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hello everyone and welcome to Cultivating Ideas, a webinar series offered here from the Center of Lifelong Learning at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. My name is Sean Watkins and I serve as Associate Dean and today I get the rare opportunity to not just host today's discussion but actually to be the facilitator for it. So I'm very excited for that. As I have mentioned to this Austin Seminary community, I'm from Houston, Texas, born and raised.

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I came to Austin, Texas 24 years ago to go to college with a full plan to graduate from UT and then go to UT's law school and engage in what it means to be a criminal lawyer like my father and My junior year of college, my academic advisor said, we told all of the black students that are there, do not graduate without taking an African-American Studies course. And so I walked into Introduction to African-American Studies. taught by Dr.

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Ed Gordon, who still teaches across the street to this day. And that was the first time that anyone had, from an academic and professional standpoint, explained culture, race, and ethnicity to me. And it completely altered the course of my life. I walked out of class after the first day and said, give me every class you have.

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In the span of two years, I took Introduction to African-American Studies, African-American History to 1860. African American history, 1860 to present, black scholars and professionals, black theater, black dance, black sports, black women in medicine, black culture. I took every class they had, and it launched me on this journey of being inquisitive and curious about other cultures, trying to understand them, and then simultaneously trying to help our sisters and brothers understand what does it mean to live in a multi-ethnic, multicultural, multiracial world. And so

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I'm very excited to be able to facilitate this discussion today because it's very near and dear to my heart. And of course, we are on the heels of a presidential election, which was a surprise for half the country and a surprise for the other half of the country. As always with elections, half the country, at least in this instance, is elated about the candidate that has won in President-elect Donald Trump. And then the other half of the country is utterly horrified.

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Both sides firmly believe that he will do what he has pledged to do. and that excites one group and terrifies another. And why is that? How is it possible that we can look at the same person and the same values and goals, but come away with two completely different perspectives, expectations, hopes, and fears?

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Well, that's part of what we're going to talk about today. So let me share my screen with you and we can start the show. So today we're going to spend some time talking about Cultural core concerns.

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Can you all see that okay? Yes. beautiful. Thank you.

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All righty. So we're going to talk about cultural core concerns. So here's an overview for our time. One, I'm going to give a biblical understanding for diversity and I will speak quickly there, but I think it's always important whenever we talk about diversity from a biblical standpoint, you want to just start with scripture and not just assume that because we're all Christians that we're going to come from a Christian perspective on these things,

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Especially if we're in the West, most of us have been given a colonized version of theology and an understanding of scripture. So we want to spend a little bit of time examining the biblical narrative and forming a biblical understanding of diversity. Just a quick crash course there. Then we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about how did we get here?

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If diversity is a biblical concept, If it is true that it's in scripture from Genesis to Revelation or Genesis to maps, as I like to be able to say for those of us that have physical Bibles, how do we get here? If the Bible is littered with diversity and diversity is God's idea, how do we get to this point in the United States of America where we are so polarized and so divided along the issues of race? And then finally, the piece de resistance, we will talk a little bit about cultural core concerns.

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and we'll examine those of different ethnic minority or sub-dominant groups. And then at the conclusion of that, we'll have a little bit of a Q&A. All right, so that being said, let's dive in. As we are in the month of November, and this is Native American Heritage Month, we want to acknowledge and do a land acknowledgement.

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All education happens on indigenous land. And so I want to acknowledge that we are on the indigenous lands of Turtle Island, the ancestral home of what is now called North America. I'd like to specifically acknowledge the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the Appalachee, and all the American Indian and indigenous peoples that have been a part of these lands and territories that we call the great state of Texas. So I want to honor those cultures in particular.

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Diversity in the Bible. Just for the sake of time, we don't have time to look at the text in its entirety, but I want you to go back in time and just imagine a cursory reading of Genesis 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless as an empty.

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Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, let there be light. That beautiful passage that's on page one, hopefully of every Bible that we all have. If I ask you to summarize what's going on in Genesis 1 through the lens of diversity.

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Through the lens of diversity, take a cursory reading to Genesis 1, what would come up for you? Well, a good inductive Bible study of Genesis 1 should reveal a couple of things. That one, God forms the earth and God fills the earth. First and foremost, we see God forming the earth with the environments.

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God forms it with the land, the sky, and the seas, right? We have these different types of environments that are present. And then God fills the earth with birds, plants, and livestock, animals, and then, of course, with people. Now, before we jump into the ethnic and cultural diversity, it's important for us to recognize that diversity is present in scripture.

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in all of its environments. God's never been monolithic in anything. Notice there's diversity in the environments that God creates, and there's diversity in the life that God creates on the earth. For example, I love superheroes.

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I wish that I could fly. It is one of my dying wishes. I hope the Lord gives everybody superpowers before we get out of here. So far throughout the annals of time and space and human history, God has not done that, but you know, that's what faith is for.

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So all that to be able to say, we don't have a planet that's filled with sky. We don't fly like the birds, right? We're not in an entirely aerial environment.

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We also are not a planet that's completely filled with land. We are not an aquatic society as well too. The entire planet is not filled with water. We have three different environments, a diversity of environments in which God is created.

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Now again, we have to use a little bit of our creative imagination here, but when scripture tells us that God creates birds of various kinds, animals of various kinds, fish of various kinds, Again, you can look outside your window. There's a diversity in plants, in animals, in fish, in aquatic creatures. There has been diversity in God's creation from the very beginning.

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And notice that at the conclusion of those days, God calls it good. And so again, we want you to see the diversity leaps off of the page, even from the text of scripture. God's never been monolithic in anything, not just when it comes to ethnicity and race and culture, but even in the environment and the animals that God's created so far. Let's keep going.

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That's Genesis 1. But again, we can say here, we'll take a look in particular at Genesis 1, 9, and 11, some very familiar passages. There's this common motif that we see God saying in the opening passages of Genesis. In Genesis chapter 1 and verse 28, it's the first thing that God says to people, to Adam and Eve,

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Go make babies. Go be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. After the flood in Genesis chapter 9, when Noah, Noah's sons, and the daughters-in-law, because they're not mentioned by name, but the ladies are present, when Noah's daughters-in-law and his family comes out of the ark, what does God say to them in Genesis 9 and 1?

