A Biblical Rebuke of Femicide

This article is part of a Learning Center course called, Reading the Bible as a Mujerista Evangelica set to release on March 8th. To learn more about WOS online courses, visit learn.worldoutspoken.com.

We have to be better readers. We have to learn how to read. And we must learn how to tell stories. To know when to raise our voice and when to lower it. When to pull the people in with a whisper, and when to increase our volume!

My professor and mentor has told me this before, and now to the countless others he has taught. His love for Charles Dickens and Don Quijote seeps into the way he reads and writes, even in his academics.[1] It makes his writing interesting to read, but only because he knows that a good reader makes a good writer. It’s the reason why I am intentional about my own reading. I regularly rotate fiction and poetry books into my repertoire. I, too, believe that a good writer learns the art by being a good reader. You communicate to others by noticing the ways that best communicate to you.

The biblical authors know this too. The Old Testament narratives have this way of drawing in the reader. These writers quickly shift from artful prose to well-developed poetry, even within the stories of the historical narratives (like Deborah’s victory song in Judges 5). These stories aren’t just dry attempts to narrate without a purpose; no, these stories are meant to convey something deeper about the condition of life and add to what we already know about God. I invite you to look at Judges 19 with me, a story so grotesque that maybe you’ve skipped it over, but a story so carefully crafted that the narrator is undeniably attempting to communicate something to the readers on the other side of the page.

(Trigger warning: Rape, domestic violence, and murder. Please feel free to skip over this article.)

Judges 19[2]

In those days, when there was no king in Israel, a certain Levite, residing in the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim, took to himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah. But his concubine became angry with him, and she went away from him to her father’s house at Bethlehem in Judah, and was there some four months. Then her husband set out after her, to speak tenderly to her and bring her back. He had with him his servant and a couple of donkeys. When he reached her father’s house, the girl’s father saw him and came with joy to meet him. His father-in-law, the girl’s father, made him stay, and he remained with him three days; so they ate and drank, and he stayed there.

“In those days, when there was no king in Israel…” Already the narrator sets the scene for us. Knowing the period of Judges as a time where “everyone did what was right in their own eyes” (Judg 17:6), this statement already stirs up fear for the reader. What will happen in this narrative, during a dark time of chaos and free reign?

We read that a concubine becomes angry at her Levite husband. In her anger, she decides to set out to her father’s house for a long four months. What I find interesting about this story is not what it says, but what it doesn’t say. As a Levite, this man had a higher status and honored place in society.[3] The concubine, who in contrast has a lower status in the ancient Near Eastern world as legal property of her master, does not speak. We have no clue as to why she became angry. We have no clue if her father welcomed her with open arms, but we do know that he opened his arms to his son-in-law. The narrative states the Levite’s intent to “speak tenderly” to his concubine, almost in an attempt to see him in a positive light, but then the reader begins to wonder: Why did it take four months for him to come find her? And the story states that he stayed to eat and drink, but there is no mention of the Levite actually speaking to the concubine—the very reason he came to his father-in-law’s home. In actuality, it stirs up even more uncertainty. Pay attention to how your body feels, to what remains unsaid, and to how your attitude toward the Levite shifts.[4]

On the fourth day they got up early in the morning, and he prepared to go; but the girl’s father said to his son-in-law, “Fortify yourself with a bit of food, and after that you may go.” So the two men sat and ate and drank together; and the girl’s father said to the man, “Why not spend the night and enjoy yourself?” When the man got up to go, his father-in-law kept urging him until he spent the night there again. On the fifth day he got up early in the morning to leave; and the girl’s father said, “Fortify yourself.” So they lingered until the day declined, and the two of them ate and drank. When the man with his concubine and his servant got up to leave, his father-in-law, the girl’s father, said to him, “Look, the day has worn on until it is almost evening. Spend the night. See, the day has drawn to a close. Spend the night here and enjoy yourself. Tomorrow you can get up early in the morning for your journey, and go home.” But the man would not spend the night; he got up and departed, and arrived opposite Jebus (that is, Jerusalem).

He had with him a couple of saddled donkeys, and his concubine was with him. When they were near Jebus, the day was far spent, and the servant said to his master, “Come now, let us turn aside to this city of the Jebusites, and spend the night in it.” But his master said to him, “We will not turn aside into a city of foreigners, who do not belong to the people of Israel; but we will continue on to Gibeah.” Then he said to his servant, “Come, let us try to reach one of these places, and spend the night at Gibeah or at Ramah.” So they passed on and went their way; and the sun went down on them near Gibeah, which belongs to Benjamin. They turned aside there, to go in and spend the night at Gibeah.

Here the narrator drops another hint. We know now that the Levite is traveling not only with his concubine, but with one of his servants. His title has now been changed to “his master,” almost as if the narrator is detaching the Levite from the concubine and shifting focus onto the servant. His servant makes a suggestion: to spend the night in a city of foreigners. The master says, “No thank you!” He refuses to be part of a community that does “not belong to the people of Israel.” We remember too that his association as a Levite meant that in theory, he practiced the law of the LORD. However, the reader wonders if his disdain toward foreigners disregards a law that states to love the foreigner—not tolerate, but love (Lev 19:34). He dismisses his servant’s suggestion and does what is right in his own eyes.

He went in and sat down in the open square of the city, but no one took them in to spend the night. Then at evening there was an old man coming from his work in the field. The man was from the hill country of Ephraim, and he was residing in Gibeah. (The people of the place were Benjaminites.) When the old man looked up and saw the wayfarer in the open square of the city, he said, “Where are you going and where do you come from?” He answered him, “We are passing from Bethlehem in Judah to the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim, from which I come. I went to Bethlehem in Judah; and I am going to my home. Nobody has offered to take me in. We your servants have straw and fodder for our donkeys, with bread and wine for me and the woman and the young man along with us. We need nothing more.” The old man said, “Peace be to you. I will care for all your wants; only do not spend the night in the square.” So he brought him into his house, and fed the donkeys; they washed their feet, and ate and drank.  

The woman has still been largely absent up to this point. Was she not intended to be the focal point of this entire narrative, the reason the Levite man even went out in the first place, and now the reason they are traveling back? The reader begins to wonder why the narrative feels empty, and it is the lack of focus on the woman that contributes to this emptiness. The Levite even tells this man, “Nobody has offered to take me in” instead of “Nobody has offered to take us in” (italics mine).[5] The narrator continues to drop clues about the Levite man’s character and the blatant disregard for his servant and his concubine.

While they were enjoying themselves, the men of the city, a perverse lot, surrounded the house, and started pounding on the door. They said to the old man, the master of the house, “Bring out the man who came into your house, so that we may have intercourse with him.” And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is my guest, do not do this vile thing. Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them; but against this man do not do such a vile thing.” But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine, and put her out to them. They wantonly raped her, and abused her all through the night until the morning. And as the dawn began to break, they let her go.

As morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her master was, until it was light. In the morning her master got up, opened the doors of the house, and when he went out to go on his way, there was his concubine lying at the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. “Get up,” he said to her, “we are going.” But there was no answer. Then he put her on the donkey; and the man set out for his home.

Still as the story begins to close, the woman does not speak. And now, as the Levite demands her to “get up” because they should be on their way, we as readers do not know if she is alive. It confirms all of our suspicions picked up throughout the narrative—that the Levite’s character is less than exemplary.

When he had entered his house, he took a knife, and grasping his concubine he cut her into twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. Then he commanded the men whom he sent, saying, “Thus shall you say to all the Israelites, ‘Has such a thing ever happened since the day that the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt until this day? Consider it, take counsel, and speak out.’”

The story still never tells you if the concubine was alive or not. Her silence lingers until the very end. Instead, the Levite man takes control of the situation by gruesomely dismembering her. And, instead of taking responsibility for his actions and their outcome, he has the audacity to point fingers at the Israelites! As everyone did what was right in their own eyes, he blamed the dark and preventable death of his concubine on the state of society. Maybe if people spoke out, then the men wouldn’t have come to rape them, and then perhaps this “thing” would not have “ever happened.” We know that the Levite man’s complacency in the systemic sin found in the period of Judges contributes to this abomination just as much as the wickedness of the men did.

Being on the other side of the story, even more questions arise. Did the concubine have good reason to leave in the first place, considering the outcome of her story? Would this violence have been averted if the servant’s suggestion was followed, or was this bound to happen due to the Levite’s less-than-holy character? And finally, what is the narrator trying to convey with a story so brutal, one that begins with a woman afforded no agency or words and ends with her rape and death?

When we read stories like this, our minds always shift to ask how something like this could be included in our Old Testament Scriptures. It is important to acknowledge the implications of such a text. First, like many of the Old Testament stories, this story is not meant to be prescriptive but descriptive. After careful analysis, readers see that the narrator’s craftsmanship of the story shows that they were never on the side of the Levite. Thus, a theological, real-life lesson can be extracted. Second, the Old Testament does not shy away from acknowledging the hurts of this world. Although we hate encountering stories like this, we know that our fallen world is scattered with situations that read just like this one. And for those who have experienced these situations, it gives us words that describe something that we may not have even processed ourselves.

As Phylllis Trible puts it, this story “depicts the horrors of male power, brutality, and triumphalism; of female helplessness, abuse, and annihilation.”[6] The moment the Levite decided to mistreat his concubine, everything went downhill. If you continue on to read Judges 20, you see that things continue to spiral downward as an effect of the woman’s death. The flourishing of women, or lack thereof, is directly correlated to the health of this society. This society is indeed in need of a savior. The mistreatment of the oppressed and marginalized, specifically women here, can only result in a society that perpetuates even more oppression and marginalization.

About Michelle Navarrete

My passions stem from within the Old Testament, focusing on biblical themes and social ethics through an interdisciplinary approach. As a second-generation Latina who lives in between the Mexican and American cultures, my faith inevitably intersects with my culture and experiences. I use storytelling in my academics as a way to engage my audience and cultivate connection. People are part of my passion and I want my work to reflect that. Currently located within the Latino community of West Chicago, I am pursuing my master’s in Old Testament Biblical Exegesis at Wheaton College, and I intend to pursue doctoral studies after my time at Wheaton. During my time at World Outspoken, I hope that my contributions will renew faith perspectives in a way that mobilizes restoring change within communities.

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Footnotes

[1] Dr. M. Daniel Caroll R. intertwines his love for narrative and storytelling, and even contextualizing from the Latina/o perspective, through the prophetic voice in his new book The Lord Roars: Recovering the Prophetic Voice for Today. Shameless plug.

[2] I invite you to read this without the verses marked, like a story. For your reference, this is the NRSV translation, and the entirety of chapter 19 of Judges.

[3] Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives, 66.

[4] For a more comprehensive treatment of the narrator’s possible intentions, see Jacqueline E. Lapsley’s work, “A Gentle Guide: Attending to the Narrator’s Perspective in Judges 19-21.”

[5] Lapsley, 43.

[6] Trible, 65.

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Forming Just Reading Communities

This article is from a forthcoming series in the Moody Center magazine. To learn more about the magazine and Moody Center, subscribe to their newsletter.

Does not wisdom call, and understanding raise her voice? -Proverbs 8:1

The past year has taught us that understanding the problems we face is not as easy as one would hope. We are stuck in the irony of having more information available to us than ever before but not knowing who to trust. This past year begs the questions, “how do we best love our neighbor,” and “what is just?” To complicate matters further the pressure has revealed deep disunities in our homes.

We need to invite people to understand more—to heed the call of wisdom. But how does one begin? One way is by creating space where we can slow down, focus more deeply on engaging resources that have studied the issues, and process questions together.

What follows is what I have gleaned from participating in and leading reading groups. I offer a theological framework of the goals and practices of these groups as being an exercise in biblical wisdom. For it is within the practice of wisdom that we will find our first steps in justice. First, I overview certain aspects of wisdom that form the method and goal of our reading communities. Second, I show how these aspects of wisdom are best exercised by reading in community. I conclude with how these practices differ in approaching justice than our broader social context. For justice is wisdom moving towards love.

Reading for Wisdom

To know wisdom and instruction, to discern the sayings of understanding, to receive instruction in wise behavior, righteousness, justice, and integrity. Proverbs 1:2-3

Wisdom is the understanding by which the Lord has ordered creation. The personification of wisdom in Proverbs chapter 8 tells us that she was beside God “as a master workman.” Scripture presents us with an invitation into wisdom by revealing who God is and what God has done. In this revelation, wisdom is shown to be God’s gift to us. God graciously reveals Godself and God’s purposes to invite us to enter in. In recognizing that wisdom is a gift from God we understand that our practices to enter wisdom are not acts of positive contribution to our own improvement but a withdrawal to allow the triune God to begin, progress, and accomplish the work within us.

