The Bible in Transmission (Spring 2022) on the Church, the Bible, and Racism

The latest issue of The Bible in Transmission, from Bible Society, is available online here, offering a collection of articles on ‘The Church, the Bible and Racism’.

I have taken the summaries of articles below from Joshva Raja’s Editorial.

Joshva Raja

Editorial

Joshua T. Searle

What is Wrong with Racism? A Biblical and Theological Answer

As Joshua Searle reminds us there is a non-negotiable biblical mandate and gospel imperative to confront and combat racism. Racism is more than the expression of a set of bigoted beliefs. It operates on many levels and manifests itself in many different ways. It promotes injustice and inequality, and is a ‘blasphemous violation of the sacred dignity of a human being who bears the divine image’.

Mohammed Girma

Racial Justice and the Church: Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy

Mohammed Girma discusses the struggle the Church has in moving from right theology to right practice when it comes to matters of racial justice. The Church needs to set a biblical agenda and engage prophetically in the public discourse about racial justice. Although the BAME community bears the brunt of abuse, marginalisation and injustice, we should recognise that the spiritual damage transcends racial boundaries. The issue goes deeper than skin colour because it is an example of the depth of human brokenness. If the Church is to change mindsets and become an inclusive and equal community, the goal must be ‘re-humanising by restoring the distorted divine image in humanity’.

Chigor Chike

Creating Space for Diversity within Church Communities

Chigor Chike reminds us that racism is about power. Building on his work in the area of ethnic diversity and inclusion, he argues that one strategy for confronting and overcoming racism is the promotion of diversity within our church communities. Diversity is a good thing. Churches wishing to confront racism should create space for diversity within their communities. This will be uncomfortable for some church leaders but they should commit to working with BAME people in order to fight racism.

Owen Hylton

The Reconciled Church: The Antioch Model

Owen Hylton shows that diversity and racial reconciliation are not purely modern inventions of a secular society. Rather they are at the very heart of God’s purpose: ‘God always intended... one day to display his wisdom through the multicoloured, multi-layered, multicultural diverse Church.’ Reflecting on the example of the Early Church in Antioch, Hylton outlines some of the steps churches can take to become reconciled and more integrated communities.

Jason Shields

Race, Justice and Social Analysis

Drawing on biblical views of justice and righteousness, Jason Shields asks church communities to transform themselves. They should alter their thinking and reimagine their prophetic role in challenging and changing the sinful and discriminatory structures within the Church and wider society. He invites churches to be part of an alternative biblical vision for diverse and inclusive communities, one that recognises the dignity of all people.

Chine McDonald

The God of All People

Chine McDonald writes about her experience of being both black and female in a world that in many ways is designed to elevate both whiteness and patriarchy. ‘White supremacy can come in the form of monochrome leadership, theology and practice.’ This is the status quo. However, the Church should be better than this because it should be actively breaking down the dividing walls of hostility that exist between people. The Church should be like a mosaic of different shapes, colours and sizes that come together to form a beautiful picture.

Ingrid Reneau Walls

Transcending the Dehumanising Effects of Slavery and Racism: Hope and the African American Spirituals

Ingrid Reneau reflects on how the Bible became the enduring vehicle for many forms of radical resistance thinking and actions for those Africans cruelly taken into slavery. Informed by biblical stores of exile, liberation, lament and hope, the African American Spirituals gave those forced into slavery the cultural and spiritual tools to overcome the limitations of their present realities and affirm a right to life. In doing so, those who sang and danced the Spirituals rejected the Christianity of those who enslaved them.

Word and World 9 (June 2021/February 2022)

Issue 9 of Word and World, published by IFES in June 2021, has been expanded with with further articles on the topic of ‘Race and Justice. The issue now contains the below pieces, which are available from here, and as a pdf here.

Paula Fuller

Left Behind: Justice and the Church after George Floyd

Paula Fuller, the Executive Vice President of People and Culture at InterVarsity USA, reflects on persistent racial divides in the American church and how students should be shaped to be agents of reconciliation.

N.T. Wright

Undermining Racism

N.T. Wright, author and theologian, also shares his perspective on the church as God’s worldwide family, and how ‘racism is a failure of vocation.’

Bethany Peevy

Let Justice Roll: Building Bridges, Pursuing Justice

We also look back at our series of Conexión articles from the past year, with stories of students across IFES regions who are choosing to confront and address injustice in their own contexts.

Jasmine Foo

Translating Vision into Reality: Normalizing the Biblical Image of Racial Relations

Jasmine Foo, former staff worker from FES Singapore and Assistant Director in Strategic Planning & Training with State Courts of Singapore, now undertaking doctoral research in Biblical Studies at King's College London, brings a perspective on ‘Translating Vision into Reality: Normalizing the Biblical Image of Racial Relations’ through an Asian lens.

Eleasah Phoenix Louis

Preservation and Liberation

Eleasah Phoenix Louis, a UK-based emerging theologian and consultant with various church and parachurch organisations, presents her perspectives on preservation and liberation in relation to race and justice issues.

Alejandra Ortiz

The Letter of James in Contexts of Inequality: A Latin American Perspective

Alejandra Ortiz, a member of IFES staff in Latin America, brings us perspective from her region on how to live out the epistle of James in contexts of inequality.

Word and World 9 (June 2021)

‘Race and Justice’ is the theme of the latest issue of Word and World, published by IFES. The issue contains the below pieces, which are available from here (summaries are taken from Tim Adams’ Editorial).

Paula Fuller

Left Behind: Justice and the Church after George Floyd

Paula Fuller, the Executive Vice President of People and Culture at InterVarsity USA, reflects on persistent racial divides in the American church and how students should be shaped to be agents of reconciliation.