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Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth. Again, we see this motif. God says, go make babies, go fill the earth with my image.

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And then we come to Genesis 11, this very familiar passage of the Tower of Babel. What happens there? They say when they come to the plain of Shinar, they settle there. The Bible says that the people say in verse 4 of chapter 11, come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens

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So then we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth. Notice there, what is God's invitation? Go be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

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And what do the people say in Genesis 11? We don't want to be scattered. We want to stay in one place. I like to be able to say God in this passage says, move on up.

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And the people say we shall not be moved, but not in a good way. And so what happens? The Bible tells us that God comes down and confuses their language.

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And verse 9 of chapter 11 says, from there, the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth and they stopped building the city. In other words, God introduces a diversity of languages that's confusing for them because as one people, they were speaking the same language and they actually were moving in the opposite direction and pushing against God's intention. And so by coming down and introducing a diversity of languages, God is getting them back on track. Now, a lot of times when we look at Genesis 11, this text is used as an argument against ethnic and cultural diversity, that God comes down and curses people, and that's why we have diversity.

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But if you look in the original language, particularly in the Hebrew, the word curse is not mentioned anywhere in the text. Diversity in scripture has never been a problem to be solved. It has always been a song to be sung. It testifies of God's creative majesty.

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Always, always, always. So it's a little bit about Genesis chapters 1 and 11. I want to keep going just for the sake of time. Genesis 12 is another great example.

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Abraham and Sarah. I like to call them these Old Testament bridge builders, if you will. In Genesis chapter 12, verses 1 through 4, the Bible says, the Lord had said to Abram, go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you.

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And I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all people on earth will be blessed. review. This seventh-fold promise that God gives to Abraham and Sarah we see in Genesis chapter 12, right at the conclusion of the Tower of Babel.

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Now notice for Abraham and Sarah, what does obedience cost them in the text? Well, to obey God, they have to leave their country behind. Think about that for a moment. He says, leave your country, your family, and your father's household.

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What does it mean to leave your country? That means they're leaving their culture behind, their national identity. It means every conversation they have is going to be a cross-cultural conversation for the rest of their lives. God is inviting them to lifelong displacement.

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It is an invitation to be misunderstood. That every time Abraham and Sarah go somewhere to meet anyone for anything for the rest of their lives, they are going to hear an accent and they have to lean in. And every time Abraham and Sarah ask a question, they are going to speak with an accent, and the person they're speaking to has to be able to lean in so they can hear as well. It's an invitation to be misunderstood.

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They have to leave their country behind, which means they're leaving their culture behind. Second, they're leaving their family behind, their security. This is not just a near recent concept. It's a concept for us here in the 21st century.

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Family can become a safety net for us. When life happens, everybody calls mama and daddy or aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins. But when you leave your country behind, when you leave your family behind, you leave behind that safety net, that sense of security You are completely dependent on the Lord, on God, and then also on the community and the people around you.

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And then finally, the Bible says they have to leave their father's household behind. That's their identity. If you notice in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, in particular, when we get to the genealogies, when we're talking to people of Jewish origin or Jewish heritage, there typically are these genealogies that are mentioned, or we talk about the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. That's a memory or historic recall for Jewish and Hebraic people that lets them know and understand.

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They've got to pay attention. We're speaking to their cultural identity. But if you're talking to people who are not Jewish, and we'll get to that in a moment, you don't use those Old Testament references because nobody knows who Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are. And so God is telling them that familial identity, that genealogy that everyone in the town and everyone in the community knows,

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you've got to leave that behind as well, too. And so obedience costs them their culture, their security, their identity, their country, their family, and their father's household. But what do they gain from that obedience? Well, they give birth to a new nation, the Bible tells us.

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They're going to be a blessing to all families, and we remember them as a model of people of faith. Let me put this on pause for one second and say, when we talk about immigration in the United States of America, not from a political standpoint, but from a Christian standpoint, from a biblical or a theological standpoint, we rarely, if ever, talk about it from this mindset. We talk about immigration from a perspective of people being undocumented, people being illegal, and then coming into the country in an illegal and unsafe manner and having to be deported. We never really talk about it from the perspective of God's invitation to them.

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What if by legal or illegal, by documented or undocumented methods, that the Lord is speaking to a people group and saying, we want you to go to a different country? That's not saying that we need to change our laws. It is saying, as Christians, how do we approach the conversation of immigration? Do we approach it solely from a legal standpoint and from a political standpoint, but do we also approach it from a theological one?

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Is there a question of, Has God invited these people here? What does it mean for us to embrace hospitality and the call of God on their lives if they're coming not for economic opportunity, but they are coming because they're going to a land that God said God would show them in order to be a blessing to their families? Moses and the exile.

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I mean, excuse me, in the Exodus, rather. So I absolutely love talking about Moses. Moses is a great example of caring about culture and diversity. And so, one, it's important to recognize that Moses is tricultural.

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Moses is tricultural. He's ethnically Hebrew. He has an Egyptian education, and he's in an interracial marriage. I'll say it again.

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He's ethnically Hebrew. He's got an Egyptian education and he's assimilated to Egyptian culture and he's in an interracial marriage. We know that Moses is assimilated to Egyptian culture in particular because of what happens in Exodus chapter 2 and verse 19. If you remember, after Moses kills an Egyptian,

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He goes on the run and the Bible says that after he crosses the desert, what happens? He comes to the well where the ladies are trying to draw water and there are some thieves that are there and they are attacking the women in some type of way. Moses gets all this supernatural energy and fights off these thieves. And then the girls run back home, and their father, Jethro, the prince of Midian, says, how did y'all get back so fast?

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They said, what? We were trying to draw water to water the flock. These men came and attacked us, but this Egyptian rescued us. Moses is not in Egypt anymore.

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He's in a completely different country. But he is so assimilated to Egyptian culture that when he leaves Egypt, he's still readily identified as Egyptian. Moses walks like an Egyptian. He talks like an Egyptian.