Our invitation into God’s wisdom is to recognize our relation to that which the Lord has made. The fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom is to rightly understand this relation to the Lord and the rest of his creation. It is a recognition of the way of life that God has set before us to cultivate shalom in a fallen world, in other words to know justice. This recognition is a humble locating ourselves as the aids, not the originators, of bringing peace into the world. It is recognizing our finitude and the immense complexity that challenge the peace of the kingdom of God today.

Recognizing our finitude should lead us into constant formation of wisdom instead of chasing the illusion of mastering these issues. This means that we are constantly cultivating questions. We ask questions, seek out the answers, and then ask better questions. This process resists settling for simple answers to complex problems. I believe this is displayed in Proverbs 26:4-5. In these verses we are given two apparently contradictory responses to similar situations. Wisdom is not found in knowing the responses but in the ability to discern when to employ them.

From these above points-- understanding wisdom as God’s gift to us, recognizing our relation to God and creation, and leaning into our finitude amongst complexity-- we should recognize that wisdom shapes us primarily to be excellent listeners and secondarily as speakers. God calls his people to listen to his statues and cherish his law (Deut 4:1, Ps 119). James 1 advises us to be quick to hear and slow to speak. Proverbs repeatedly asks the reader to listen. Jesus constantly ends lessons with “those who have ears, let them hear.” It is only in listening that we begin to understand the complexity of our contexts and be better equipped to participate in God’s shalom. 

Reading in Community 

Iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17

Reading in community helps cultivate these aspects of wisdom in practical ways. The presence of another person changes the way in which we interact with a text. The three things I want to highlight are how reading together forces us to find and enhance our questions, encourages us to internalize the process of our thinking so we can communicate clearly, and exercises our ability to share the space to think.

Whenever our group begins a book, we always start with a set of questions. We start with basic questions; why do we want to read this book? Why did the author think it was important to write about this topic? This prepares the group to look for certain things. We can come back to those questions and start to answer them. We can modify the questions to be more specific and to reflect how we are progressing in our understanding. Why does Augustine stress the indivisibility of the trinitarian persons in God’s economic actions? Why does Willie James Jennings stress a people’s relation to land in trying to understand race? The questions propel us forward and remind us of our place as learners-- recognizing how we do not yet fully understand.

Not everyone in the group will have the same experience with reading texts or thinking through certain problems. This is a benefit to everyone in the group. Encouraging and prioritizing questions should help everyone feel free to pause the discussion and ask for clarification. It forces the group to slow down and find another way to communicate the argument. This helps us further internalize the concepts and find meaningful ways to communicate to help people understand. It forces us to focus our listening so that we can better aid our neighbors in their process of understanding.

When we read in a group we are also sharing the space to think. One person can certainly monopolize the group’s time with their thoughts. Reading in a group helps us exercise an ability to think with as opposed to for one another. We consider each other’s questions. We hear how each other processes and makes sense of a topic. We practice disagreement in a way that shows we respect and love the other person. When we fail to do so, we have a space to also repent and continue the work.

Cultivating Wisdom toward Love

At this point, you may be wondering how this understanding of wisdom and these practices of reading in groups helps us become more just. I take it to be obvious that in our time of social media and the commercialization of information in our news sources that practices contrary to wisdom are being cultivated. Complex issues are reduced into simple binary options in order to mobilize political bodies to expediency. We receive positive reinforcement for our speaking on any given issue and thus want to speak more and more. These things are not bad in themselves but when left unchecked they do not foster the type of wisdom that is reflected in Scriptures.

The above practices force us to slow down and listen to our neighbors, especially when we disagree with them. We ask questions when we recognize we do not understand. We are forced to find better ways to communicate that which we do understand. We allow issues to be complex and we find better ways of engaging in the ways that we can. This is what we do with those we love-- we continue the conversation because we care about the other and are trying to understand the ways in which shalom is broken. This is a small part of justice. This is a small part of growing in wisdom-- understanding to love our neighbor.

About Sam Keithley

Sam Keithley is a husband and father of two. He is located in Des Moines, IA where he leads a theological reading group. He has an MA in Systematic Theology from Wheaton College and hopes to pursue further academic work researching pneumatology, philosophy of language, and the doctrine of Scripture.

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For further reading

Daniel J. Treier, Virtue and the Voice of God: Toward Theology as Wisdom

John Webster, The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason

Matthew Lee Anderson, The End of our Exploring: A Book about Questioning and the Confidence of Faith

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Stay or Leave

Should I stay or should I leave? Am I trapped in the barrio or is the barrio an inescapable, yet beautiful part of me from which I should not flee (or even have the desire to leave)? Should the life-taking stories of my barrio take precedence (like they do in the news) or do I privilege only the life-giving (counter) narratives that dignify my city? If I stay, am I being a bad parent, allowing my son to remain in a potentially dangerous environment where opportunity and resources are scant? If I leave, am I being a bad Christian by opting for my family’s and my own comfort and safety?

These questions invaded my mind and the noises of my barrio played a conflicting melody where love, sacrifice, injustice, and pain entwined.

El ruido que amo (the noise that I love)

I love las cumbias, las rancheras y los boleros I hear desde mi ventana. I didn’t exactly request this music pero my neighbors’ music selection is everyone’s delight. Ok, maybe not everyone’s, but I like it. I’ll be hanging out in my back yard and suddenly la canción de Ana Gabriel que puso la vecina gets me going, and I start singing my heart out: ¿Quién como tú, que día a día puedes tenerle? It takes me back to the many road trips I took with my parents when I was a little girl. Ana Gabriel, Juan Gabriel, Los Bukis – those were my jams!

I love el ruido que mi gente makes when they’re hussling. Tamales, tamales, tamales. ¡Tamales de piña, de puerco, de pollo, tamales! I love when my son runs out yelling raspadooo when the street vendors pass by honking their horns announcing la llegada of those delicious raspados we all slurp with such gozo. I love hearing mi pueblo use their voice to try to make ends meet en el swapmeet: barato, barato, barato, pásele; ¿qué le damos, señorita, pásele a lo barato? 

I love la euforia que se escucha cuando la selección mexicana scores a goooooooool!

Whoever said my people have been silenced, has not set foot in my neighborhood.

El ruido que odio (the noise that I hate)

I hate that I can distinguish the sound of fireworks from gunshots. I hate that we have to run inside the house and lock every door when we hear shots fired. I hate that every other day police sirens and the noise of helicopters drown out the sound of my favorite TV show, reminding me that I am not safe. I hate the cries of yet another grieving mother as she pleas with the public to help her find her child’s murderer.

El ruido que amo y el ruido que odio are juxtaposed mainly because “U.S. barrios have been a source of cultural resistance; they function as reterritorialized spaces where it is possible to maintain one ́s culture and to resist assimilation. At the same time, the barrios are social spaces where ethnic lower classes are segregated thus impairing their economic development and creating a subculture of violence and poverty.”[1]

El silencio que mata (the silence that kills)

But the most murderous force in my neighborhood is silent. The culprit hides in plain sight. More than two thousand pounds of toxic chemicals are emitted in Wilmington, California every single day. My beloved city is surrounded by the largest concentration of oil refineries in the state and the third largest oil field in the contiguous U.S., and it is home to the largest port in North America (Grist 2022). Wilmington, which is 90% Latino and 40% immigrant, is a toxic wasteland; the dumping grounds of big oil corporations. The contaminants expelled daily create diseased bodies in a community where the median household income is 40% below the state’s average and where 28% of its residents are not medically insured, a number that represents three times more than the national average. The environmental hazard created by these companies also has an impact on violent crime. Several studies have found a link between violent crime and pollutant exposure: “air pollutants act as stressors, eliciting endocrine stress responses in our brains that lead to irrational decisions and violent tendencies and also disturb the physical, cognitive and emotional health of people exposed to it at high levels” (The Guardian 2022).

Wilmington, CA; they call it a “bad neighborhood” and bad neighborhoods are always bad because of the individuals that inhabit it. A “bad neighborhood” is never thought to be bad by virtue of systemic injustices that include racial and environmental inequalities. My family and I are from a “bad neighborhood,” but I don’t think we’re bad people. Jesus himself was from Galilea, a neighborhood deemed undesirable. Dr. Chao Romero asserts that if Jesus was from California, he would not come from Beverly Hills or Calabasas, but the most marginalized regions of the state, like East LA or the Central Valley.[2]

What we really mean when we say “bad neighborhood” is impoverished, and, often, Brown or Black. The “good neighborhoods” are strictly regulated. Associations determine rules about the colors in which you are allowed to paint your house, how often you’re supposed to do your lawn, and how much noise you can make. “Good neighborhoods” are wealthy, have good school districts, lower crime rates and are predominantly White. Language matters because language constructs truth. The use of “good/bad” as it refers to neighborhoods continues to strengthen the belief that the people who live there are inherently bad and completely disregards systemic issues that have created and continue to sustain the disenfranchisement of our barrios.

I understand the ways in which systemic issues have worked against my community. I love my community for the ways in which it has shaped me to be resilient, humble, and faithful. I am grateful for the ties I have formed there and the life lessons that have been imparted to me: to not judge people by what they have or where they came from. Nonetheless, there is another competing truth: I have witnessed more gun violence than the average American, I attended low-performing schools in the area and do not feel safe letting my teenage son walk alone to the store that is 100 feet away from my house. I have lived in this city for over 30 years and there is a certain level of comfort granted to me by familiarity, but as a mother, I face a conundrum: do I stay or do I leave?

Deciding to leave our barrios is more than aspiring to a bigger, nicer house with abundant parking, and plentiful green spaces. Leaving our barrios means that our children will have better educational opportunities, access to resources that improve their livelihoods, and the probability of being less exposed to violent crime. Ironically, the dilemma many of us face is similar to the one experienced by our first-generation immigrant parents with one distinction: my socioeconomic status and educational levels have significantly improved while remaining in my native community.

The Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) emphasizes a ministry of presence in which believers are active members of the communities in which they serve. It is a way of doing ministry that decentralizes white saviorism and centers the voices of community members. They invite people to be wholly present in their areas of ministry by becoming (and remaining) a neighbor. As a Christian that understands the importance of serving the socially dispossessed, am I to remain and use my social and economic capital to help my community flourish or should I leave relocating in a city where my children will be safer and have access to opportunity?

I left. It might seem like that was the easiest decision to make, but it certainly didn’t feel that way. I wrestled with this decision for quite some time, asking the Lord for guidance: “Lord, help us; ayúdanos a entender tu voluntad.” Months later, my husband and I received an answer to our prayers that gave us the certainty that we were being called out of my beloved city. In very God-like fashion, he set the pieces in motion and directed our steps.

So, should you stay or should you leave? I don’t know, and I don’t think there’s a generic right or wrong answer. God directs our paths in unique ways in different seasons of our lives (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8). For people of color, these decisions are especially difficult as we encounter survivor’s guilt. Dr. Piorkowski explains that survivor’s guilt, or success guilt, is prevalent amongst first-generation college students from marginalized communities. We often ask ourselves – and God – questions that are filled with remorse: Why did I succeed when so many others in my neighborhood didn’t? Why am I alive when many of my classmates aren’t? Why do I have the opportunity to live in better conditions when many of my family members don’t? How is it possible that I love my barrio, but still want to leave it?

Guilt and gratefulness collide, but this guilt is crippling because it doesn’t allow me to faithfully receive God’s blessings. Instead of viewing the earth as a punishment that we must endure to buy our way into Heaven, we must understand the earth as a good place created by God (Genesis 1:18; Genesis 1:31) and our salvation as a free gift from our Lord (Ephesians 2:8; Romans 6:23). Perhaps God is indeed calling you to stay, but the decision to remain should not be guided by guilt. Conversely, if we are being led to leave, we must not do so developing a posture where we see our former neighbors as less-than, or inherently lacking, because of their socioeconomic status, and in doing so, engaging in the further dehumanization of our barrios. Remember that “You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are” (The House on Mango Street). 

