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CHAPTER 1

WHAT IS ETHNIC CONCILIATION?

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Our Call as the People of God

Racial reconciliation. This is a term we're used to hearing — but we rarely see positive results from discussions surrounding it. The words racial reconciliation usually trigger greater chasms of division rather than healing, repentance, and togetherness.

I'm going to state a hard truth: God's people, rep- resenting so many different ethnic backgrounds, seem just as divided as the world around us. Because of this, I have serious issues with how the American church has engaged in the work of racial reconciliation.

Yes, I believe in the full power of the gospel, which, when put into in action, produces evidence that Jesus' redemptive work on the cross is for people from every ethnicity, gender, and social class. I believe that all those who embrace Him as Lord are made part of the one new humanity He has created and is building.

But my hesitation comes down to the terms racial and reconciliation.

First, racial indicates that there is more than one race, which I see directly contradicting God's Word. And reconciliation implies we're trying to get back to what we once had — as if at one point, the various ethnicities within the United States were at a point of conciliation. To me, both terms are misleading, and operating with- out the fuller perspective means we're dedicating effort, resources, and time to a work that is not supported in Scripture or even a historical fact. If we're focused on the wrong things, the healing we seek will never be accomplished! That's why I believe that we in the American church should reframe the conversation around our efforts toward ethnic conciliation.

Ethnic conciliation is accomplished when we affirm (not ignore or idolize) the ethnic heritage of every human being and seek to remove animosity, distrust, and hostility from our interpersonal relationships. I believe that the only people qualified to take up the holistic work of ethnic conciliation are those who follow Jesus — because we are the only ones who have experienced both conciliation and reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:17-20; Ephesians 2:11-22). Jesus' finished work has not only reconciled us to God but has also brought us — from all different ethnicities — into one family! In Jesus alone, the nations have conciliation.

Jesus has sent His followers on a global mission to make this reality visible. The church has been equipped by God with His Word and the Holy Spirit to embody ethnic conciliation as a method of both evangelism and discipleship. When the watching world sees believers from every nation, tribe, and tongue working through the tensions of life together, nonbelievers will witness a beautiful example of ethnic conciliation.

However, what has happened for hundreds of years inside the American church is the opposite of Jesus' mission. We have refused to tear down human-made walls of segregation that have divided us from one another. Because of our stubborn unrepentance, the world has walked all over our witness.

It's time for us to reestablish a credible witness on behalf of our risen Lord. Let's step back from our status quo approach of reluctantly engaging in arguments regarding "issues of race" inside the church. Just as my wife and I need to sit down and actively listen to each other list contributions and solutions to our unresolved issues, the family of God must do the same in our divisions. We must engage with a fresh perspective that reflects Jesus' rule over the ethnic tensions present inside His own house. And we can begin by digesting the terms ethnic and conciliation.

ETHNICITY, NOT RACE

According to the Bible, the imago dei — image of God — is equally given to every human being in the entire human race. I believe life begins at conception, so from the beginning of every physical life that God forms in the womb (Psalm 139:13), through the time a child is born, lives, and dies, that person bears God's image. Because I am whole life as opposed to pro-life — which is often reduced to advocacy for children inside the womb while socially neglecting them thereafter — I want you to know that every person, for the entirety of their life, is privileged to bear the image of God. When people ignore the imago dei, the result is social atrocities: not only abortion but also chattel slavery, Jim Crow laws, hate crimes, and much more.

Imago dei provides every human being with God-given dignity and distinction from every other kind of creation God made. Even after the fall of man, every human being has inherited sin equally. This was passed from Adam to our entire human race, not to one or a few select people groups (Romans 5:12). The human race traces back to one common set of parents, Adam and Eve.

Acts 17:26 says, "He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place." This one man is Adam, who heads the family tree of every ethnicity on the planet. What's important to understand here is that Paul was proclaiming this truth to a group of Greeks, who believed they were superior to all other ethnic people groups! Paul debunked any belief that one ethnicity is superior to another, especially when it comes to political and military conquests.