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He's dressed like an Egyptian. When they see this Hebraic man in a different country, they instinctively see him as an Egyptian person. And so Moses is ethnically Hebrew, he's got an Egyptian education and assimilation, and then he's also in an interracial marriage. Zipporah is from North Africa, and it causes one of the first conflicts between Miriam and Aaron and Moses we see in the scriptures.

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Moses is born into a world filled with racism and xenophobia. Remember what Pharaoh says at the beginning of Exodus chapter 1, let the girls live, but if you have a Hebrew boy, kill him. He is targeting someone based solely on their ethnicity, on their ethnic heritage. And of course, the Exodus is the most redemptive act in the Old Testament.

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All of God's people have an addiction. All of God's people have a habit. But when God sets you free, Whom the son sets free is free indeed.

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We see God demonstrate his power. He dictates and demonstrates really what the kingdom of God is like by breaking the chains of bondage and freeing these people. And then, of course, it introduces God's expectations regarding sojourners, immigrants, and aliens, both in Exodus 22, Exodus 23 and 9, and Deuteronomy 26 and 11. In all three of these passages, God says the same thing time and time again.

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You were foreigners in Egypt. You remember what it was like to be othered. Make sure that you do not other people. When you go out into your fields and you pick food, don't take everything.

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Leave some for the immigrant, for the undocumented among you. Because you had a history of being in a land not your own for 400 years. When you see someone who is different from you, welcome them, share with them. Do not ostracize or alienate them.

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And obviously I'm putting emphasis there because what we see in scripture is really not how the United States approaches the conversation and the engagement when it comes to people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds that we would readily identify as immigrants, both documented and undocumented in our country. And then of course, finally, the book of Leviticus, absolutely phenomenal book. I wish we had time to dive into it.

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If you've ever tried to read the Bible before, from Genesis to Revelation, Just about everybody skips over Leviticus, but let me just say right now, don't sleep on Leviticus. Leviticus is great. Let me tell you why I'm gonna give you a decoder ring for looking at Leviticus.

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When they walk out of Egypt, when the Hebrew people walk out of Egypt in Exodus, they are slaves. They have a slave mindset. The Bible says, I think it's in Exodus 14. God says, I'm going to take them the long way to get to the Red Sea, to get to the promised land, because if they face war, they may turn around and go back to Egypt.

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They're so fragile that the first time that they may have a conflict, they may just bend the knee, kiss the ring, and go back to Egypt and go back to bondage. They have a slave mindset when they walk out of Egypt in Exodus. When they walk into Canaan and Joshua, they are a nation. They have an identity, they have laws, they have ethics, they have rules, they have values, they have faith.

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How do you go from being an enslaved people to being a nation? It's Leviticus. God is decolonizing them. God is deconstructing and reconstructing their culture.

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You were in Egypt for 400 years. Y'all killed everybody whenever you wanted to. You sexually assaulted anybody whenever you wanted to. You are now my people and you will not kill.

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You will not assault each other. You will not rob each other. You will not bear false witness against each other. God works with them in the book of Leviticus to teach them culture and values.

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Let's keep going. Now, I can hear you thinking, Sean, what about the New Testament? I'm glad you asked. That's a great question.

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So very briefly, when it comes to diversity in the Bible, Jesus, first and foremost, much like Moses, was born into a world filled with racism and xenophobia. Remember what Herod said at the very beginning, right? For the Hebrew boys, kill them, but let the girls live.

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It's the exact same situation again as what happened with Moses. Jesus lives under Roman oppression. Rome is occupying Jerusalem at this particular time. He's also poor.

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When his family goes to give the offering for a child, they give the offering not of two doves of someone who's wealthy, but of two pigeons, right? It's the offering of a poor person. And then of course, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus are all refugees.

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They are migrants crossing into Egypt to survive a political climate. They are undocumented and crossing illegally and unethically into Egypt to be able to escape the racism and xenophobia that is happening in Bethlehem and in Jerusalem at that particular time. And so again, we see these motifs that are happening both in the United States and really around the world right now. They are also located within the confines and the text of scripture.

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Jesus on diversity and inclusion. Well, let's be clear. Jesus starts with, wait for it, 12 Jewish men.

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And they're kind of a little racist and a little sexist as well, too. I wish we had time. And we'll talk a little bit about that in a second, right? Jesus preaches to both Jews and to Gentiles.

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One of my favorite passages is Mark chapter 4. Jesus says, let's get in the boat. There's a storm. Jesus calms the storm.

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They go to the other side. And there is a man who is demon possessed and he is chained as a consequence of being demon possessed. Today, we would say that that's a mental health issue and that he is incarcerated. right?

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He's in bondage. He is literally imprisoned. And what does Jesus do? Jesus has them go to Gentile territory.

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He casts this demon out, removes the change from this man, and they turn around and go back home. That's it. That's the whole reason for them to go over there. And so we see Jesus working with Jews and with Gentiles.

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Jesus includes women in absolutely everything, especially in Luke's gospel. As a matter of fact, women are the first ones to preach the resurrection and they preach it to the men and the men do not believe them in Luke's gospel. The parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke chapter 10. Excellent passage.

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And I always like to be able to say all of our Bibles are wrong. Every single last one of our Bibles, if it has the passage of the Good Samaritan, not the text itself, but the subchapter. The parable of the Good Samaritan is not true. When Jesus tells this story, you have to remember Samaritans are not viewed as good.

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They are not viewed in a positive light. They are ethnic minorities. They are a sub-dominant group in this particular land at that particular time. And so they are not the heroes or the heroines of the story, right?

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And so Jesus says, listen, you've got someone who is a priest, you've got someone who is a Levite, and they continue to walk past this man in the ditch. But The undocumented person among you, the person that makes you clutch your purse or lock your doors, or the one that you're horrified about because you believe that they may be a danger to you, to your family, to your country, that's the hero of the story. The Samaritan that is overlooked, Samaria that none of y'all want to be able to go through, Jesus in telling this story says, the Samaritan is the person who has the right ethic, the right level of compassion, who demonstrates what it means to be a neighbor.

