriminatory) modes of mission.
It’s okay for us to feel race fatigue, but we can’t afford to become discouraged by others who struggle with their own learning curve in this conversation. What Platt shared last night, what transpired last week at the MLK 50 Conference, and what Tom Skinner admonished at Urbana 1970 is a reminder that the consequences of racial sin have not yet been erased from our Christian institutions.
However, that doesn’t mean that the gospel isn’t powerfully at work. Which also means that it is right and good to expect organizational and institutional change, even within our lifetime.
Written by:
John C. Richards, Jr. is Managing Director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.
Daniel Yang serves as Director of the Send Institute at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.
This article originally appeared here.