In Malachi 2:10, the prophet of God says, "Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?" Malachi makes a distinction based not on race but on relationship to God. God is the creator of every human being; we all bear His image. Yet God is Father only to those He has adopted into His family. This is reinforced in 1 Peter 2:9-10; Peter speaks to Christians as God's "chosen race," "royal priesthood," "holy nation," and "people for [God's] own possession." Once again, our race is not what separates us — whether we are God's own possession is what sets us apart. If we follow Christ, we are to share God's story with those who know Him only as Creator and not as Father. This is the Good News of the esperanza we proclaim: We can each be reconciled to God.

In Scripture, the first divisions between humans come not from different races but from rebellion and separation from God. At the time of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), all people on earth shared one language, and they used this shared language to attempt to elevate themselves above God. God brought judgment on them, confusing them by creating various languages, which would prevent humans from organizing global rebellion.

We see throughout the rest of Scripture that people are often described not in terms of racial categories as we use today but rather by ethnicity, language, or geographic proximity. As Dr. Jarvis Williams notes,

The category of race has a broader use in the Bible than in modern terminology. One important distinction is that the biblical category of race was not constructed with pseudoscience for the purpose of establishing a racial hierarchy. Racial categories were employed apart from any consideration of biological inferiority rooted in whiteness or blackness. In fact, Genesis 11:6 in the Septuagint identifies humanity as one genos (race/kind/class/group). The Greek term ethnos (nation, Gentile) overlaps with genos. Both terms function as racial categories.

When we look at Acts 2, we see God the Holy Spirit beginning a new and unique work in the lives of Jesus' followers, providing them with the ability to speak in languages they did not know. In this passage, people groups are identified by languages connected to their geographic dwelling:

They were amazed and astonished, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians — we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God."

ACTS 2:7-11

The Holy Spirit's work at Pentecost was a foretaste of the gospel being proclaimed in languages and places beyond the geographic limits of Jesus' earthly ministry. The Holy Spirit empowered believers to make Jesus known globally and locally. The gospel's power is made visible when human beings from various ethnicities hear the gospel clearly communicated in their known language and are given opportunities to embrace Jesus as their Savior.

The Bible proves that there is one human race and that within this one race is a beautiful array of different ethnicities. The racial categories we often use today in America are human-made social constructions slanted toward partiality and manifested in superiority and inferiority complexes. In Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America, Anibal Quijano boldly declares that the Spanish creation of racial categories was mere code language between the conquerors and those they conquered. At its inception, racial categories were a way to declare who was superior and who was inferior. Quijano says, "The idea of race, in its modern meaning, does not have a known history before the colonization of America" and "it was constructed to refer to the sup- posed differential biological structures between those groups [conquerors and conquered]." He also argues that history shows "race as a category was applied for the first time to the Indians, not to blacks. In this way, race appears much earlier than color in the history of the social classification of the global population."

One of the strongest arguments for the systemic racial caste system we have in the United States is evidenced by the color-coded language we use. In his book Working toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White, David R. Roediger traces how immigrants from Europe exchanged their ethnic identity for the created term white to secure employment, housing, and other social benefits. The idea behind this term was to create an American identity. Today in America, it's nearly impossible to speak clearly on the issues of ethnicity without having to use the socially embraced terms white and black. These terms were not normally used prior to colonization.

In Spain, starting in the sixteenth century, the casta system created systemic segregation between those with pure Spanish bloodlines and all others. A royal Spanish decree in 1563 declared that the lower classes of society — which included the indigenous natives, African slaves, and those with mixed blood — could only live in approved barrios. (Needless to say, these barrios were comfortably placed away from those who lived in the higher tiers of the casta.) This system also prevented those with mixed blood from upward mobility, not only in society but also in the church.

Prior to the Reformation, in 1512, Spain passed the Laws of Burgos, which provided a framework for protecting their indigenous labor and ensuring their Christianization. These laws were rarely enforced, and Dominicans Antonio de Montesinos and Bartolomé de las Casas mobilized to fight for the stated rights of the indigenous peoples who were now slaves that were treated worse than animals. Between 1550 and 1551, Bartolomé de la Casas debated the known Spanish scholar Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda about the horrible treatment of the indigenous image bearers. Sepúlveda's arguments were rooted in Aristotle's doctrine of natural slavery, which said, "one part of mankind is set aside by nature to be slaves in the service of masters born for a life of virtue free of manual labor."