About Dra. Meduri Soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel

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Footnotes

[1] Views of the Barrio in Chicano and Puerto Rican Narrative (Antonia Domínguez Miguela)

[2] The Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology and Identity (2020) 

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Shifting from Exclusion to Embrace

This fall we are featuring three pieces by student writers who are engaging theologically as bi-cultural leaders. We are thrilled to give platform to these up and coming voices who will surely shape the trajectory of the mestizo church. -The Editors

Before I began my PhD program, I had the privilege to live, work, and worship in East Chicago, Indiana, a small city near the Illinois-Indiana border whose racial demographics are almost evenly divided between African American and Latinx communities. I taught seventh-grade English Language Arts at the local middle school for five years while serving as Christian Education Director at my local Latinx Pentecostal church. The main responsibilities of this role included weekly Sunday School programming as well as annual events like Vacation Bible School. However, I became disillusioned by the disconnect between the church and the surrounding community. I would see my students playing outside on the same street as the church and wanted to invite them to participate in church gatherings, but I doubted if the experience would be life-giving. I wanted to keep my students safe as they were already experiencing the violence embedded in the US public school system. Rather than supporting them in their learning and development, school was a space where they were othered; their voices missing from the curriculum; their appearance and behavior surveilled, scrutinized, and ultimately admonished. And the church was not exempt from perpetuating those same logics that criminalize children of color for simply existing. Noticing this overlap, I yearn for a world otherwise, one with an abolitionist orientation where all members of the Beloved Community are allowed to be imperfect but held accountable, joyful, and above all, safe. My hope is that the Church, as an integral community partner, would lead this initiative. If we start here, we can impact other institutions and spaces. 

The otherwise world where children of color are not criminalized for appearance or background depends on a shift from shame and punishment as responses to harm, to an abolitionist orientation. The ways in which we interact and respond to each other in various environments, including school, church, home, and the larger community reveal our values and commitments.

Are we committed to relationship and story or shame and punishment? An abolitionist orientation embraces love, deep community, and accountability. The shift toward relationship is key considering the disproportionate punitive measures experienced by students of color, particularly Black girls, in urban public schools. According to Walker, Green, and Shapiro, “A New York Times analysis of the most recent discipline data from the Education Department found that Black girls are over five times more likely than white girls to be suspended at least once from school, seven times more likely to receive multiple out-of-school suspensions than white girls and three times more likely to receive referrals to law enforcement.” Monique Morris explores this issue more in-depth in her book and subsequent documentary, Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools. In my time as a middle school teacher, I remember seeing students walk through metal detectors and have their bookbags inspected before they could even receive breakfast. If they were considered disruptive or disrespectful, they could receive a lunch detention where they had to eat silently in a room separated from their peers. Multiple incidents often led to in- or out-of-school-suspension where students would be isolated at home for anywhere from 1-5 days.

In many local churches, including the one where I served, the practice of disciplina also indicates an orientation towards punishment via exclusion. When an action was committed that was deemed unfit by the pastor because it went against church norms and/or Christian values, the person on disciplina would be excluded from participation in church activities. Sometimes this also included revoking their titles and positions from leadership. The extent of the isolation during a person’s disciplina was ultimately at the discretion of the pastor, much like how a school administrator determines how long a student is suspended. In both church and school, isolating a community member does more harm than good. Instead, an abolitionist orientation invites accountability through deep community. How are we working together as one body to hold each other accountable while still showing love?

Abbot Elementary is an unexpected example of how to apply an abolitionist mindset to a space tainted by dynamics of punishment and exclusion. For fans of television sitcoms, Abbott Elementary is a refreshing addition to the genre. Following the hilarious and, at times, heartbreaking happenings of an urban public school in Philadelphia, the series deals with issues such as underfunding, integrating technology, surveillance, and building community among students and staff in a “mockumentary” style. As a former public school teacher and an emerging Christian education scholar, the show hits home.

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In the fifth episode of the first season, a student named Courtney is transferred to main character Janine’s (Quinta Brunson) class. Courtney quickly commands control of the classroom by having the other students call her by the teacher’s name and changing the words to the Pledge of Allegiance. In many traditional classrooms, these kinds of behaviors would have resulted in Courtney being disciplined with detention or suspension for being disrespectful and disruptive. After reading Courtney’s file, Janine realizes Courtney is extremely intelligent and acting out of boredom, so Janine disregards the disciplinary advice from a senior colleague who previously had Courtney as a student. Instead, she works with the school admin and the other teachers to find a better placement for Courtney.  While Courtney was doing things that were disruptive to the class, the onus was placed on the teachers to figure out what would be the best learning environment for her and her classmates. This gives an example of turning towards accountability rather than exclusionary punishment, and it was not possible until the teachers took the time to honor the full story of their student.

An abolitionist orientation toward accountability and story aligns with the vision of Beloved Community reflected in the teachings of Jesus.  

He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

–Mark 9:35–37 (NRSV)

Jesus is inviting the disciples into a similar shift away from the competitive, cutthroat way of life and into an abolitionist orientation towards accountability and deep community where the most vulnerable are protected and prioritized. In a world of exclusions, I pray that our schools, churches, and other community institutions would be spaces where children of color experience embrace. Bettina Love explains it this way, writing:

The practice of abolitionist teaching [is] rooted in the internal desire we all have for freedom, joy, restorative justice (restoring humanity, not just rules), and to matter to ourselves, our community, our family, and our country with the profound understanding that we must ‘demand the impossible’ by refusing injustice and the disposability of dark children. (Love, 7)

An abolitionist orientation welcomes children of color to be their full selves without fear of punishment and rejection. All members of the mestiza Church, educators and non-educators alike, can participate in the co-creation of this abolitionist world, as directed by the Teacher Himself, who calls all into abundant life.

About Adriana Rivera

Adriana (Dri) Rivera, a lifelong learner of Puerto Rican descent, is a former 7th grade English teacher and lay leader in Christian Education and youth ministry from Northwest Indiana. She studied Secondary English Education at Indiana University Bloomington before earning her MDiv at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Christian Education and Congregational Studies at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL with concentrations in emancipatory pedagogies and decolonial theologies. By practicing an abolitionist pedagogy, she imagines a world otherwise where all members of the Beloved Community can experience abundant life, sin vergüenza.

Follow Dri on LinkedIn and YouTube.

Footnotes

This article is an adaptation of an unpublished paper for a course at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

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Immigrants Against Immigration?

We were in our dining room table tomando cafecito and chit chatting. The TV had remained on in the background and Noticias Univision announced that there was a new wave of Central American migrant caravans approaching la frontera. She reacted angrily and exclaimed, “Nada más vienen a robar, a aprovecharse del gobierno y a quitarnos lo que es nuestro” (They only come here to steal, to take advantage of the government and to suck us dry). I had heard this phrase before, but never in my home and certainly never in Spanish. Her comments me cayeron como un balde de agua fría – they destabilized my narrative.

As a second-generation Mexican-American immigrant, I carry my family’s migration story with pride and a great sense of responsibility. Part of my identity was formed by that journey. Although I was born in the U.S., never had to flee my home in search of better opportunities, and have not suffered persecution based on my citizenship status, I am intimately connected to these stories through my family members. As a Christian, I am also linked to the migrant narrative through the Bible. Jesus was an immigrant,[1] and the Bible is filled with stories of people who had to migrate in order to escape violence, poverty, or because they felt God’s calling in a new land.

I’ve carried, protected and defended my immigrant family’s inherent value in a society that devalues them and fails to recognize their full humanity. I’ve clung to the biblical truths that exhort us to love and care for all people, particularly those in vulnerable positions.[2] I am, to a certain extent, accustomed to the anti-immigrant rhetoric repeated by individuals outside of the immigrant community. I am familiar with the misapplied Romans 13 verse used by Christians who oppose (undocumented) migration, but this rhetoric had now infested my home and disrupted my story.     

What was most destabilized were the college applications that I wrote, proudly referencing my family’s migration journey; the lesson plans I prepared for students in which we explored migrant stories in the Bible; the scholarship I produced about the immigrant experience; my multiple conversations with my son about his grandparents’ journey so that he wouldn’t forget and become one of those third-generation Mexican-Americans who ignores the plight of immigrants, or worst yet, resents it. I was haunted by this question: “Does my advocacy and story make sense now that my relative declared herself anti-immigrant in our dining room table?”

We’re used to telling simplified stories of ourselves and others. Dichotomous stories have become our templates: villain/hero, victim/victimizer, good/bad. However, our reality as humans is a lot more complex. In fact, biblical narratives do not rely on utopian, unidimensional characters. The stories told in the Bible direct us towards God’s perfect love, not to our own perfection. As humans, we embody positive and negative traits, and it is only by God’s redeeming grace that we are salvos.

When she pronounced herself anti-immigrant my story became muddied. Frankly, I wanted to pretend she had never uttered those words, but that conversation haunted me. She was a first-generation immigrant herself. How could she speak so vilely about immigrants? Renowned journalist María Hinojosa’s memoir Once I was You describes how her positionality as a 1.5 generation immigrant made her empathetic to the suffering of immigrants and keenly aware of the injustices committed against this group. But my relative, unlike María, had not developed a deeper sense of awareness or empathy. “Once you were them,” I told her, “How can you say all this?”

This article attempts to answer that question. My goal is to engage in an honest, even if difficult, reflection about why members of the Latino community, particularly immigrants, hold anti-immigrant notions. To accomplish this, in the following sections, I will hypothesize on the potential factors that contribute to the existence of an anti-immigrant rhetoric upheld by immigrants themselves.

Hypothesis #1: A distorted view of justice

Last year, when I first heard the rumors about the cancelation of student loans, my immediate reaction was anger. “I’ve paid thousands and sacrificed so much! Why do these people now get to have their loans canceled?” I thought.

My angry reaction about the cancelation of student debt and the belief that, “If I suffered, others must too” was selfish and absurd. In a way, we’ve normalized a warped vision of justice in which we believe that we are entitled to sustaining oppressive systems on the basis that those systems oppressed us. We tend to feel as though the suffering of others somehow justifies our own, but two injustices don’t equal justice. Your suffering doesn’t erase or ameliorate mine. We consider it unfair if others “get a pass” or “have it easier than us.” Some immigrants believe that if they had to go through all those troubles, so do others. We can accept God’s free gift of salvation but cannot tolerate when others are “freely rewarded.”

The parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:21-35) tells the story of a man who pled for mercy for not being able to pay his debt. After the King shows him mercy and forgives his debt, the man meets a fellow servant that owed him money, demands payment and throws him in jail when he could not pay. Many immigrants are pleading to be let in as they try to find refuge for a multitude of reasons, and some immigrants who are now living in the States refuse to welcome them. In a 2015 survey conducted by the American Values Atlas, 10% of immigrants who had lived in the States for a year or less thought that immigrants threatened traditional American customs and values, and 14% of immigrants who had resided in the U.S. for 20 years perceived newcomers as threats.

In times of financial hardship immigrants become economic scapegoats. “I hear they’re getting free health care,” she said trying to strengthen her case, “and I have to pay for mine out-of-pocket.”

Placing blame on the most socially dispossessed groups of people in our society during times of economic adversity is not uncommon. Perhaps immigrants that have been in this country for decades feel an added sense of frustration as they realize that the promise of the American Dream was not fulfilled in the ways they had imagined and la mentalidad cangrejo or “if I can’t have it, why should others,” prevails. Instead of binding together to help each other, we tear one another down and call that fair, but Christ points us in the direction of love, humility and compassion.

Hypothesis #2: Racism, colorism & nationalism

Although we might be more accustomed to thinking about the evils of racism within a white vs. POC framework, the truth is that racism and colorism also operate within our own communities. Being a Latin American immigrant doesn’t automatically place everyone on an “equal playing field;” racism and colorism don’t disappear in immigrant spaces and these corrupt ideologies often impact the experiences of immigrants in the country of destination.

Pew Research (2021) found that Latino-on-Latino discrimination is almost as common as discrimination experienced from other ethnic groups, and skin color and nativity seem to play a role; 41% of Latinos with darker skin report receiving unfair treatment by other Latinos, compared to 25% of lighter skin Latinos. Latinos born in Latin America are 9% more susceptible to suffering discrimination from other Latinos. Furthermore, close to 50% of Latinos reported hearing racially insensitive or racist remarks about other Latinos often (13%) or sometimes (35%).

In a skin tone stratified society that privileges fair skin, skin color also plays a role in the experiences encountered by immigrants. A recent report published by Freedom for Immigrants revealed that Black immigrants are six times more likely to be placed in solitary confinement; that although Black immigrants only make up 7% of all non-citizens in the U.S., they account for 20% of immigrants detained on criminal grounds. Indigenous peoples are also disproportionately affected by anti-asylum policies, face linguistic exclusion within immigration services, and are victims of anti-Indigeneity racism (Amnesty International 2021).  

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There are also elements of nationalism that play a role in Latino intragroup discrimination. If you are part of a Mexican family, you’ve probably heard many derogatory comments said by your family about Central Americans. The anti-Central-American attitudes predate the migrant caravans, but the influx of Central Americans traversing Mexico has strengthened feelings of hostility and rejection felt by Mexicans towards the Central American community. In fact, a 2019 survey conducted by Washington Post and Reforma found that 6 in 10 Mexicans (who lived in Mexico) considered migrants to be burdens and 55% supported deporting migrants. One would assume that Mexicans, many of whom have family members living abroad as immigrants, would welcome immigrants with open arms.