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And so that good Samaritan is us attempting to tell a corrective interpretation of the text when in reality, Jesus was demonstrating by putting a Samaritan as the hero of the story, he's confronting the cultural narratives that the Jewish and Hebraic people had embraced for a very long time, since the exile, rather. Of course, we see in John chapter 4 that Jesus had to go through Samaria. Everyone takes the long way around Samaria to not deal with one particular ethnic group, and Jesus makes a beeline and goes right through them.

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And because he knows the disciples are a little racist, he sends them into town to get a bucket of chicken and some fries. And when they come back with some food to feed him, he's having a conversation with who Reverend Dr. Brenda Salton McNeil calls Sam, the Samaritan woman, the woman at the well. He's having a conversation with Sam and the disciples are like, what's going on?

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And Jesus says to them, what? I have food that you know not of. Notice in that text as well, too, the disciples, all 12 of them went into town to get food and nothing happened. Jesus has one conversation with the woman at the well.

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She goes back to the town and the entire town comes back to meet Jesus and the whole town gets saved. And so again, we see Jesus doing something amongst Jewish people and amongst Gentiles that even the disciples were not prepared for. And of course, we've got the Great Commission, and that's to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Acts chapter 11, we really don't have a whole lot of time to dig into this.

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is a very familiar passage and I've put it in bold and underlined and italicized some key emphasis for us there. You'll see at the very bottom there for Acts chapter 11 and verse 26, this passage is most commonly referred to because of that last sentence. The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch. That text is used time and time again.

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But let's go back up and look at the top for a second. Now those who had been scattered by persecution, Stephen has just been stoned, the church is being persecuted and they've all scattered. And so what happens is that they travel to Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, but notice what the text says.

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They're spreading the word only amongst the Jews. These folks have become Christians. They were originally Jewish. Persecution breaks out and they go spread the gospel only to people of their own kind.

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Jewish converts to Christianity go find Jews. and they're only speaking to them. The Bible says that some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, that's North Africa, went to Antioch and they began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. So picture that table.

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You've got people who are Jewish. You've got people who are Christian, but ethnically and culturally Jewish. You've got Greeks or Gentiles, and you have men from Cyprus and Cyrene, North Africa. Jews, Jews, Jewish Christians, Gentiles,

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and African Christians or Christians from Africa. And they're all sitting around the table, this multi-ethnic, multicultural table. The Bible says that the people of Antioch look at them and say, you look like little Christs. They're first called Christians at Antioch.

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It is this picture of that ethnic and cultural diversity around the table that was a picture for them of what the church could be. What we see happening in Acts chapter 11. And so just to be able to land the plane here, of course, there are other passages in the New Testament, the spirit falling on a multi-ethnic community in Acts chapter 2, the inclusion of the Gentiles with Peter's vision in Acts chapter 10. Paul confronting Peter with his racism in Galatians, excuse me, chapter 2, verses 11 through 14.

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They're going to Galatia and they're ministering to the Gentiles. The Jewish folks show up or Jewish Christians show up. And Peter gets up from the Gentile table and goes to the Jewish table and Paul rebukes him and says, you have lost your mind. We have gotten saved.

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We are missionaries. Do not revert back because folks who look like you don't understand what we're doing right now. We have a missional mandate. It's a very powerful passage.

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You are all one in Christ Jesus, Paul goes on to say in Galatians 3 and of course, Revelation 7 and 9. In conclusion, the Pierce de Resistance, the end of the Bible, if you will. After this, I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count from every nation, that word nation in the Greek is ethnos, that's ethnicities or nationalities, not nations, but from every nation, tribe, people, and language standing before the Lamb. In other words, again, heaven is going to be this picture of cultural diversity with spiritual unity.

00:28:22.120 - 00:28:56.240

That's what heaven's going to look like. And so, just to be able to wrap up our time here in terms of the Bible and diversity, when God chooses the margins, the hungry, the thirsty, the poor, the alien, the sick, the prisoner, as the principal means of salvation, God dictates and demonstrates what the kingdom of God is like, not through the powerful, but through the powerless. In every single passage in scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, it's the margins that God says, let me show you what the kingdom of God is like, that upside down nature of the kingdom. we see as well too that God has always been about diversity.

00:28:56.480 - 00:29:11.520

That diversity is not a problem to be solved, but a song to be sung. It testifies of God's creativity. And of course, if you've got questions as well too, go ahead and start to put those in the chat. We're going to talk about cultural core concerns for a moment, and then we're going to open it up for questions.

00:29:12.280 - 00:29:32.560

And so at the foot of the cross is cultural diversity with spiritual unity, as I've mentioned before. And then of course, that we are not called to sameness, but to oneness. The cross is a picture, again, of cultural diversity with spiritual unity. It never was that we're going to be speaking the same language, looking the same, talking the same, having the same values.

00:29:32.960 - 00:29:54.080

God wants that beautiful diversity to be present there, and that gives God glory. And this is one of the few places where historians theologians, anthropologists, and missiologists are all in agreement. And when God says, fill the earth and subdue it, God knew that we would spread around the world, and that all of a sudden, or as a consequence, whether of us spreading, that culture would begin to form.

00:29:54.480 - 00:30:16.040

We are going to be in different environments, and depending on if you're in the north, the south, the east, or the west, You're going to have to adapt closing to that because some places are warmer than others or colder than others. Our skin pigmentation is going to change based on the amount of sunlight that's there. If there are sandstorms that are present, the shape of our eyes are going to adapt to that environment so that we can survive.

00:30:16.080 - 00:30:29.120

We're going to develop food around those things. We're going to develop music around the crops that can be grown. In other words, culture is going to be formed and we're in these different environments. And God knew that would be good.

00:30:29.400 - 00:30:45.440

And so we see God being concerned about diversity from the very beginning. Now, I'm going to leave this up here just for a moment. We don't have time to dive into those, but just some food for thought. If you've got the opportunity to, I encourage you to take a photo of those, but just some questions for us to reflect on.

