Sujit Sivasundaram Posted: 16 December 2008
Keywords: Christianity & Religion, Worldviews & Culture,
The affirmation of ethnic diversity can give the individual believer and the local congregation a sense of cohesion and belonging. Yet, if ethnicity becomes a primary criterion defining identity, we risk marginalising ethnic minorities. This paper brings the twin principles of unity and diversity to bear on four contexts: the individual Christian, the local congregation, the global church and the church in society. In each case, it advocates the celebration of both the unity of how being in Christ sees ethnic differences disappear and the diversity that emerges in understanding and respecting ethnic differences amongst believers.
Unity, like faith, must be accompanied by works. Works of unity require cooperation, management, cross fertilisation and teamwork in the Body. These are skills and activities mostly in the hands of non-clergy. Diversity is stiffled by the bottle-neck, as David Watson once put it, of the clergy. Without leadership reform, the vital need of unity and diversity cannot be accomplished.
Doug Flett 17 December 2008
I quite like the paper. Regarding allowing immigrants to have their own group in the beginning, it sounds quite nice, but I am afraid, most often they tend to become a closed group sometime later.
Jeremiah Duomai 19 February 2009
Some excellent thoughts. However, there are two weaknesses. One, as Trinitarian Christians, we do not believe in Unity in Diversity. That is dualist and ultimately--if applied to the Trinity--is modalist or similar. Unity does not transcend and encompass diversity nor visa versa. Trinitarianism teaches true [i.e., visible] unity and real [i.e., self-governing, etc.] diversity at the same time. This can be worked out in (Con)federal structures. Second, Churches grow in family and friendship circles. Thus local cells of believers of friends and family can be mono-linguistic, mono-cultural. They can even band together into congregations and classes/diocese/presbteries. But they can fellowship with other groups of different languages within the same geographic territory (e.g. Great London or New York, etc.).
See
Kreitzer, Mark. 2009. The Concept of Ethnicity in the Bible: A Theological Analysis. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.
Hughes, Dewi. Castrating Culture: A Christian Perspective on Ethnic Identity from the Margins.
I\'d like to dialogue.
Mark R. Kreitzer, D. Miss., Ph.D.
Visiting Professor
Reformed Theological Seminary
Kosin University
Mark Kreitzer 10 October 2009
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