As a Church, our call is to welcome everyone, not only those who look like us, speak like us or have the same passport as us. Rev. Alexa Salvatierra reminds us that, “The Church is called to embody the boundless love of God by being a community of radical welcome to all God’s children.” Radical welcome embraces the wholeness of the guest and allows engagement in mutually life-giving relationships.

Hypothesis #3: Whiteness as an ideology that also infects immigrants of color

Whiteness is an ideology that can be upheld by white and non-white people alike; much like machismo, a male-centered ideology that is, on many occasions, supported and perpetuated by women. It is perplexing, but we must recognize that as social beings we breathe the same air; whiteness, in this country, is the polluted air we all breathe. Survival is the name of the game for many first-generation immigrants and “the desired proximity to whiteness and white acceptance, and the temptation to protect it once you have it, is a survival mechanism” (Vu). Perhaps the animosity felt by first-generation immigrants towards other fellow immigrants is birthed out of decades of contorting their identities in white-appeasing ways for the purpose of fitting into a society that views whiteness as normal and everything else, as undesirably foreign. 

People of color who uphold whiteness and by extension, immigrants who oppose immigration, seem to be preposterous and self-harming, but internalized oppression leaves us all exposed. In his seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire claims that the oppressor’s concern is to change the consciousness of the oppressed in order to convince them that oppression isn’t actually occurring, enabling conformity and uniformity. According to Frantz Fanon, the “breaking in” of the oppressed happens when the oppressed themselves admit “loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man’s values” (The Wretched of the Earth). Internalized oppression occurs when we turn against ourselves, our families, and our communities and we take to heart and mind the lies of the enemy. This type of oppression doesn’t always manifest in loud and clear ways; instead, it lurks in our subconscious, inhabits our deepest thoughts, and expresses itself in the most unexpected ways. Whiteness contaminates our mind. We suck in this polluted air for so long that it becomes our norm, even as it destroys us. This is why people like my relative can have first-hand experiences, intimately know the stories, bear the oppression, and still become their community’s most avid persecutor.  

Final Thoughts

Sometimes the stranger becomes known, the foreign land becomes familiar, and the powerless gain power. Our circumstances may change, but our compassion, empathy and love for each other should not wane. Oppression, says Freire, “is necrophilic; it is nourished by love of death, not life” and God is the antithesis of death.

According to a Pew study, people’s religion greatly influences their views on abortion, the death penalty, and homosexuality, but not immigration. Similarly, a LifeWay Research poll found that only 12% of evangelicals think biblically about immigration, citing the media as more influential on their immigration views. There seems to be an obvious disconnect considering that the Bible speaks amply about immigration and references the foreigner extensively[3]. God doesn’t speak to us tangentially about immigrants; in fact, God commands us to welcome the foreigner (Leviticus 19:34), treat them justly (Deuteronomy 27:19; Exodus 22:21) and care for them (Matthew 25:35-40; Deuteronomy 10:18-19).   

Sinful ideologies can also infect the very same people we’re trying to defend, but our advocacy for the vulnerable should always be guided by God’s unwavering word and His love for immigrants.

“El inmigrante militante”

Aún huelo tu aroma en ese recoveco en el cual te escondiste. Aún siento tu sudor y escucho el pálpito de tu corazón al intentar cruzar desapercibidamente. Anhelabas con que ese espacio minúsculo, carente de luz, te condujera hacia tu nuevo hogar. Y ese hogar te dio tanto, pero también te quitó todo. Treinta años después, la casa de oro te construyó, y el corazón de piedra te formó. Ahora, tú vigilas la frontera, destruyendo sueños ajenos. Pero esos sueños también eran los tuyos. Formaste enemigos imaginarios, volcándote contra ti misma. Creíste la mentira del enemigo, sabiendo por experiencia propia la verdad. Recuerda, hija, el día en que tú saliste de Egipto.

About Dra. Meduri Soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel

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Footnotes

[1] See Octavio Esqueda’s What’s Your Immigration Status? Divine (2017)

[2] See Robert Chao Romero’s The Brown Church (2020). 

[3] For theological references that center immigration, consult the Mygration Christian Conference.

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Is your Bible Anti-Black? Pt. 2

Editors Note: Throughout this essay, “black” and “white” refers to the colors, while “Black” and “White” refer to historic racialized communities.

שְׁחוֹרָ֤ה אֲנִי֙ וְֽנָאוָ֔ה בְּנ֖וֹת יְרֽוּשָׁלָ֑יִם כְּאָֽהֳלֵ֣י קֵדָ֔ר

כִּֽירִיע֖וֹת שְׁלֹמֹֽה

אַל־תִּרְאֻ֨נִי֙ שֶֽׁאֲנִ֣י שְׁחַרְחֹ֔רֶת שֶׁשְּׁזָפַ֖תְנִי הַשָּׁ֑מֶשׁ בְּנֵ֧י אִמִּ֣י נִֽחֲרוּ־בִ֗י שָׂמֻ֨נִי֙ נֹֽטֵרָ֣ה אֶת־הַכְּרָמִ֔ים כַּרְמִ֥י שֶׁלִּ֖י לֹ֥א נָטָֽרְתִּי

—Song of Songs 1:5-6

This is essay two of two for the mini-series “Is Your Bible Anti-Black.” In the first essay, I engaged renowned Old Testament scholar Wilda Gafney’s critique of how the King James Version renders Song of Solomon 1:5. Whereas the original Hebrew literally reads “black am I and beautiful,” the KJV’s translators choose to write “I am black, but comely [beautiful].” Reflecting on this glaring difference, Gafney argues that the KJV’s translators “could not see blackness as beautiful, and so their whole identity [as self-identified white men] went into that one conjunction saying, ‘in spite of being Black, she’s all right.’ But that is not what the text said. And so that was the first place where I understood that people make choices when they translate [the Bible], and those choices affect what we hear [from the text].” The KJV’s rendering is wrong, Gafney contends, and layers anti-Black racist ideas onto the biblical page. Accepting Gafney’s argument, I extended her work by detailing the KJV’s cultural and racial context and noting how modern versions compare to it.

In this essay, I return to Song of Solomon to offer an interpretation of verses five and six. I again think with Dra. Gafney, following her lead as I listen to this ancient Song’s textual rhythms. Join us.

Setting the Stage: Song of Solomon 1:1-4

Song of Solomon shocks its readers. Whereas the song never explicitly mentions God, it repeatedly and exuberantly details human love. And this is not the love of mere friends. As Gafney observes, the text focuses on “the love of two people expressed sensuously, sexually.” More specifically, the song celebrates “the love of and between two black bodies—offered as scripture and revelation.”

The first black body the song introduces is the text’s lead woman. She is the focus of our passage and essay. And she immediately makes her romantic desires known.

May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!
For your love is sweeter than wine.

Your oils have a pleasing fragrance,
Your name is like purified oil;
Therefore the young women love you.
 Draw me after you and let’s run together!
The king has brought me into his chambers. (NASB, vv. 2-4)

Intoxicating kisses, fragrant oils, an alluring name, romantic flight, and a royal bed chamber—these are the Song’s opening themes.

The beloved declares her ballad publicly. She does not conceal her sensuous love. For immediately after we read her love song, an enthusiastic, supportive chorus enters the text, greeting us and the beloved with a celebration of her imminent sexual union.

We will rejoice in you and be joyful;
We will praise your love more than wine.
Rightly do they love you. (NASB, v. 4)

All are joyful. All rejoice. All celebrate a woman’s sensuality and sexuality. All are elated about the beloved’s foreshadowed lovemaking with her beloved.

A Beautiful Black Woman: Song of Solomon 1:5

This women that the chorus celebrates as rightly loved, what does she look like? Verse five tells us.

I am black and beautiful,
You daughters of Jerusalem,
Like the tents of Kedar,
Like the curtains of Solomon. (NASB, v. 5)

As noted above, the Hebrew text literally reads “black am I and beautiful” (שְׁחוֹרָ֤ה אֲנִי֙ וְֽנָאוָ֔ה). The order matters. As Gafney writes, the verse “emphasizes [the woman’s] blackness by opening with it.” Gafney makes a related point elsewhere: When describing the woman—the one her beloved declares the “most beautiful among women” (v.8)— “[b]lack is the first word.”

Like her beloved, the Song’s lead woman champions that black is beautiful. “I am black and beautiful.” The word “and” translates the text’s vav conjunction וְֽ at the start of וְֽנָאוָ֔ה. This basic conjunction stresses blackness’s inherent beauty. Indeed, Rabbi Marcia Falk’s translation conveys the text’s tone: “Yes, I am black! And radiant/O city women watching me.”

The Song’s lead women again highlights her blackness in verse five by comparing it to the tents of Kedar, or Qedar, and Solomon’s curtains. This analogy, Gafney notes, reveals that the women’s body “is blacker than your average brown-to-black ancient Afro-Asiatic person.” The reference to Qedar tells readers that the woman “is black as a black-haired goat.” As Gafney explains, the Song’s woman is “as black as the black goats’ hair tents woven from the famed goats of Qedar renowned for their beautiful black coats in antiquity.” Gafney’s use of “renowned” is important. As Old Testament scholar Aubrey Buster notes, the Qedar’s tents and Solomon’s curtains “were considered to be striking and beautiful” in the woman’s culture. Hence, the Song’s lead woman affirms that her blackness is strikingly beautiful, worthy of renown and communal adulation like Qeadar’s tents and Solomon’s curtains. Thus, verse five starts and ends by emphasizing the woman’s beautiful black body.

Many commentators and translators miss verse five’s celebration of blackness. Gafney laments this trend among translators:

[A] myriad of bible translators continuing into modernity persist with “I am black/dark but beautiful/comely/lovely.” Blackness and beauty cannot occupy the same space in the imaginations so they cannot occupy the same space in their translations, no matter what the text actually says. (emphasis added)

Numerous translators render verse five’s opening vav conjunction “but,” not “and.” This interpretive choice injects an aesthetic distance between blackness and beauty. Nothing in verse five requires this distance. Moreover, and more important: the conjunctive-vav’s common “and” meaning and the positive, culturally loaded invocations of beautiful black goats, tents, and curtains provide immediate linguistic and contextual grounds against this disjunctive, distancing reading.

One respected Old Testament scholar overlooks the previous two points. Tremper Longman argues that readers face a choice at verse five: “Should we translate the waw as a conjunctive ‘and’ or a disjunctive ‘but”?” For Longman, the answer is simple. “The context is actually quite clear. She is not happy with her darker-than-normal skin, so the disjunctive makes sense.” The contrast between Longman’s reading and those of Gafney and Falk is striking. So is Longman’s silence about the rest of verse five. He says nothing about Qeadar’s tents and Solomon’s curtains. It’s as if they weren’t there.

Gafney, Buster, and Falk read verse five as celebrating blackness and its beauty. Longman reads it as lamenting “darker-than-normal skin.” If verse five doesn’t’ drive Longman’s interpretive decision and commentary, what does? His reading of verse six.

Sun Gazed: Song of Solomon 1:6

Desire and joy fill verses two through five. A choir praises the woman after her opening declaration of longing to be with her beloved. Then the woman celebrates her blackness. She is black and beautiful like Qeadar’s famous tents and Solomon’s splendid curtains. Given the prevalence of parallelism in Hebrew songs and poetry, we might expect the chorus to support the woman’s celebration of blackness with their own hymn of praise. But the text doesn’t meet this expectation. Instead, it introduces the Song’s first rebuke.

The translation I’ve used throughout renders verse six thus:  

Do not stare at me because I am dark,
For the sun has tanned me.
My mother’s sons were angry with me;
They made me caretaker of the vineyards,
But I have not taken care of my own vineyard. (NASB, emphasis in translation)

This translation doubly obscures verse six’s first sentence. The word translated “dark” carries the connotation of “black” from verse five. Likewise, the sentence contrasts people’s staring/looking with the sun’s staring/looking. The KJV captures both details: “Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me.” Still, the word “stare” better expresses the Hebrew meaning involved in the woman’s rebuke-saturated command to the daughters of Jerusalem. Gafney writes, “It seems the city-women can’t keep their eyes off of her. They keep staring, looking her up and down.” These stares aim to pierce, penetrate, and judge. Again Gafney:

The shout out to the daughters of Jerusalem is an acknowledgement that our bodies are always under scrutiny. We are weighed and measured, consumed and labeled acceptable or defective in a glance. The black beauty Shahorah—we can call her Ebony, Raven, Jet or Onyx—Shahorah says you call me black like that’s an insult. Let me tell you, I am black, as silky-black as the luxurious coat of a Kedari goat, like mink, only blacker.