00:30:45.440 - 00:31:12.640

How often do you or your community consider diversity through the lens of scripture? What are some situations you've experienced where scripture was used to affirm ethnic and cultural diversity? What are some situations you've experienced where scripture was used to critique or to condemn ethnic and cultural diversity? And how does viewing ethnic and cultural diversity as a biblical principle shape your personal views on diversity, equity, inclusion, and or racial justice?

00:31:13.080 - 00:31:38.800

So again, some great conversations to be able to have down the road if we get the opportunity to come back to it. But I'd love to be able to ask some of those questions because I think once we start to realize that diversity has been in scripture from the very beginning, it should shape and reshape how we approach these conversations. Now, all that to be able to say, half my time on the scriptures, the rest of the time, pretty much for why we actually got here. How did we get here?

00:31:39.040 - 00:32:06.000

It's a great question. If diversity is a biblical principle, which I believe that it is, how did we get to this place where the United States, which professes to be a Christian nation, is divided theologically on the issue of race? Well, the short version is the United States is a nation that was built with unrecognized, unconfessed, and unhealed trauma. The United States is a nation built with unrecognized, unconfessed, and unhealed trauma.

00:32:06.800 - 00:32:34.560

This nation was birthed from the genocide of native peoples, the enslavement and economic exploitation of African peoples for the better part of 246 years. That resulted in a civil war and a theological crisis in the United States where the American church did not know what to do with people that were not white and that were enslaved. And that comes from Mark Knowles' book, The Civil War is a Theological Crisis, an excellent, excellent, excellent resource. The Civil War is a Theological Crisis.

00:32:35.000 - 00:32:49.920

The American church did not know what to do with non-white people and with the institution of slavery because they could not solve it. We went to war. And as Ta-Nehisi Coates says, the North won the war, but the South won the narrative. We've never addressed any of those things.

00:32:50.400 - 00:33:03.680

Four million formerly enslaved people were set free. White slave owners in the South were given reparations for their loss of workers that were present and enslaved peoples. And America just continued to press on.

00:33:04.080 - 00:33:13.120

We had a Chinese Exclusion Act. We had the economic exploitation of Latinx peoples. We've never talked about these things. We've never healed from those things.

00:33:13.120 - 00:33:28.160

We've never, as a nation, talked from a holistic or a therapeutic perspective on those things. As a matter of fact, in some states, those issues are not taught in any capacity. They're just bulldozed over. And so as a consequence, you've got unrecognized, unconfessed

00:33:28.480 - 00:33:40.960

and unhealed trauma. I love what Dr. Eddie Glaudis said, speaking as an African-American that works on MSNBC. He said, for black people that we have never believed the myths and the legends about America.

00:33:41.280 - 00:34:06.960

We couldn't afford to believe the myths and the legends because we had to bear the brunt of them as a community. And so what you see for a lot of marginalized communities is that what this Navajo proverb is true, that we trust our memory more than history, that even what is written in the history books is different from the collective oral history and traditions that are passed down amongst people because the body keeps score. We remember the land, the buildings, the suffering.

00:34:06.960 - 00:34:29.440

Our grandparents and ancestors have told those stories. And so we recognize that we've got a nation that is filled with trauma. And so Howard Thurman said it best in his classic, Jesus and the Disinherited, Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically and therefore effectively with issues of discrimination and injustice on the basis of race, religion, and national origin?

00:34:29.840 - 00:34:41.680

Is this impotency due to a betrayal of the genius of religion or to the basic weakness of religion itself? Howard Thurman says at the beginning of his book. If you haven't read that, I highly encourage you to do so. It's absolutely phenomenal.

00:34:41.680 - 00:34:51.600

He does answer that question throughout the remainder of that small book of five great chapters. So Cultural core concerns. How did we get here?

00:34:51.600 - 00:35:05.680

Well, in order to understand that, we've got to talk about a couple of things. All of us have what are called life concerns. Life concerns are life affecting and life challenging. This is where theology comes from or doctrine comes from.

00:35:05.680 - 00:35:18.360

Doctrine is just biblical principles matching with life's issues. And so all of us have life concerns. Now, life concerns fall really into one of two categories. They fall into what are called inner concerns and outer concerns.

00:35:19.040 - 00:35:33.120

Outer concerns are not life-affecting. They're not life-changing. If you're on the freeway and you're driving and the paramedics drive past you, out of respect, you may pull over, but you're going to keep going with your day. That's not going to impact you.

00:35:33.280 - 00:35:53.440

If your spouse, your children, or a family member is a paramedic or a firefighter and the ambulance or a fire truck goes by, you're going to be concerned because you're worried about them and, you know, their job isn't going to put them in harm's way in some capacity. That's an inner concern. It's life-affecting and life-changing. Now within inner concerns, we've got 3 categories.

00:35:53.440 - 00:36:08.720

We have what are called primary concerns. These are the bare necessities of life. Food, water, shelter, clothing, and community. It doesn't matter where you are, what your ethnicity is, your race is, your gender, your geographic location, what generation you're born into.

00:36:08.800 - 00:36:19.600

All of us have these primary concerns. You take any of them away from us and we die. Food, water, shelter, clothing, community. We also have what are called core concerns or social core concerns.

00:36:20.320 - 00:36:39.360

These are universal, but they are dependent on geographic location. So for example, Flint, Michigan a couple of years ago did not have clean drinking water. And we said that was a social core concern because in the United States, if you pay taxes, you should have access to clean drinking water, right? And so that was an issue that emerged.

00:36:40.080 - 00:36:51.200

Finally, we have what are called cultural core concerns. Now, cultural core concerns are life-affecting and life-changing. Let me keep going there. So my slides can catch up to me.

00:36:51.200 - 00:37:07.720

There we go. We have what are called social core concerns and cultural core concerns. Now, cultural core concerns are unique to each specific ethnic group. And when you deal with the cultural core concerns of each ethnic group, you will get their attention.

00:37:07.720 - 00:37:23.800

That's where we're going to spend the remainder of our time, and then we'll be done. So for cultural core concerns, here's a couple of other examples from scripture. We see in Genesis 2, Peter addresses the crowd, and he's quoting all the Old Testament prophets because it's a Jewish crowd. In Acts 17, Paul's in Athens.