N.T. Wright

Undermining Racism

N.T. Wright, author and theologian, also shares his perspective on the church as God’s worldwide family, and how ‘racism is a failure of vocation.’

Bethany Peevy

Let Justice Roll: Building Bridges, Pursuing Justice

We also look back at our series of Conexión articles from the past year, with stories of students across IFES regions who are choosing to confront and address injustice in their own contexts.

Lausanne Global Analysis 10, 3 (May 2021)

The latest issue of Lausanne Global Analysis, from The Lausanne Movement, is available online from here, including pdfs of individual articles as below.

Harvey Thiessen and Alena Popova

Passing the Baton to Evangelical Migrants

Jojie Wong

Why Mission Mobilizers Need Foundational Training

Joseph Handley

Polycentrism as the New Leadership Paradigm

Jennifer Javed Khan, Rebecca Yin Foo, Paul Lewis, Susan Ann Samuel

Racism and the Great Commission

Lausanne Global Analysis 10, 2 (March 2021)

The latest issue of Lausanne Global Analysis, from The Lausanne Movement, is available online from here, including pdfs of individual articles as below.

Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson

Is Christianity Shrinking or Shifting?

Since November 2012 when our first LGA issue was published, Christianity has become even more truly global. The center of the church has shifted from the North to the South, and there’s a growing influence of non-western Christianity. Todd Johnson and Gina Zurlo, editors of the World Christian Encyclopedia, 3^rd edition, have written about what a truly global Christian family means in our first article, ‘Is Christianity Shrinking or Shifting?’

Steve Sang-Cheol Moon

Reaching Generation Z with the Gospel

There’s another demographic trend in recent years, and this is the rise of Generation Z. This is the youngest – and perhaps final – generation in our world to have distinctive characteristics. But who are the Gen Z-ers – and how can they be reached with the gospel? Steve Moon, Founder and CEO of Charis Institute for Intercultural Studies, suggests three concrete steps to help us progress from knowledge to action in his article, ‘Reaching Generation Z with the Gospel’.

CJ Davison & Richard Coleman

Racism and the Great Commission

Our next article, ‘Racism and the Great Commission’, is part one of two articles from the Lausanne YLGen Empower team. This article brings together a wide range of voices from across the world on the globally pressing topic of racism, and especially how it relates to the Great Commission.

Jenny James Taylor

The Holy Responsibility of Journalism

Unconscious biases, whether generational, racial, or vocational, impact the practice of journalism. But as a Christian journalist, Jenny Taylor uncovers the roots of journalism in the Christian values of freedom, justice, and truth in her article, ‘The Holy Responsibility of Journalism’. What would it look like to restore journalism ‘as a sacrament of all that we value’?

Dave Deuel

A Workplace for Mephibosheth

The final article in this 50^th issue of LGA is by Dave Deuel, Lausanne Catalyst for Disability Concerns and Academic Dean Emeritus for The Master’s Academy International. In ‘A Workplace for Mephibosheth’, he shows how only a small fraction of persons with disabilities globally are employed. How can we transform workplace culture – and the world – by employing those with disabilities?

On the Coronavirus Conspiracies

The below is an excerpt from an email written for the congregation where I am one of the pastors.

By now, you’ve probably heard some of the conspiracy theories around the ‘real cause’ of Covid-19. Perhaps you’ve read an article or been sent a link to a video by a well-meaning friend.

In some cases, it has to do with a plot on the part of China to develop biological weapons. Or it has to do with the rollout of the 5G data network (which has led to acts of vandalism and arson against mobile phone masts). Or Bill Gates is said to be using the virus as part of a plot to control the world’s population through immunisation. For Christians, permutations of these theories often get combined with a large dose of the book of Revelation!

You might think differently, but – even apart from the fact that there is no credible evidence for any of these links – I tend to sit light to such theories.

In times such as these, there’s an innate human tendency to want to find explanations for what’s happening or to attach blame in some way. There is something about a sense of powerlessness which generates the need for some overarching explanation.

So far as we can tell, this has happened throughout history. Writing in The Guardian, Tim Adams notes that ‘at the time of the great plague in London, the spread of miracle cures and scapegoating prophecy was almost harder to contain than the infection itself’. Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, set in London in 1665, records the popularity of superstitions during that deadly time: ‘The apprehension of the people were likewise strangely increased by the error of the times... They were more addicted to prophecies and astrological conjurations, dreams and old wives tales than ever they were before or since.’ Examples could be multiplied many times over.

Sadly, conspiracy theories like this often tap into suspicion of ‘foreigners’. Again, there are many historical examples. In the spread of syphilis across Europe in the 1390s, it was known as ‘the French sickness’ in Germany, ‘the German sickness’ in Poland, ‘the Polish sickness’ in Russia, ‘the disease of the Christians’ in Turkey, ‘the disease of the Turks’ in Persia, and so on. As Richard Evans points out, ‘since pandemics by definition spread across the globe, everywhere they arrive they come from somewhere else’.

Conspiracy theories perpetuate the sense of powerlessness and isolation people feel, feeding the idea that ‘evil forces’ are at work, offering little sense of hope.

It’s understandable that this period should raise questions that many people – Christians included – have not grappled with before. But Christians are able to reflect on the issues in a different way. Our faith in Jesus and the salvation he brings provides true hope, not because it ignores reality, but because it points to a deeper reality. We of all people know that God has addressed the sin and suffering of the world head on. We of all people know that Jesus’ death and resurrection are the climax of God’s plan to restore the whole of creation back to himself.

We can be people of truth, wisdom, and hope at this time, not because we have everything stitched up, but because we know the one who does – and his love is stronger than death itself.