The Song’s lead woman told the daughters of Jerusalem that she was black and beautiful in verse five. Now she tells them, Gafney writes, “don’t stare at me because my beautiful black skin has gotten even darker while I bask in the sun.”

The sun gazed upon the Song’s black woman and made her darker, gave her a tan. Some modern readers assume that the text’s implied talk of tanning entails that the Song’s lead woman is but a white woman with a tan. This reading projects a white normative gaze onto the text and ignores verse five’s repeated discussion of rich blackness. It also elides the truth that black-skinned people tan. Gafney discusses personally suffering this elision.

I am regularly asked to give an account of my presumptively alternate biology, imagined to be fundamentally different from the interrogator’s own normative experience of being human.

“Can you tan?”

“Do you burn?”

I am expected to answer when questioned. To explain myself and my race. Public access to my body is unquestioned.

And deeply entangled with the notion of otherness is the notion of beauty.

The false assumption that Black people don’t tan which regularly confronts Gafney also occupies a place in study bibles. As Gafney recalls, “Some say...doesn’t verse 6 say that she is sunburned, therefore, she can’t be black – that’s what the notes in my study bible says.” For some readers, “being black and sunburned [is] impossible, as impossible as being black and beautiful” (emphasis in original). Even Tremper Longman joins Gafney in rejecting the assumption that the Song’s lead female is a tanned or sunburned white woman. “The woman was Semitic and likely had a dark complexion to start with. The darkness about which she complains is not her natural skin color but a tan or burn.”

Yet the differences between Longman’s and Gafney’s readings remain sharp. Longman says that the woman “likely had a dark complexion to start with.” Gafney, following verse five’s emphasis on the woman’s blackness, highlights that the woman was black and “revels in the blackness of her skin.” Longman says that the woman “complains” about her “tan or burn.” Though Gafney acknowledges that “the woman in the text ruined her beautiful black Qedari complexion with a sunburn,” Gafney never says that the woman complains about her sunburn. Instead, Gafney says that the woman “embraces the kiss of the sun” while denouncing the Jerusalem women’s glares and how her family treated her. The women’s glares are “reminder[s] that everyone won’t look at [black skinned people] and see the glory that God created.” These glares carry negative class associations with field labor. And her family’s mistreatment of her has left the Song’s lead woman unable to care for her own vineyard—for herself.

Let’s unpack the previous point. Verse six’s second half reads:

My mother’s sons were angry with me;
They made me caretaker of the vineyards,
But I have not taken care of my own vineyard. (NASB)

Though the woman claims her mother, she doesn’t claim her brothers. They are “my mother’s sons.” Similarly, although the woman says her mother’s sons were angry with her, she doesn’t explain why. The text doesn’t say she did anything wrong. It does, however, stress that these sons made her care for the vineyards. The joy of agency is missing; the cruelty of coercion is present instead.   

This is not the only time the Song’s lead woman describes her “brothers” controlling her body. In the Song’s final chapter, we read them saying:

We have a little sister,
And she has no breasts;
What shall we do for our sister
On the day when she is spoken for?

If she is a wall,
We will build on her a battlement of silver;
But if she is a door,
We will barricade her with planks of cedar. (NASB, 8:8-9)

In these verses, men alone speak. We do not hear the Song’s lead woman discussing her body. We do hear the men referring to the woman’s genitals as a “wall” (i.e., premarital chastity) and a “door,” a common Near Eastern image that alluded to a prostitute. As Gafney writes, the “brothers” work “to constrain and confine her.”

And this male coercion returns us to it’s first appearance in the song, verse six. For there we read that the lead woman has not cared for her own vineyard—her own body. Because her “brothers” forced her to labor outdoors, the sun burned her. It harmed her beautiful black body. And in act of resistance, the woman rebukes the Jerusalem’s daughters for trying to inflict similar pain by staring at her. She is black. She is beautiful. She is unashamed of herself and refuses to internalize negative class associations with field labor. And she is tending to her vineyard, she is loving her body and her beloved. “It is time,” Gafney writes, “to tend our own vines and their sweet, luscious, intoxicating fruit.”

Conclusion

Let’s consider one final contrast between Longman’s and Gafney’s readings. Longman argues that “In spite of some ambiguities, [Song of Song 1:5-6] is clear about two matters: (1) the woman considers her dark skin unattractive, and (2) her dark skin is not her natural skin color but rather the result of a tan.” Both claims run afoul of verse five’s celebration of blackness, which verse six never negates. Taken together, Gafney argues, these verses teach that “Black is beautiful. Blackness is beauty. Blackness is worshipful. All blackness is divine. It is the imprint of the holy darkly radiant God in whose image we are created.”

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About Dr. Nathan Luis Cartagena

A son of the US South (Mom) and Puerto Rico (Dad), Dr. Cartagena is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL), where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy, and is a fellow in The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. He serves as the faculty advisor for Unidad Cristiana, a student group working to enhance Christian unity and celebrate Latina/o cultures, a scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, and a co-host for the forthcoming podcast From the Underside. He’s also writing a book on Critical Race Theory with IVP Academic.

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Seeing Jesus in the Invisible

““Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

— (Matthew 25:37-40)

Mamaw’s Cry

Tears filled my eyes as I put my bed away.

I was visiting Mamaw and Grandpa in their nineteen-foot RV. They slept in the lone bedroom. I slept on the living-room couch, an arm’s length away from the front door and rear kitchen. Medicine bottles, heating pads, braces, and canes filled the cramped space. A walker and set of handheld massagers lined the wall. Mamaw and Grandpa had accumulated this stockpile over the years, hoping each would alleviate some of Mamaw’s chronic pains. Some days they helped. Other days Mamaw’s suffering rendered them useless. None of these resources could dampen her searing pain.

Two thin doors and a miniature bathroom separated my room from the bedroom. Even collectively they could not contain the shriek of agony that jolted me awake. Mamaw was screaming. Extreme pain in her neck and back thrusted her into consciousness. Any movement proved excruciating. The emerging sunlight made matters worse. I heard Grandpa draw the blinds as Mamaw yelled, “Bill, close them—I can’t take it!!” Like the blinds, Mamaw stayed down. She couldn’t get up. There’d be no trips to the bathroom; there’d be no gatherings in the living room; there’d be no cutting up; there’d be no physical relief. The trailer’s resident remedies proved impotent. Mamaw lay in a den of misery all day.

I knew Mamaw wouldn’t get out of bed. Two months of living with her made me familiar with early morning cries that testified to day-long, bed-ridden suffering. Mamaw’s anguish resulted from sustained physical abuse and car accidents initiated by drunk drivers. Pain had been her constant companion. A piercing form visited her now.

I waited to rise until I heard Grandpa confirm what I already knew. “Nathan,” he said stepping down into the living room, “Your Grandma is in intense pain and isn’t likely to get up today. Why don’t you go to the local YMCA to play?”

Grandpa returned to Mamaw. Fighting back tears, I got up and started making my bed. I heard Mamaw moan. I wept.

I spent the morning and afternoon at the YMCA. None of the pickup basketball games, nor shooting and dribbling drills dampened the reverberations of Mamaw’s moan. I heard it over the squeaks of shoes on hardwood. I heard it over the boombox pouring out music. I heard it over my sorrow.

Grandpa greeted me when I returned home.

“Hi Nate! Good to see you. Grandma is sleeping so we need to be quiet. How was the Y?”

“Fine. But I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be with you and Grandma. I wanted Grandma to feel better.”

“I know. I wish she felt better, too.”

“Did any of Grandma’s friends in the trailer park visit?”

“No. They’re all out of town.”

“What about her friends from Bible study?”

“No.”

“It seems like no one from the surrounding churches ever comes to help you and Grandma—not even members of her Bible study.”

“That’s because they don’t come. They never have. Hasn’t mattered where we’ve lived or who knows about Grandma. Church folks don’t come. They don’t help—or at least they don’t help for long. Only Grandma’s close friends like Nell stay with us.”

“I hate it. I absolutely hate it. People, especially Christians, should be helping you all.”

“Whether or not they should, the truth is they usually don’t. And when you’re as old as I am you learn not to expect their help. They’ve Bible studies to attend. It’s a lot easier to discuss the Bible over coffee than it is to watch Grandma suffer.”

We both grew quiet. Grandpa spoke from decades of abandonment; you could hear it in his voice.

“I’m sorry, Grandpa. It shouldn’t be this way.”

“But it is, Nate. It is.”

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““Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ ”

— (Matthew 25:37-40)

Bisabuela’s Isolation

Abuela was exhausted. Even over the phone I could hear it in her voice.

“Abuela, ¿Cómo estás? You sound tired.”

“Oh, I’m okay, Nathan.”

“Are you sure”

“Sí. I just got back from helping bisabuela, that’s all.”

“Are tíos Jr. and Tutin helping you?”

“Sí, but they’re both in the States, so I’m the only one taking care of great grandma.”

“I’m sorry abuela. That’s a lot.”

“Sí, Nathan. And bisabuela has been getting worse. She keeps repeating herself. She says the same thing over and over because she doesn’t remember what she’s said. You know what I mean?”

“Sí abuela. Yo entiendo. I’m sorry bisabuela is getting worse. I hate it. Alzheimers is terrible.”

“Sí Nathan, it is. It’s hard to hear bisabuela repeat herself. And it’s hard to tell her the same things over and over.”

“Can anyone help you while Jr. and Tutin are gone?”

“We’ve hired someone to help cook bisabuela’s meals and clean her house.”

“What about from your church? Does anyone from the congregation help?”

“Well, how do you say…they pray and say they’re sorry, but they don’t come. So, I have to do it. You know what I mean?”

“I think so.” 

“It’s not good, but it’s the way it is. You know what I mean?”

“Sí. Almost no one from church helped my Grandma. I’d hoped things were better in Puerto Rico.”

“Well Nathan, I’ll tell you something. Many people at church come for the service and then do whatever they want the rest of the week. They don’t help anybody. It’s not good. It’s very sinful. But what are you going to do?”  

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““Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ ”

— (Matthew 25:37-40)

The Spirit’s Conviction

The students and I were grooving. Lively group discussions spilled over into insightful class-wide conversation. The energy was invigorating. I was proud of the class and felt blessed to share this hour with them.

“Y’all are making excellent points. Let’s go even deeper. Remember: When we consider the state of an individual, institution, society, or nation, we must think through five categories: race, class, gender, sexuality, and culture.”

Immediately after I finished writing “culture” on the board, I felt Spirit-inspired pangs. The Spirit prompted me to look at the five categories. I did. Then I heard an inaudible question: “What’s missing.” Many answers could’ve been appropriate. I’d not mentioned religion, for example. But that’s not what the Spirit brought to my mind. Instead, the word “Ability” flashed before me. Then conviction flooded over me, and I began to cry.

My students and I had spent the past twelve weeks identifying and lamenting how evangelical discipleship in the US tends to omit the weightier things of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23). We’d repeatedly discussed our responsibility to enter the sufferings of others. But I’d never directed my students’ attention to disabled or chronically ill. Neither had our authors. I was discipling my students into ableism. I thought of Mamaw and bisabuela as I repented to the class for this failure.

“I need to do a better job showing y’all Jesus. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13)

About Dr. Nathan Luis Cartagena

A son of the US South (Mom) and Puerto Rico (Dad), Dr. Cartagena is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL), where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy, and is a fellow in The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. He serves as the faculty advisor for Unidad Cristiana, a student group working to enhance Christian unity and celebrate Latina/o cultures, a scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, and a co-host for the forthcoming podcast From the Underside. He’s also writing a book on Critical Race Theory with IVP Academic.

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Poor Because They Are Lazy

Richard Delgado’s words stunned me. Putting his essay down, I meditated on this unsettling passage: 

[U.S. Latin@s] suffer disproportionately from poverty and school drop-out. A U.N. study showed that if all Latinos residing in the United States were considered as a separate country, that country would rank thirty-fifth in the world in a combined index of social well-being that included income, education, and access to health care.

Delgado was citing the UN’s 1993 Human Development Report. That same document noted that “In the United States, with the HDIs of white, black, and hispanic populations separated, whites rank number 1 in the world.” The U.S. Latinx community was thirty-fifth; the U.S. White community was first. And as Delgado observed, “the racial disparity noted in the 1993 report has widened and deepened.” The UN’s 2001 Human Development Report revealed that whereas U.S. Whites remained near the top of the world’s HDI index, U.S. Latin@s had dropped to sixty-eighth.

Seeing the suffering of Mi Gente

Reading these grotesque numbers carried me back to my first experiences with Puerto Rico’s poverty. Mi abuela was driving. I sat in the passenger seat. As we rode through dilapidated communities, my young eyes, raised in a middle-class New Jersey neighborhood, poured out tears. I had never seen such catastrophes. These were mi gente, my people. And they were languishing in extreme destitution. 