00:37:23.800 - 00:37:46.720

He does not quote any Old Testament prophets because it doesn't mean anything to them. In Acts chapter 6, we see the Greek-speaking widows being overlooked in the distribution of food, so they pick seven men with Greek names, seven Greek men, and they're chosen to correct that injustice. It's the first time that we see affirmative action mentioned in scripture. They've turned over power and responsibility of food distribution to the marginalized community.

00:37:47.080 - 00:38:08.800

And then of course, in Acts chapter 11, the church is persecuted, as we mentioned before, and disciples are first called Christians at Antioch because of that multi-ethnic and multicultural table. For African Americans, and I'm just going to run through these very quickly, 70 years ago to be black in America meant that we were descendants of the enslaved. Today it means four different things. It means one, that we're transcendent.

00:38:08.960 - 00:38:24.240

We have African Americans that have so much money that it transcends race. Oprah, Jay-Z, beyoncé, Magic Johnson. That's not saying that race does not impact their lives, but it is saying they have enough wealth that race is no longer a determining factor on the quality of life they can have.

00:38:24.640 - 00:38:35.520

The second is emerging. These are our biracial sisters and brothers, as well as our first, second, and third generation African immigrant sisters and brothers. We also have abandoned. These are folks that live in generational poverty.

00:38:35.840 - 00:38:55.600

This is what affirmative action was originally created for, but their poverty is so significant, they don't have the on-ramps to get out of the hood, to get out of difficult, or just, yeah, the hood. to be able to have access to affirmative action in some ways. And finally, we've got mainstream. That's our working and middle-class communities.

00:38:55.600 - 00:39:07.680

And so when we talk about being black in America, it means all four of those. And so recognizing we have to broaden our understanding of what it means to be black. And that's just one example. This is true for all the ethnic groups.

00:39:07.920 - 00:39:28.560

I wanted to be able to speak for my own tribe because I'm Wakandan and I get to do that. All right, so in terms of cultural core concerns of African-Americans, The cultural core concerns of African-Americans are these three things, dignity, identity, and significance. If you want to get the attention of African-Americans, talk about these three things.

00:39:28.560 - 00:39:59.680

Dignity, one that we are made in God's image, we're not three-fifths of a person, that our lives are infinitely and equally valuable. In other words, if someone is white and male and runs a stop sign and the police pull them over to ask them what's going on and give them a side And I run that stop sign. It should not be that some type of way law enforcement feels like their lives are in danger and that I'm shot 17 times, whereas someone who is white and male is not.

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And so recognizing that if there is a belief of safety and dignity that's ascribed to one group of people, it should be ascribed to African-Americans as well. And so when you affirm that dignity, you get black folks' attention. Identity. that black is cultural, that there's an appreciation of that culture, not an assimilation to the dominant culture.

00:40:19.840 - 00:40:40.560

It should not be that in order for us to have an integrated society, I have to leave my culture at the door. And so when we invite African-Americans or black people to come and to show up in the fullness of their culture, we get their attention. And finally, the last thing is significance. That for African-Americans in particular, our theological framework revolves around the exodus and the exile.

00:40:40.800 - 00:40:58.840

What does it mean for us to be descendants of enslaved peoples, and what does it mean for us to be strangers in a land that we've called home for 400 years? That even though we've been here for four centuries, we still are othered. That whenever racial epitaphs appear, there's this common nomenclature of, go back where you came from. Right?

00:40:58.840 - 00:41:17.280

Well, if we've been here for four centuries, when does this become home? And so when you can speak to the dignity, identity, and significance of African Americans, you get their attention. For our Asian American sisters and brothers, and this comes from Daniel Lee's work at Fuller Theological Seminary. He's the director of the Center for Asian and Asian American Studies.

00:41:17.680 - 00:41:37.920

He talks about the Asian-American quadrilateral. Because Asia is such a massive continent with a wide variety of cultures, but when people with Asian descent come to the United States, they're automatically labeled universally as Asian. And so what Dr. Daniel Lee says, we need to think about the broadness of the Asian diaspora in different ways.

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One, that what these folks have in common solely is that they have an Asian heritage. That's the one unifying thing. Just about everything else is different in terms of language. language, culture, values, customs, the whole 9.

00:41:51.200 - 00:42:14.000

One, our Asian sisters and brothers have what's called an Asian heritage. They all come from the continent of Asia in some respects. Also, they also have a migration experience. There's some type of experience or story that they have, whether it's parents, grandparents, if they're first generation and 1.5 generation, meaning they were born in a country in Asia and then were brought to the United States as children and then raised here.

00:42:14.520 - 00:42:31.640

or second and third generation. They each have a migration experience. There's also this navigating of American culture, as I mentioned before, as well, too. You may be Filipino or Taiwanese or Chinese or Japanese or Korean or Mongolian, but when you come to the United States, you're just told that you're Asian.

00:42:31.760 - 00:42:49.080

This includes our South Asian and Southeast Asian sisters and brothers as well, too. So how do you navigate American culture? How are you put in a massive bucket when you have so many cultural differences that are very rarely acknowledged in the United States? And then, of course, this notion of racialization, right?

00:42:49.080 - 00:43:21.280

It's having to deal with what does it mean to confront racism. When I teach this class at Gordon-Conwell, I always have students, particularly my Asian-American students. I had one student last year who was from Taiwan, and she said, It's strange being in the United States because I am used to being in the dominant culture. remember that here I'm not in the majority and that my lens has to shift.

00:43:21.520 - 00:43:42.480

So there's a racialization that takes place for our Asian sisters and brothers. For our Latin sisters and brothers, our Latinx sisters and brothers, and I'm using Latin for a reason, first and foremost, a terminology is very important. We've seen this happening with the Latinx diaspora in the last 10 to 15 years. They've been called Latinos for a very long time.

00:43:42.480 - 00:43:53.120

We had a gender inclusive Latina. And then all of a sudden, Latinx has started to appear in the last couple of years. And then Latina as well, too. And there's been a lot of conversations around that.

