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 PrintableVersion How to become a colour-blind Christian‘Half the world lives on less than two dollars a day’ (George Bush, June 2001). They are poor because we have taken their money. 20% of the world receives 87% of its income while 80% of the world lives on 13% of its income. In 1820, income per person in developed countries was three times income per person in underdeveloped countries: by 1992, income per person in developed countries was 72 times income per person in underdeveloped countries.1 Meanwhile, in 1960, 78% (66 million) of 84.5 million evangelicals worldwide lived in the West. By 2000, nearly three-quarters (310 million) of 420 million evangelicals worldwide lived in underdeveloped countries.2 What is God saying? Imagine you live on less than two dollars a day (like over half the evangelicals and unreached peoples in the world). Rich Western Christians are daily made richer through your labour, raw materials, minerals and land. What do you think the mission of rich Western Christians should be? To share their faith with unreached peoples? Not primarily. To give back what they’ve stolen from us. Crucial evangelism‘Isn’t evangelism important’? It’s crucial! But consider Jesus’s observation in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead’ (Luke 16.31). Moses and the Prophets spoke much about justice and stopping oppression: if people do not practice justice they risk going where the rich man went. Good works are evidence of repentance (Luke 3.8-14); they are part of the witness that brings people to God (1 Peter 2.12): bad works cause loss of saltiness and fitness for being thrown out and trampled by men (Matthew 5.13). Capitalism and Christianity‘How did some people get so poor while other people got so rich’? The capitalist system started around the 14th century, based on buying goods cheap and selling them dear. Owing to the lack of resources in Europe, merchants then travelled the world to trade and make people richer. The Industrial Revolution in Britain was financed initially largely from profits made through the triangular slave trade between Britain, Africa and the Caribbean; more latterly, in the 19th century, it was bolstered by wealth from India. Britain managed an empire by developing a wealthy elite in each country who believed that British values and ways of life were superior to their own and to be welcomed. The implication is that white people are superior to African, Asian and Latin American people in every way. After countries gained independence, transnational companies continued siphoning wealth out through inter-company pricing, while institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation have acted largely in the interests of developed countries at the expense of underdeveloped countries. For the cost of a plane ticket‘But Blair and Bush don’t represent me! I’m coming to bring people the good news of Jesus’. You land in a predominantly Muslim country having just spent the equivalent of nine months of a local person’s income on the plane ticket. Your children attend a school that rich local people are bribing other locals to get their children into. Your presence and lifestyle remind people of where their money has gone. What does this tell people about Jesus? One mission agency’s Asian evangelical workers asked Western missionaries recently to leave their countries and return to work in their continent of origin! Where do we go from here? 1. Do integral mission3‘Rather than eliminating the distinction between the Kingdom of God and the world, or conversely retiring from the world in a kind of modernised, intellectual monasticism, let us advance joyfully and enthusiastically to submit the world to God’.4 The first has brought death to liberal churches. The second, sadly, has been the way many evangelical churches have striven to live the Christian life separated from the world, which produced religious sub-worlds that were supposed to eliminate all the cultural influences from Christianity. The third way is not some moral majority controlling a country’s laws; rather I understand it to mean transforming and dedicating the peoples and cultures to the service of God’s Kingdom. 2. Start localIn an effort to reclaim their family’s wealth, many people from underdeveloped countries have come to Britain. ‘People need to start with their nearest neighbour. It is usually easier to respond to the farthest (e.g. Africa) than the nearest’5 (e.g. African neighbours in UK). 3. Face up to white people’s daily experience of lifeWhite people ‘have a package of unearned assets that they can cash in each day’, for example: ‘I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race. This privilege confers dominance and leads to a systemic racism that African, Asian and Latin American people experience in all aspects of life. 4. Face up to African, Asian and Latin American people’s daily experience of lifeTake, for example, black underachievement in schools. A common view is that the responsibility for black underachievement lies with the black community. So, black boys lack motivation to succeed at school through the absence of their fathers acting as role models and are more attracted by the hedonistic bling-bling appeal of MTV rather than by exam success. An alternative view from the black community is that the institutional racism discovered in the police service through the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report needs to be investigated in the education system. Life outside of school influences black children’s response to the school system. Experiences such as discrimination against their parents relating to housing; tabloid comments on immigrants and asylum seekers; bad community experiences of the police; word association of ‘white/light’ with ‘good’ and ‘dark/black’ with ‘bad’ and comments from white children about ‘black b*****’ make children think negatively about their colour. The impression children receive is that if you’re black then you are ugly, stupid and worthless. In school a black child’s language/accent (e.g. Jamaican Patwah) can be seen as second rate. When the pictures, illustrations, music, heroes, great historical and contemporary figures in the classroom are all white, it is difficult for a child to identify with anyone who is not white (I understand this curriculum is also common in India, Africa and the Caribbean). Research has been done in UK and US into the reaction of 3-8-year-old black children to white and black dolls. When asked which doll black children liked to play with best, 67% chose the white doll. When asked which doll looked most like themselves, 33% of black children chose the white doll. Research also shows that when black children are asked to draw themselves, they draw themselves as white people!7 A common temptation for the schoolteacher is to have low expectations of the ability of black children. For their part, the black child is likely to have low expectations about their likely performance in a white-controlled system of education and also low motivation to achieve academically, for example, because of a lack of a decent job and life chances. 5. Do something in partnership with African, Asian and Latin American ChristiansSeveral initiatives are starting among young people in Wandsworth borough. The first is ‘Black Boys Can’ (BBC)8, being jointly supported by several predominantly African-Caribbean churches. BBC aims to build black boys’ self-confidence, motivating them to social and educational success and assisting them in developing strategies for dealing with adverse factors that often impede their progress. BBC is taught by positive role models from the community. One main purpose is evangelistic and the aim is to start in the church and then take BBC out into a local secular youth club and secondary school. Clearly, a prime purpose is to ensure that mainstream education gives equality of opportunity to all children. Dialogue in education, as well as in other areas, has been started by Africans involved in addressing legacies of enslavement raised by the 2007 commemoration.9 I have been asked to identify youth groups in white-led churches in the borough who might wish to discuss with African young people the issues they face in education. Predominantly African-Caribbean churches are also hoping to start Street Pastors within the borough before the end of the year. This is partly in response to three murders in three weeks recently in Tooting. Alan SharpNotes: © Evangelicals Now - October 2006 |
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