“Mira, Nathan,” mi abuela said. “Ellos son muy pobres y están sufriendo; they are very poor and are suffering. God calls us to love and care for the poor. We cannot look away.”

Later that visit, I spoke with a family member about the poverty I’d seen. “Oh yes, there are many poor people here in Puerto Rico. But they are poor because they are lazy. You see the same thing in the mainland.”

My relative’s callous tone and comments jarred me. Abuela had said nothing about laziness while we witnessed our people’s misery; she spoke about our divine call to love and care for the poor. Granted, abuela never explained mi gente’s poverty. But the contrast between her focus on neighbor-love and this relative’s reductive explanation for severe poverty shook me.

Returning to the Present

Chills jerked my body as I recalled these experiences. I picked up Delgado’s essay and reread the arresting passage. How to understand these truths, the poverty I witnessed, or what my relatives told me?

This multi-faceted question becomes more pointed when you engage updated data. Ed Morales writes that “on average, prices [are] about 21 percent greater in Puerto Rico than in the United States.” Though this percentage is like “major metropolitian areas like New York and Miami,” those cities only have poverty rates of “12 percent and 24 percent, respectively” whereas Puerto Rico’s “41 percent poverty rate (compared to the United States’ average of 14.3 percent) represented a much higher percentage of the population that has a difficult time just grocery shopping.” Morales presses the point. “This high rate reflects the concentration of poverty you’d expect to see in peripheral areas of US cities, showing how “American” socioeconomic problems are reproduced in an isolated island territory.” Morales wrote two years ago. Now Puerto Rico’s poverty rate is 43.5 percent—over two times higher than Mississippi’s, which has the highest poverty rate among US States.

These ghastly percentages testify to profound human suffering. And they force us again to ask: How to understand these truths, the poverty I witnessed, or what my relatives told me? Let me offer three biblical reflections that should inform every Christian’s answers.

Biblical Reflection One: Laziness and Want

Scripture identifies laziness as a cause of poverty. As Esteban Voth writes, “the book of Proverbs states that one of the causes which had contributed to the existence of poverty is laziness.” Consider the following passages.

Laziness brings on deep sleep;
    an idle person will suffer hunger. (Proverbs 19:15)

The lazy person does not plow in season;
    harvest comes, and there is nothing to be found. (Proverbs 20:4)

Do not love sleep, or else you will come to poverty;
    open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread. (Proverbs 20:13)

The craving of the lazy person is fatal,
    for lazy hands refuse to labor. (Proverbs 21:25)

Three verses link laziness to hunger; one links it to death. Thus, these texts reveal their agrarian context. Thus, they establish laziness’s lethal consequences.

Yet each of these passages address individual poverty, not its communal form. Three verses specifically reference a lazy “person.” The “you” of Proverbs 20:13 is singular. This limited scope matters, for as Ibram X. Kendi argues, “Individual behaviors can shape the success of individuals. But policies determine the success of groups.”

When Isaiah and Amos chastise Israel for its oppressive treatment of the poor, they highlight how Israel’s anti-covenantal policies and practices—in this context, those opposed to the Mosaic covenant and law—produce or perpetuate poverty. Isaiah writes:

The Lord rises to argue his case;
    he stands to judge the peoples.
The Lord enters into judgment
    with the elders and princes of his people:
It is you who have devoured the vineyard;
    the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people,
    by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts. (Isaiah 3:13-15)

The LORD condemns an elite group—elders and princes—for establishing and exacerbating poverty through their practices and anti-covenantal policies. Likewise, Amos declares:

Thus says the Lord:
For three transgressions of Israel,
    and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because they sell the righteous for silver,
    and the needy for a pair of sandals—
they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,
    and push the afflicted out of the way;
father and son go in to the same girl,
    so that my holy name is profaned;
they lay themselves down beside every altar
    on garments taken in pledge;
and in the house of their God they drink
    wine bought with fines they imposed. (Amos 2:6-8)

Israel’s elite exploit and oppress the poor, gorging themselves upon this community’s limited resources, and so worsening the poor’s plight. None of these condemnations come in an individualist key. All focus on groups and group dynamics. And each echoes texts in Proverbs.

Biblical Reflection Two: Injustice and Poverty

Though Proverbs identifies laziness as a cause for individual poverty, it also identifies societal level injustices as a cause for communal poverty. As Esteban Voth observes, because the same book “proposes that many times poverty is caused by injustice,” its readers “cannot generalize and attribute the existence of poverty to laziness alone.” Consider the following verse

The field of the poor may yield much food,
    but it is swept away through injustice. (Proverbs 13:23)

Whereas verses from Proverbs we considered in the previous section linked individual laziness to individual poverty and hunger, Proverbs 13:23 links the bareness of poor people’s fields to societal injustices. Thus, Proverbs 13:23 bears a striking resemblance to the texts from Isaiah and Amos we considered. 

Similar commonalities also hold. Voth argues that “In contrast to the wisdom literature, for the prophets the true cause of poverty was found in the presence of injustice. This injustice had been institutionalized in royalty as well as in the clergy.” We noted such institutionalized evils in the previous section. Here we note proverbs that echo what we and Voth read in the prophets.

A ruler who oppresses the poor
    is a beating rain that leaves no food. (Proverbs 28:3)

Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker,
    but those who are kind to the needy honor him. (Proverbs 14:31)

Oppressing the poor in order to enrich oneself,
    and giving to the rich, will lead only to loss. (Proverbs 22:16)

Do not rob the poor because they are poor,
    or crush the afflicted at the gate;
for the Lord pleads their cause
    and despoils of life those who despoil them. (Proverbs 22:22-23)

Isaiah and Amos chastise royalty for perpetuating poverty. So does Proverbs 28:3. Isaiah and Amos rebuke Israel’s elites for exploiting the poor. Proverbs 22:16 and 22:22-23 anticipate this rebuke. And Isaiah and Amos highlight how Israel’s elites have insulted God because they oppress the poor.

Reflecting on the totality of Scripture’s witness, Elsa Tamez argues, “For the Bible oppression is the basic cause of poverty.” Tamez has communal poverty in view. She continues: “The oppressor steals from the oppressed and impoverishes them. The oppressed are therefore those who have been impoverished, for while the oppressor oppresses the poor because they are poor and powerless, the poor have become poor in the first placed because they have been oppressed.” In a prophetic, proverbial register, Tamez concludes, “The principal motive for oppression is the eagerness to pile up wealth, and this desire is connected with the fact that the oppressor is an idolater.” Isaiah and Amos do not rebuke Israel’s poor for laziness; they do not exhort them to try harder and pick themselves up. Instead, they rebuke Israel’s ruling elites for unjust policies and practices that bear the mark of idolatry.

Biblical Reflection Three: Legal Injustice and Poverty

Rulers and ruling-class elites often promote exploitation and poverty through law. Isaiah condemns Israel’s elites for this very sin.  

Woe to those who make unjust laws,
    to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
    and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
    and robbing the fatherless. (Isaiah 10:1-2)

These unjust laws stand in sharp contrast to the laws God instituted in the Mosaic covenant. There we read:

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19:9-10);

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe,  who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. (Deuteronomy 10:17-20) 

God establishes laws to care for the poor and remediate poverty. Loving and worshiping God involves knowing that he executes justice for the marginalized and opposes oppressive, poverty-inducing regimes like Egypt’s.

Concluding With Puerto Rico

We return to the grotesque data about Puerto Rico’s poverty and our multi-layered guiding question: How to understand these truths, the poverty I witnessed, or what my relatives told me? In reverse order, we see that mi abuela was right to stress God’s call to care for the poor. We must love them—and so love their and our Maker. In contrast, we see that my relative’s linking of laziness to Puerto Rico’s wide-spread poverty is biblically dubious. Whereas Scripture links such societal level poverty to societal injustices perpetuated by ruling elites, my relative settled for a reductive and false linkage with individual behavior.

Biblically speaking, we must evaluate Puerto Rico’s poverty in terms of systemic evils perpetuated by ruling elites and the policies and practices they promote. This requires us to analyze and chastise elites on the island. But it also requires us to analyze the elites of Puerto Rico’s colonizer: The U.S. What Delgado says of Latin@s generally applies to Puerto Rico particularly: Latin@s require freedom from “the badges and incidents of conquest, including loss of ancestral lands, destruction of culture, suppression of their native language, and a public school system that systematically renders their history invisible.” And as I’ve written elsewhere, White U.S. elites crafted the laws governing US-Puerto Rico relations to solidify these badges and their accompanying poverty. These laws and the economic structures they protect trample Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico’s poor. Moreover, scholars such as Ed Morales and Teresa Delgado have shown that Puerto Rican elites like Ricardo Antonio Rosselló added cronyism and domestic domination to these evils. And unlike Zacchaeus, the island’s oppressive elites never repaid what they stole. Decolonizing this multi-sourced catastrophe requires confronting Egypt- and Rome-like exploitation and idolatry.

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About Dr. Nathan Luis Cartagena

A son of the US South (Mom) and Puerto Rico (Dad), Dr. Cartagena is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL), where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy, and is a fellow in The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. He serves as the faculty advisor for Unidad Cristiana, a student group working to enhance Christian unity and celebrate Latina/o cultures, a scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, and a co-host for the forthcoming podcast From the Underside. He’s also writing a book on Critical Race Theory with IVP Academic.

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Imagining Una Iglesia Mestiza: Vision Amid Crisis

This article is from the forthcoming Moody Center magazine, set to publish spring 2022. To learn more about the magazine and Moody Center, subscribe to their newsletter.

Middle-America is currently facing a years-long identity crisis.

The March 2018 issue of National Geographic includes an article by Michele Norris titled, As America Changes, Some Anxious Whites Feel Left Behind. Its subtitle reads: “Demographic shifts rippling across the nation are fueling fears that [white] culture and standing are under threat.” The story centers on Hazleton, Pennsylvania, an old coal mining town transformed by an influx of Latin Americans, particularly Afro-Latinos from the Caribbean. White residents – themselves children of European immigrants to Hazelton – repeatedly told Norris during interviews they now felt “outnumbered.”  She writes about white residents no longer participating in the town’s fall parade because it “became too scary. Too uncomfortable … too brown.” White Hazletonians were feeling, perhaps for the first time ever, the cultural collision, el choque, that has shaped the borderlands of the US for over a century. Their reaction to this encounter is unsurprisingly defensive:  

“With Hazleton’s changing demographics and persistent economic decline, the community began to see itself as white. The city reasserted its identity as white.”[1]

The realities of the US borderlands are no longer bound to the outer edges of the country, and Hazelton’s identity crisis exemplifies a common response. This crisis, and the fear stemming from it, marks wide-reaching debates about racial justice and the role of the evangelical church; it raises questions about who US Americans are and what must be conserved as things change. Few evangelical leaders are addressing the identity question inherent to the growing tensions in towns like Hazelton. Fewer still are asking if a non-white community identity can help congregations bring peace between neighbors. Ironically, the very people whose presence is cause for Hazeltonian suspicion produced a theological category and identity from which to imagine this peace. US-Latin American theologians reimagined the meaning of a racist identifying name and in doing so created a good tool to use according to the guidance of the Spirit. This article explores the US-Latin American use of the “mestiza y mestizo” identity as a tool to resolve the crisis and move toward peace.[2]

A Brief History of “Mestizaje”

During their colonization of the Caribbean and Latin America, the Spanish developed a system of racial classifications to assert their superiority. Sanctioned and perpetuated by the church, these racial categories became the hierarchical and ordering arrangement of Spanish colonies. Those designated “blanco” (white) were given the full rights and privileges of a colonial citizen. The Spanish system included 14-20 official classifications of racial mixture to distinguish between greater and lesser “whiteness” and provided measured rights and privileges accordingly. These racial categories were fluid but rooted in phenotype (e.g. skin color, hair type, etc.). Some people managed to move up via the accrual of wealth, becoming a priest, or being appointed to serve in government, and they received certificates of racial purity as they arrived at “white” status.

Mestiza/o was one of the official classifications of the Spanish colonies. It was given to those mixed children of Indigenous and Spanish blood. This designation would later become the leading self-identity for several Latin American countries attempting to establish their own peoplehood. Mexico, for instance, under the guidance of philosophers and politicians like Jose Vasconcelos, attempted to encourage (often by force) the mixing of remaining African and Indigenous people in the land, so they could become one “mestizo” people. Cuba, Colombia, Brazil, and other nations had similar blanqueamiento (whitening) programs that were justified according to racial improvement logics.[3] The goal of these programs was to move the people further up the scale toward becoming “white.”