00:43:53.120 - 00:44:11.600

I want to suggest to you that what's happening with the Latinx or the Latina diaspora is precisely what is happening to every other ethnic group in the United States. Latinx is not a term that Latino sisters and brothers came up with on their own. It's an academic term that was used to be able to describe that broad diaspora.

00:44:11.920 - 00:44:31.920

And so of course, this applies to generations, geography, and gender. If you are someone of a particular age, I'll just do a hypothetical and say 50 and above, it's very difficult to use a new term that helps you to understand a particular ethnic group. We've said Latino forever, why are we changing? terms, this doesn't make sense.

00:44:32.640 - 00:44:54.720

If you are a woman, and this is a hypothetical, but for ladies who have always had to see themselves in masculine pronouns, the invitation to say Latina or Latine or Latinx is huge. It's very, very, very important. And so this community, again, is wrestling with how they want to be identified and what they want to be called. And so I think that's true for

00:44:55.440 - 00:45:08.560

every ethnic group. African-Americans, we were Negroes, we were Negro Americans, we were Afro-Americans, we were African-Americans, and then we were Black. And so the exact same thing is going on for the Latinate diaspora. And so you have this terminology that's taking place.

00:45:08.960 - 00:45:19.480

They also have a migration experience as well too. And so recognizing that very similar to our Asian sisters and brothers. There's colorism that's present. The same thing that goes in the African-American community.

00:45:19.480 - 00:45:39.200

We talk about the brown paper bag. in the black community and so a lot of times light-skinned African-Americans are pitted against dark-skinned African-Americans and vice versa. The same thing happens in Latinx culture, whether you are Latine and white or Latine and black or Latine and Asian, there's colorism that exists. in that community.

00:45:39.200 - 00:46:01.640

There are parts of Brazil and other countries in Central and South America that depending on how much money you have, you can be racially categorized as white. Now, I wish we had time to park about that, but you can look at that on your own time if you've got some research there. It's a great opportunity to do a deep dive on Latinx culture. And you also have this notion of a consumed culture, but a rejected people.

00:46:01.640 - 00:46:19.040

And this is very true of the Latinx diaspora in the United States right now. Their culture is being consumed, but the people are being rejected. Much of our conversation around immigration is a rejection of Latinx peoples, but then we also love Taco Tuesday, right? We want the Latinx culture, but not necessarily the people.

00:46:19.040 - 00:46:29.600

And so that's something they've got to be able to wrestle with. And then finally, for the indigenous diaspora here. Highly visible, but invisible culture. Think about it for a moment.

00:46:29.600 - 00:46:50.960

The helicopters of the United States military, they are the Apache, the Cherokee, the Chickasaw. We have named our militaristic helicopters after indigenous tribes that have either shrunk or no longer exist in the United States. They're highly visible, but then also invisible. The Washington Redskins, now the Washington commanders, the Kansas City Chiefs,

00:46:51.280 - 00:47:06.880

the Atlanta Braves. We have taken these cultures and we have used that iconography for our sports and militaristic terms. So they're highly visible, but how many times do we, how much and how often do we engage with indigenous culture? Not very often.

00:47:07.840 - 00:47:23.760

The gospel was not originally good news to them. Dr. Richard Twist's Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys talks about that when indigenous folks first encountered Christians, it was through genocide and land theft. And so the gospel was not good news for them originally.

00:47:23.760 - 00:47:44.240

And so when we think about what does it mean to share the good news of the gospel with indigenous folks, we cannot start with the good news of the gospel in terms of God created the world for good. We are sinners, but Jesus came into the world and isn't it wonderful? We have to have a very different approach. And that begins with recognizing the trauma that is taking place with indigenous cultures.

00:47:44.640 - 00:48:07.360

There's also this immigration issue that's happening in indigenous culture, but it's the complete opposite. We got the opportunity to go to a conference years ago, and these indigenous folks stood up and shared, they were like, the United States of America is talking about an immigration issue. Are we talking about the last eight years, the last 80 years, or the last 800 years? Because we are talking about the last 800.

00:48:07.920 - 00:48:26.000

All of us are viewed as immigrants in the indigenous community. And so what does it mean to approach with a posture of humility as we're dialoguing and engaging with these sisters and brothers? And then finally, there's this notion of an erasure of culture. As my indigenous sisters and brothers often say, we live in grandma's house.

00:48:26.000 - 00:48:33.280

We eat grandma's food. We are sitting on grandma's couch. But don't forget, grandma is upstairs. It's still grandma's house.

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And so for all Native Americans or indigenous peoples, sometimes in the United States, consistently, we forget our indigenous sisters and brothers. We are on native land. How it was taken is a very painful and difficult story, but those sisters and brothers are still here and they matter and their voices need to be heard and understood. To conclude our time and we're done, we want to give you some applications to be able to think through.

00:48:57.200 - 00:49:15.600

One, I want to invite you to go home and segregate your books. Go home and segregate your books based on ethnicity and culture, because I want you to see who's shaping your thinking. I'm not saying you have to agree with anything that I've said today, My job is not to make sure that you think what I think, but to make sure that you're thinking.

00:49:15.920 - 00:49:25.680

Go home and segregate your books and see who's shaping your thinking. See where you may have gaps. Do you only have books that have been written by men? Do you have any books that have been written by women?

00:49:26.080 - 00:49:38.720

Do you have books that have only been written by white authors? Do you have any books that have been written by black authors or Asian or Latinx or indigenous authors? See where you may have gaps. And then seek to understand before being understood.

00:49:38.720 - 00:49:57.520

It is seminal. Seek to understand these different ethnic groups before seeking to be understood. So it's a little bit of what I've got to be able to share. I want to stop sharing my screen and see if there are any questions at all from what we've talked about so far.

00:50:00.320 - 00:50:07.120

Checking the chat real quick. Not yet. All right. Any questions about anything we've talked about so far?

00:50:10.480 - 00:50:25.760

Dr. Watkins, I did notice that there was a question in the chat for you. Rochelle had to leave to do something for the IA. She said she had a question about Project 25.

