Byrnesys Blabberings

Appended to the end of my already long, must-read books is the above Race: A Theological account. Fortunately I am able to taste of the book through various blogs who have mentioned it and particularly Jesus Creed who have run a series on it. My interest in race and theology has been rekindled through my recent trip to South Africa where I read the fascinating "My Traitors Heart" by Rian Malan which gave a terrifying account of the feelings and actions surrounding 20th Century Apartheid.

I was somewhat astounded though to read the following quote from Carter:

“modern racial discourse and practice have their genesis inside Christian theological discourses and missiological practices, which themselves were tied to the practice of empire in the advance of Western civilization” (p.3).

The church has formulated the basis for many presuppositions with society, and it has the opportunity to redress those.

Carter goes on to say:

"race functions to support the coming-to-be and the sustaining of modern society at an inarticulate level” (p.39-40). In other words, the problem of race is directly related to the problem of modernity. “West is out to isolate . . . what it is about ‘the very structure of modern discourse at its inception’ that allowed and even mandated it to ‘[produce] forms of rationality, scientificity and objectivity as well as aesthetic and cultural ideals’ that ‘require[d] the constitution of the idea of white supremacy’” (p.44-45).

McKnight then remarks the form that this issue has taken in the Church.

"for many centuries we have been witness to the Western, white cultural captivity of the church. Christianity has more accurately reflected the norms, values, and practices of Western, white culture than the Scriptures. The Western, white captivity of the church has meant that non-white voices are often marginalized and placed into the category of “exotic” and non-normative expressions of Christianity (such as the black church or the immigrant church)."

My question is this, how is this meaningfully addressed within mission? My immediate response is some warped form of ‘just’ affirmative action where all white males are band from mission outside of their cultural context to end the perpetuation of White male dominance but this seems to be fraught with problems at every level. Healing for these wounds will never be brought around by programmed responses, political correctness has at least taught us that. At least one of the ways in which we can heal such a wound without turning to cliche buzz words is relationship, the purging of irrational fear and subjection which comes from stereotyping people into statistics, to live life as people together.