In the 1960s, along the borders of the US, Latin-American pastors, poets, activists, and theologians reappropriated the word mestiza/o to describe the experience of Latina/o diaspora. That is, the term now described the bi-cultural tension of Latina/os born along the border who felt neither fully of the US or the country of their parentage. These Latina/os felt they belonged to both and neither at once; They were, as one writer would say, living “on the hyphen.” These borderland mestiza/os made mistakes in adopting such a term for their purposes, yet their use of mestiza/o reveals a way of imagining belonging that can be useful to the church. Here are three ways the mestiza/o identity can serve the church’s witness to a US in crisis.

1) Rejecting the Purity Myth

By definition, mestiza/os are impure. They are the byproduct of colonization by Spain and US-empire expansion. The former produced people of literal mixed heritage. The latter created the circumstances in which the already mixed person experienced a second-level mixing of culture, theology, and race. Gloria Anzaldúa would call this second mix a product of a “choque” (collision) that created dissonance for the Mestiza/o. This dissonance, what Anzaldúa calls “mestiza consciousness,” stands in stark contrast to “the theory of the pure Aryan, and to the policy of racial purity that white America practices.”[4] Because the mestiza must operate between worlds that neither accept nor include her fully, she can better handle ambiguity and develops a tolerance for contradictions. She learns to participate as a partial exile in worlds borne of conflict. To say it plainly, mestizas are disinterested in the claims of objectivity and purity used by whites to protect and insulate themselves from others.

Consider the way the Hazeltonian reaffirmation of whiteness animates retreat by its residents; they flee from that which they cannot understand. They wish to retain the “purity” of their vision for Hazelton. They accuse their Afro-Latina/o neighbor of distorting, deforming, and breaking the town fabric. Anzaldúa demonstrates the irrationality of this purity myth. Her ideas press the Hazeltonians to see themselves as equally impure byproducts of their collision with new lands and exile from former European roots. Their practices are not more true, good, or beautiful. Both “white” and non-white exist as impure products of a violent history, mixtures born from empires.

2) Accepting a Non-Innocent History

The complexity revealed in the mestiza/o identity echoes a truth long affirmed by the Church: no human is pure and innocent (Rom. 3:23). Whiteness, understood as a purity claim, records a history of innocence that reifies that purity. The default for whites is innocence, not guilt; racial purity is equated with moral purity. This began with the endorsement of the church on the racial arrangement of colonies, and it persists in many respects today. This self-defense is only possible through organized forgetting – “the intentional, repetitious omitting of certain facts, narratives, and artifacts, and the repetitious presenting of other facts, narratives, and artifacts, [by which] communities form themselves to know some things and to overlook or disremember other things.” Any attempt to disassociate from historical (and present) racism is conditioned by this form of forgetting. The normalcy of the forgetting is what makes it possible for “whites” to feel innocent regarding racial systems. They simply do not know what they do not know. Once more, whiteness moves away from sound doctrine, and the mestiza/o identity offers a corrective.

Theologian and church historian Justo Gonzalez, referring to Hispanics and their inherited history, writes:

Our Spanish ancestors took the lands of our [Native] ancestors. Some of our [Native] ancestors practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism. Some of our Spanish forefathers raped our [Native] foremothers. Some of our [Native] foremothers betrayed their people in favor of the invaders. It is not a pretty story. But it is more real than the story that white settlers came to this land with pure motivations, and that any abuse of inhabitants was the exception rather than the rule. It is also a story resulting in a painful identity.[5]

Anzaldúa expands Dr. Gonzalez’s line of reasoning. In a world deeply marked by conflict, Anzaldúa believed mestiza/os could serve as mediators because the mestiza consciousness “serves as a mode of self-critique.”[6] Anzaldúa resisted the idea of simple two-sided conflicts where one group is oppressor and the other is oppressed. She believed “no one is exempt from contributing to oppression in limited contexts.”[7] These scholars echo truths of Scripture. The historical church acknowledges it is not beyond the guilt and crookedness of this violent world. The identity of God’s people is always simul justus et peccator (simultaneously righteous and sinner). As those who confess their non-innocence, Christians engage ministry differently.

3) Inverting the Scale (Life in the Middle)

Mestiza/os must make a choice: (a) attempt to move up the scale toward whiteness or (b) as mediators and ambassadors, pursue justice for all those negatively affected by the scale. If Dr. González is right that the mestiza/o identity is a “painful identity” marked by inherited guilt, this must include the ways mestiza/os have made attempts to move up the scale to white. Surely mestiza/o history does not stop with the earliest ancestors. Those blanqueamiento (whitening) programs meant to produce mestiza/os demonstrate the ways Latina/os perpetuate racism. On the other hand, shaped and informed by theology, mestizaje offers a vision for ministry rich with gospel implications. This vision begins with the subversion of the scale all-together. In other words, it begins by resisting whiteness’ invitation toward preferential treatment of the powerful (James 2:1-13). Instead, mestiza/os are invited to take up God’s missional focus on the poor.

The mestiza/o who prioritizes those affected by racial injustice also approaches their ministry methods with deep humility. In their work, they acknowledge their impurity and non-innocence; they are aware of the real risk for self-contradiction. These three lessons inform the church’s approach to the identity crisis poisoning towns like Hazelton. Rejecting whiteness is about remembering collective guilt, acknowledging shared impurity, and prioritizing the inverted scale.

“It is in the very way of Jesus that mestizos find their mission: to create. In this is both the excitement and challenge. God might have created the world in seven days, but it takes us many generations to create a new humanity, a new culture. It cannot be merely legislated. It has to develop gradually through the efforts of the poets, the artists, the thinkers…” the culture-makers.[8]

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About Emanuel Padilla

Emanuel Padilla is president of World Outspoken and cohost of the Mestizo Podcast. He is committed to serving bi-cultural Christians facing questions of identity, culture, and theology. He also serves at The Brook, a church on the northwest side of Chicago, along with his wife Kelly.

Follow him on Twitter to learn more.

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Footnotes

[1] Jamie Longazel, professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, as quoted by Norris.

[2] The words “mestiza, mestizo, mestizaje” and related variants have unique meanings in various Latin American countries. The focus in this article is the specific use of the word(s) by Latin Americans in the US.

[3] See PBS documentary Black in Latin America (2011) for more information on forced miscegenation political programs.

[4] Gloria Anzaldúa, Norma Cantú, and Aída Hurtado, Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 4th ed. Edition (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2012), p. 99.

[5] Justo L. González, Manana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective (Abingdon Press, 2010), p. 40. As a point of observation regarding non-innocence, it is worth noting the exclusions in Gonzalez’s comments about Hispanic heritage. It could be said that Gonzalez is guilty of exclusion of the African in his historical account, and in so doing, is non-innocent regarding their erasure.

[6] Nestor Medina and Nstor Medina, Mestizaje: Remapping Race, Culture, and Faith in Latina/O Catholicism (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 2009), p. 25.

[7] Anzaldúa, Cantú, and Hurtado, Borderlands / La Frontera, p. 8.

[8] Virgilio Elizondo, Davíd Carrasco, and Sandra Cisneros, The Future Is Mestizo: Life Where Cultures Meet, Revised Edition, Revised, Subsequent Edition (Boulder, Colo: University Press of Colorado, 2000).

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Tempted to Silence

Stage Setting

To borrow a line from Willie James Jennings, “The things I tell are precise accounts while being exact fabrications…everything I tell you, everything, is the truth. It is the truth in service of moving us to a new place of gathering.”

Here is a temptation story. Does it sound familiar?

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En El Parque

We sipped our coffees between sympathetic sighs and pain-laced chuckles. We had suffered greatly and we knew it. That’s why we agreed to grab café and walk to a park where we could talk freely. We knew our colleagues wouldn’t be there. We knew the police rarely patrolled it; no need to worry about “inquiries.” Sometimes you must escape modes of surveillance so you can be—so you can listen and cry en conjunto.

Our visit did not start with sipping and sighs. Because our coffees were too hot to drink and our stories too agonizing to share without the security of a secluded space, we carried our coffees and swapped fun family updates while we walked to the park. We had much to celebrate. We had jokes to tell. Smiles adorned our faces and joyous laughter filled the space between us as we spoke. These laughs were divine gifts. We needed them and we knew it.

We reached the park and scanned the grounds. No one was there. Relieved, we selected a place to sit. Some burdens demand stillness. Sometimes movement fosters avoidance.

Our moods changed as we began discussing our personal pains. So did our cadence. Nervous, trauma-infused laughter filled the space between us. We had suffered greatly and we knew it. The brown bench bowed under our weight.

“Remember the racist meme?” I ask.

“Of course. How could any Latino or Latina forget it?”

“During a conversation, an institutional leader asked me if I had to use the word ‘victim’ when I talked about being pictured in that anti-Latin@ meme. ‘Perhaps another word is more appropriate?’ If I’m not a victim for being pictured in a racist meme that hundreds of people viewed on the internet, when would I be a ‘victim’?”

“Right? Sometimes these attempts to ‘reframe’ things to appease the constituents of historically white Christian spaces like ours leave you wondering: ‘Did I just hear that, or am I going crazy? You can’t be serious. Is it still the 1950s or something?’”  

“Exactamente. The subtle efforts to nudge Latinx folks into more ‘respectable’ speech—the kind that won’t rock the Anglo boat—infuriate and terrify me. They require so much vigilance! I’m telling you: It’s easy to become a cooked frog, assimilating to every minor temperature adjustment designed to keep ‘certain’ Anglo constituents appeased.”

“And when you resist, when you ask, ‘Why are you adjusting the water temperature?” they look you in the eyes and say, ‘What are you talking about?’”

“Preach.”  

“You see their hand on the nob. You watch them turn up the heat. But when you ask them why they’re doing that, they say they aren’t doing anything. The blatant gas-lighting is gross.”  

“Sure is.”

“Ever notice how often these leaders gas-light you right before charging you with being a troublemaker?”

“Ah—the dreaded T-word. Not sure any racialized minority can recover from being labeled a ‘troublemaker’ in a historically or predominately white institution.”

I sip my coffee; my friend is silent. No one sighs. Our muscles tense. Apprehension fills the space between us.

“Nathan, you know people are calling you a troublemaker, right?”

“I know some people are calling me much worse than that!”

“I’m serious.”

“I am too…”

“Okay, but hear me. I’m worried about you. People are labeling you a troublemaker, hermano—and some are trying to keep you from getting a seat at important institutional tables.”

“I know…and I’m grateful for your loving concern. You unfortunately have good reasons to worry.”

“Yes I do. We both do.”

“This reminds me of a line from Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction. Du Bois says that the U.S. will never have a truthful history ‘until we have in our colleges men [and women] who regard the truth as more important than the defense of the white race.’ What Du Bois says about U.S. higher education generally holds for U.S. Christian higher education in particular—especially in historically white institutions. My speaking out against the histories of racism, white supremacy, and U.S. Anglo-Saxon imperialism has upset some folks.”

“Sí; it has.”

“Fans of white Christian Nationalism are outraged. Some have called for my job. ‘He’s racist and a liar!’ they say. ‘Fire him, or I’ll stop financially supporting your institution!’”

 “Got to love the financial power plays coming from the very people who decry ‘cancel culture.’ I wish you never faced those threats. It must be anxiety inducing.”

“You know they are, because you get them too. Nothing like having to trust God for your daily bread when people are calling for your job or labeling you a troublemaker.”

We both look down. The bench remains bowed. My hands start to sweat as I raise my coffee to drink with my friend. We sip. We shake our heads and sigh. Then we look at each other. My friend continues.

“If you dialed it back—and I’m not saying you should—I suspect you could shake the label ‘troublemaker.’”

“I can’t dial it back. We both know that. If anything, I have been too quiet. Mi gente in Puerto Rico are the world’s oldest colony. They continue to suffer from U.S. white supremacy and economic exploitation. God has called me to bear witness to their miseries and amplify their voices in places where they have gone unheard.”

“You and your people have suffered greatly. And I agree about your calling. But I worry that your pace and the labels you carry may keep you from amplifying these voices in the halls of power. I mean, just look at how I’ve been ostracized and disrespected—and I’ve said far less ‘incendiary’ things than you have.”

Pain radiates from my friend’s eyes. Psalm 35 comes to mind as I consider my next words.

“I hear you,” I begin. “And I’m sorry you’ve suffered so much for confronting institutional racism. I hate it. I wish yours wasn’t a vocation of agony.”

“Thanks, Nathan. Me too.”

“The ‘reprimands’ and gas-lighting you’ve faced have been egregious. Simply egregious.”

“Seeing the institutional underside has been rough. I’ve shed many tears while crying out to Jesus. You’re right: It’s been a vocation of agony.”  