00:50:25.760 - 00:50:38.400

It makes me super nervous about my safety, et cetera. Yes, that's a monumental one. without going into a lot of deal because we're almost out of time. I think the short version is, as I said at the beginning, is world two.

00:50:38.400 - 00:50:57.440

We have a nation that is divided theologically on the issue of race, not just politically. And so in the United States of America, there really is this belief to, I think, protect a traditional form of American values and how folks remember the United States was from 50, 60 years, 70 years ago. The diversity was there.

00:50:57.440 - 00:51:10.400

It just was not recognized as much. There was one dominant group, which was traditionally white and male, that made a lot of the decisions. And so everyone else kind of assimilated to that. And that felt like a less complex and less difficult time.

00:51:10.640 - 00:51:24.320

As America recognizes the diversity that's here, that's caused a lot of problems. Diversity is a very messy thing. It's beautiful, but it's kind of like Psalm 23, when my cup runneth over, right? Overflowing things can be messy things.

00:51:24.800 - 00:51:55.840

And as Christians, we have a responsibility to embrace that with kindness and with grace and with compassion and not with violence and vitriol. And so a lot of what is happening right now in the country is an attempt to say the ends justify the means that we can embrace Project 2025 or some of the horrible things that have been said in recent weeks and months about immigrants for the sake of the end result is that America will be safer. As an ethicist, I'm not just concerned with the end result, but the process, the method that we take to get there.

00:51:55.840 - 00:52:03.920

Who will we become if we embrace these principles? And so that's an ongoing challenge for us. It's a great question and it's something that we're all concerned about. Yeah.

00:52:05.360 - 00:52:14.000

Anybody else, questions about anything at all? I know I was talking fast. I am from Houston, so. I'll toss one in.

00:52:14.000 - 00:52:23.280

Thank you so much. As always, every presentation you make is stellar. And this was wonderful. And I hope this is not the only place where this happens.

00:52:24.080 - 00:52:32.960

Of course, you've done all this preparation. It's so tight. And thank you. So you know me, I'm living in the land of preaching and worship.

00:52:32.960 - 00:52:53.360

So I'm thinking, okay, I would like to hear you talk about what should be happening from pulpits. And I'm imagining what should be happening in congregations that we call purple. I'm not thinking to keep the peace.

00:52:53.360 - 00:53:21.920

I'm thinking the way that you walked through scripture, There's a whole set of Christians that think differently how to talk about Scripture. So would you just play around with what you think preachers should be doing in any context, any denomination, any racial context, but if the congregation represents both sides of the political aisle, what should preachers be doing as a carryout of what you just presented? Yeah, thank you, Jen.

00:53:21.920 - 00:53:46.720

That's a great question and something that I love to be able to talk about. So I would say very briefly, one, even as I said, the title of today's lecture is going to be Cultural Core Concerns. I could have just started with the cultural core concerns of African-Americans and Asian indigenous folks are, but I wanted to spend half the time demonstrating as quickly as possible biblical understanding of diversity. Because if you have been educated in the United States, which is all of us,

00:53:47.040 - 00:54:04.000

We all have a colonized version of theology. We have not been taught to see ethnic and cultural diversity in scripture. We don't look at the ethnic groups of, ethnicity of anybody from Abraham to Moses to Esther, right? She's come to a position, a royal position for such a time as this.

00:54:04.240 - 00:54:20.720

And if she's not queen, there's genocide of her peoples. None of those things are talked about. And so I think some of it is how do we illuminate these realities for folks and to help them to be able to see that diversity is in scripture, that there are things that they got right in scripture around diversity and things that they just straight got wrong.

00:54:21.120 - 00:54:39.760

But then what does it mean for us to be the people of God? So I think you have to be able to start there. The second thing that I would say that needs to take place in our churches is we need to think about comfort in terms of a quotient. I always say that if someone is 100% comfortable, someone else in that room is 100% uncomfortable.

00:54:40.480 - 00:54:59.960

If you're in a room and all the illustrations in the sermon, if all the songs that have been sung, if you know all the references that are present, there is someone there who knows none of those things. They don't know any of those songs. They get none of those references. And so if we're going to be in a multi-ethnic or a multicultural community, we need to have an equal amount of cultural

00:55:00.160 - 00:55:11.120

affirmation and displacement. My friends and I, we played at a church in Round Rock a couple of years ago called The Refuge. That was one of our goals. So we're going to sing songs from Hillsong.

00:55:11.120 - 00:55:24.400

We're also going to sing gospel music, and we're going to sing it with a keyboard, not a guitar. Like we want to sing gospel music correctly. We also sing in Spanish, and we have Spanish speakers that are there. We've got some Filipino sisters and brothers, so we sing in Tagalog.

00:55:24.800 - 00:55:41.600

And so we want to make sure that everyone gets exposed to these different types of cultures. And because we have that value, we have folks who have different denominational backgrounds as well too. We've got Seventh-day Adventists, we've got Baptists, we've got Catholic folks, we've got Episcopal folks. And so whenever we do communion on first Sundays,

00:55:41.920 - 00:56:04.000

we have someone from a different denominational background lead us in that service. And so sometimes it is liturgical, sometimes it's reflective, sometimes it's interactive. But again, we want to model that equal amount of cultural affirmation and displacement. So I think when you demonstrate a biblical understanding of diversity and then also challenge folks that comfort is not a right that we should have access to, comfort is an invitation.

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I think when you do that, you have an amazing opportunity for something significant. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much.

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My joy, my joy. Anybody else before we get ready to get out of here? I just want to say that this was a tremendous presentation. I loved how you walked us through the biblical viewpoint and the connections that you made to modern understandings of diversity.

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Fantastic. Enjoy it. Much. Appreciate you, Rodney.

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Absolutely. Thanks for everybody you were able to come and join us. So we are going to be off for a couple of weeks. The Academic Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr.

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Margaret Amber, will be joining us on December 5th. will be our last cultivating ideas for the year. So please make sure you come back and check that one out. Thanks for joining us and hope you have a fantastic day.

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Take care everyone.