We must understand our history if we want to understand the world we inherited. Before American Protestants charge racialized language and segregation to the Roman Catholic institution alone, we need to note a sobering truth: Much of the same systemic segregation was repeated by Protestants during the colonization of what we know as the United States of America. In American church history, the social construction of race was built by the Europeans who migrated to the new world, looking for cash and converts. In the Americas, people of color have been marginalized not only in society but also the church for nearly five hundred years. Jesus once told us that we are "the salt of the earth," the taste of God for the people around us (Matthew 5:13) — but because of this systemic sin, our saltiness has lost its flavor. Losing flavor is one reason our witness is being trampled on by the feet of the world.

This socially constructed idea of race that is normal in America today doesn't find its beginnings in Scripture. In fact, Paul rebuked this foolishness in Acts 17. The church must work to not only renounce this social construct but also tear it down, because it does not reflect Kingdom ethics or human flourishing. For far too long, God's people have normalized the sin of partiality, the false belief of different races, and the practice of segregation. We must learn to stop using color-coded language and replace it with new language that expresses the reality of imago dei in every human being. We must also affirm the richness of different ethnicities and keep ourselves from either idolizing or ignoring ethnicity all together.

CONCILIATION, NOT RECONCILIATION

Conciliation takes place when conflicting parties over- come their animosity, distrust, and hostility to operate as one united group. When I speak about ethnic con- ciliation, I'm often asked, "Why do away with the term reconciliation when it's a gospel term?" But the term reconciliation actually furthers my case for conciliation. Before the Fall, the entire human race (in Adam and his wife) were in a state of conciliation with God. There was no animosity, distrust, or hostility. In the Fall, sin separated the entire human race from God. During our separation, because of our sin, animosity, distrust, and hostility came between our entire race and God. Through the redemptive work of Jesus, every human who embraces Jesus as their Savior is reconciled to God. But reconciliation cannot take place without conciliation — and the reality of our history means that conciliation has never taken place in the United States of America, let alone in American churches en masse.

Navajo speaker and writer Mark Charles has communicated regularly about the doctrine of discovery, which addresses how the founding documents of the United States of America used language that placed the imago dei only on landowning men of European descent. He says that while we often look to "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence as proof that the founders valued equality, thirty lines below, the indigenous people of Turtle Island are identified as "merciless Indian savages." Other historic American documents strip the imago dei from African slaves. The Constitution had to be amended to provide rights to women and people of color; if women and people of color had been considered equal from the beginning of our nation, there would be no need for constitutional amendments for women and people of ethnic heritage outside of Europe.

The perspective of American (and white) supremacy permeated the church in profound and troubling ways. Professor Donald Scott said that Second Great Awakening Protestant preachers like Lyman Beecher and Charles Finney told Americans that America was the site of the millennial reign of Christ, so Christians were to assume it was their destiny to usher in the Millennium by providentially expanding from sea to shining sea.

Diplomats, journalists, soldiers, evangelical activists, abolitionists, and pacifists leveraged such language to frame Mexico and the Roman Catholic church as enemies to American Republicanism. The resulting conquest took more than half of Mexico's land — including precious oil in Texas and California and gold in California that would be discovered later — and quashed the rights of Mexican families who owned it. In the aftermath, the Mexican American citizens of the newly formed United States were not given the same rights as its citizens of European descent, as "Mexicans of color returned to a racial order where they had few civil rights." Similar to Adam renaming Eve, Mexicans living in the United States had their names sound more "American." My great-grandfather Aurelio Conchola was renamed "Joe Canchola" by the US government on entering the United States. And as we know, this is only one example of the attempt to diminish and control other ethnicities within the United States.

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Excerpted from "Intensional"
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Copyright © 2019 D. A. Horton.
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