“I got that phrase from MLK. He says promoting justice is a vocation of agony in ‘Beyond Vietnam.’”

“I haven’t read that.”

“It’s so good. That’s where King says there comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

“Some Latinx folks justify their institutional silence by saying that we need to go poco a poco.”

 “Yeah. I’ve received this counsel several times. It flies in the face of history. And it’s eerily similar to the gradualism King denounces in ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’”

“Ever the race scholar…But you’re right: Those are good connections.”

“Thanks...I wish they weren’t. I wish those pieces weren’t relevant to our lives.”

“If only…”

“Silence and gradualism remain enticing temptations. But often silence is betrayal and gradualism is an ideology that sooths flawed consciences while it perpetuates exploitation and oppression. ‘Don’t worry: We’re moving prudently—with ‘all deliberate speed.’”

“But Nathan, don’t you see, ‘We’re making big strides: We’ve written statements. You should be impressed—and grateful.’”

“You and I have heard those lines time and time again, haven’t we?”

“Yep.”

“So many evangelical institutions and institutional leaders repeat this mantra. It’s painfully predictable.”

“And it often accompanies gas-lighting.”

“You’re right.”   

We pause to sip our coffees. They’re nearly empty.

“Even when we do the work God’s given us,” my friend says, “promoting justice for and amplifying the voices of Latinx folks, we still end up in a position where we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we promote justice and amplify our people’s pains, people ostracize us, removing us from institutional or societal places of power. But if we’re silent or play the institution’s desired gradual game, we’ll get accolades and mammon—but we and our people suffer, though in different ways.”

“I hear you. That’s it, isn’t it? Nothing like being stuck between a rock and a hard place while you’re trying to stand firm upon the Rock.”

“It’s exhausting.”

“It sure is. Racial battle fatigue is no joke. We must recognize it. We need to take time to recover from it. I say this knowing that, for some reason, the LORD keeps preparing a table for us in the presence of our enemies, keeps calling us to a Eucharistic feast in which we participate in Christ’s sufferings.”

“In these circumstances, it is easy to succumb to the temptation to remain silent or ‘work’ for ‘gradual change.’” Those paths are less painful and the fast tracks to fame, money, and power. ‘Forget all this misery. Isn’t Christ’s yoke supposed to be light? This isn’t light—it’s heavy!”

“You got me thinking about Jesus’s temptation. We face something similar. ‘If you just bow an assimilated knee,’ figures in historically or predominately white institutions tell us, ‘all these kingdoms can be yours. No need to suffer.

And why not better position yourself to empower your people?’ As if we could have those kingdoms and advance the Kingdom. As if we could support our people by selling them out.”

“Can’t serve God and mammon. No wonder some of the nudges and calls to assimilate feel satanic.”

“Now that’s a word.”

We wrap up our conversation expressing our gratitude for friendship. We stand and the brown bench creaks in relief. It is no longer holding our burdens. Our burdens aren’t gone; our coffee cups are empty. Still our cups runneth over.  

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About Dr. Nathan Luis Cartagena

A son of the US South (Mom) and Puerto Rico (Dad), Dr. Cartagena is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL), where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy, and is a fellow in The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. He serves as the faculty advisor for Unidad Cristiana, a student group working to enhance Christian unity and celebrate Latina/o cultures, a scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, and a co-host for the forthcoming podcast From the Underside. He’s also writing a book on Critical Race Theory with IVP Academic.

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Cuida tu testimonio: A public theology of repentance

When I was a child, my mother would always say to me, cuida tu testimonio (watch, or take care of, your testimony). Whether she was dropping me off at school or going to a friend’s house, this dicho served as a reminder to always be on my best behavior. As the years have passed, this saying has become a guiding principle in my life, and my understanding of it has grown more profound. While as a child it only meant to not do anything that would embarrass myself or my parents, today it represents living in a manner that is worthy of my God. Mi testimonio is my Christian witness. It is the evidence of the supernatural work of Jesus in my life and my most powerful evangelistic tool for a suffering world in need of a Savior.  Mi testimonio is an expression of the image of God in me. It is my attempt to live as God’s royal representative on this side of eternity. 

I have also come to believe that while this principle applies to individuals, it also applies to collectives such as businesses, organizations, and even religious institutions. When an individual or institution fails to abide by the principle cuida tu testimonio, the integrity of their testimony is compromised, and often discredited. I believe this is the crisis of the evangelical church that has resulted in the loss of the credibility of the Church’s prophetic witness in the public square today. Ed Stetzer observes that, “tempted by power and trapped within a culture war theology, too many evangelicals tied their fate to a man who embodied neither their faith nor their vision of political character. As a result, we are finally witnessing an evangelical reckoning.”[1]

My mother also used to say, dime con quién andas y te dire quién eres (tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are). The apostle Paul similarly warned the Church at Corinth, “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”[2] In the evangelical church’s desperate attempt to gain power, influence, and control through the veins of American democracy, it has lost the hearts of its people and in turn, compromised its public witness. And while not all evangelicals have engaged in these practices, we collectively bear the name and consequences of those who have. How then can the evangelical church regain its credibility so that it can once again be a transformative agent for the American conscience and the public square? I believe the answer lies in a public theology of repentance. 

The reality of the saying, cuida tu testimonio, is that while we seek to live in a manner worthy of God, there are times that we fall short of Gods calling on our life. In the same way, just as individuals sin from time to time, so also do religious institutions, as they are comprised of individuals. To this, mi iglesia pentecostal (my Pentecostal church) taught me that the Church’s altars are always open for anyone and everyone who is willing to repent for their sins, and that Jesus is ready to meet them in that sacred place to renew and restore them once again. It is in our brokenness and not our perfection that the confidence of nuestro testimonio lies. 

For the individual, the decision to repent from one’s sin is a central element of the gospel message; it is necessary to transform the human heart. For the collective, it serves to jumpstart the process of systemic and institutional change, which can be theologically understood as a form of “social sanctification.” The evangelical church’s adoption of a public theology of repentance has the potential to result in the restoration of the integrity of its public witness by living consistently with the very message it proclaims: “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”[3]  

I imagine some Christians might have reservations about the evangelical church taking a position of humility by acknowledging its sins as counterproductive to the Church’s witness to the world. After all, the Church is meant to reflect the Kingdom of God as holy and set apart from the world. Therefore, to admit any type of fault would tarnish its character. However, I believe there is no act more Christian then that of repentance, whether individual or communal. In fact, the majority of the Bible is about a loving God who restlessly calls a rebellious people to repent from their sinful ways. Furthermore, if the Church does not model the central message of the Kingdom of God to this world, how then will the world ever learn what it means to repent from one’s sins and believe in Jesus Christ? 

Therefore, the most Christian response the evangelical church can practice to cuidar su testimonio and the credibility of the gospel message it proclaims is to repent. It must repent for placing its hope in false messiahs and partisan politics, for neglecting and suppressing the cries of black, brown, and minoritized communities, and for its companionship with white supremacy and its supporting leader(s) as exemplified at the Capitol insurrection. In embracing a public theology of repentance, the evangelical church has the opportunity to demonstrate to the world what it means to turn from sin, and even teach the world how to acknowledge and address its own historical evils through Christ’s message: “repent and believe.” In doing so, the evangelical church creates room for the Spirit to renew the credibility of the Christian message, restore the testimonio of the evangelical church, and enable the gospel message to produce spiritual transformation and social change. 

The people of Israel demonstrated this firsthand, as they knew that their public repentance would lead to the spiritual and social transformation of their community. It was only the righteous kings of Israel who were brave enough to acknowledge and properly respond to Israel’s sinful condition by removing the high places, tearing down the idols, cleansing the temple, and reestablishing their covenant relationship with God. This in turn led to the restoration of their community and the blessing of their nation. Repentance attained through the purging of evil, and belief proclaimed through the renewal of covenant relationship, the message of Christ to “repent and believe” is a timeless characteristic of what it means to be a Christian community. Should the evangelical church receive the call to “humble themselves, pray and seek God’s face, and turn from their wicked ways,”[4] perhaps then, the world will believe the gospel message they proclaim as good news indeed.

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About Daniel Montañez

Daniel Montañez was born in Visalia, CA to a Mexican mother and a Puerto Rican father. He is a Ph.D. student at Boston University in the area of Theology, Ethics, and Philosophy, and an adjunct instructor for the Latino and Global Ministries Program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the founder and director of Mygration Christian Conference, a non-profit organization that seeks to explore God’s heart through the stories of migration in the Bible. He is also the national director for the Church of God Migration Crisis Initiative, a ministry that seeks to provide church leaders with the biblical, pastoral, and ministerial preparation to positively and proactively respond to the crisis facing our immigrant communities in the United States. Daniel is dedicated to serving his Latino/a community at the intersection of the Church, the academy, and the public square.

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Footnotes

[1] Stetzer, Ed. “Evangelicals Face a Reckoning: Donald Trump and the Future of Our Faith.” USA Today. Gannett Satellite Information Network, January 11, 2021. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/01/10/after-donald-trump-evangelical-christians-face-reckoning-column/6601393002/?fbclid=IwAR2rJ3hrI0ld4HHRUCok788ZvoPD6B7k3lkbU3UylAVed17ZAT9NUYNchJ8. 

[2] 1 Cor 15:33 (NIV)

[3] Mark 1:15 (NIV)

[4] 2 Chr 7:14 (NIV; paraphrased)

Another White Nod to MLK?

Summer of 2020 inspired more conversation around the topic of performative justice. You need only look as far as social media influencers to see simple evidence of prevalent performative justice in our nation. Who spoke up, who listened, and who is continuing the work of pursuing equality and justice in large or small ways? 

Today is Martin Luther King Day. On this day influencers, marketers, educators, non-profits, and others will promote Dr. King’s ethos of peace, hope, equality, and justice. If you attended primary school in the US, you likely listened to or read King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech and wrote a reflective essay on the themes found therein, year after year. Good students had a proper respect for King; He was an American hero. Your experience in the US church also portrayed King as a man of faith, increasing his validity. Quite possibly, as a white, Christ-following American you will be sharing something from or about MLK on your social media feeds today. You will mention his memory to your young children. You will send a text of solidarity to your friends of color. And then you will move on. 

Performative justice is easiest to succumb to as white people when we are given a set of simplistic actions to justify our beliefs about what it means to be good and helpful. Holidays, monuments, and moments can become rote in both faith traditions and in our nation. Sacred remembrances can turn into mere performances of right action, actions done for self-preservation or gain. 

This was the case in Arizona. A failure to instill MLK Day as a paid state holiday led the National Football League to disqualify Phoenix as a host city for the 1993 Super Bowl.[1] This meant a projected revenue loss of over 200 million dollars for the southwest city; the game ended up going to Los Angeles.[2] In November 1992, Arizona finally approved the state holiday, nearly ten years after Ronald Reagan signed to declare the national observation of the day. I can’t help but wonder if financial gain was the tipping motivation for the state of Arizona to finally support remembering Dr. King and the civil rights movement he was killed leading. 

In his speech The Other America King spoke to the needed repentance of white Americans in this way: 

“What it is necessary to see is that there has never been a single solid monistic determined commitment on the part of the vast majority of white Americans on the whole question of Civil Rights and on the whole question of racial equality. This is something that truth impels all men of good will to admit.”[3]

We have a flawed approach toward inequality and injustice in both our nation and the American church. Our commitment to change, as King said, is limited. When we do take action, Arizona proves that it is often performative--a well placed nod driven by self-preservation.

For white people of faith, Martin Luther King Day is an opportunity to evaluate if the gospel of peace King championed is something we only give nod to on a national holiday. This day is a moment where we should consider our belief of the image of God in humanity, and how that belief informs our ministry structures, educational values, financial decisions, voting, and the voices we include when developing our theology. 

As a white, Christ-following woman, I ask you today, not to share another MLK post on your Facebook page. Instead, take intentional time to listen to King’s The Other America speech, see yourself in the narrative, ask how his words bear truth for our nation today, and reflect on your role in cultivating a culture of justice and unity in the US church. Not falling into performative justice, begins with creating space for sacred remembrance.

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About Emily C. Alexander

A first generation college graduate of a rural working class family, Emily completed her BA in Ministry to Women at Moody Bible Institute. She writes on the rural-urban divide, and issues at the intersection of faith and culture. Her hope is to contribute to the flourishing of the church through thoughtful theological engagement.

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Footnotes

[1] https://www.library.pima.gov/content/martin-luther-king-holiday-in-arizona/

[2] https://theundefeated.com/features/when-arizona-lost-the-super-bowl-because-the-state-didnt-recognize-martin-luther-king-jr-day/

[3] https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm