Multicultural Kingdom

Harvey C. Kwiyani

Description

‘Multicultural Kingdom’ explores some of the causes and implications of ethnic diversity on the British Christian landscape – and the landscape of theology itself. Why do we prefer to remain segregated in our ecclesiology? Why do several churches of different ethnic heritage use the same building for services on Sunday but not worship together?

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Ministry
• Philosophie et théologie
• Evangelism

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 30 avril 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334057543
• Langue: English

Extrait

Multicultural Kingdom
Ethnic Diversity, Mission and the Church
Harvey Kwiyani





© Harvey Kwiyani 2020
Published in 2020 by SCM Press
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978-0-334-05752-9
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
S cripture quotations from New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Bible extracts taken from the New King James Version® are copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Contents
Acknowledgements

1. The Kingdom of God is Like a Mosaic
2. The Great New Fact of Our Era
3. Shaping the Kingdom
4. The Mission of the Kingdom
5. The Multicultural Kingdom is Here
6. Diversity is a Terrible Thing to Waste
7. The Multicultural Imperative
8. Multicultural Ecclesiology
9. One New Tribe
10. Making Multiculturalism Work
11. Monocultural Churches in a Multicultural World

Bibliography





To Eric Msampha
and to Gabriel Diya

my brothers
my friends
gone too soon.
You are greatly missed.





Acknowledgements
This book summarizes a conversation that has been on my mind for a very long time. The subject of cultural diversity in the worldwide Christian community has been of great interest to me for the past 20 years. In this time, I have had the privilege to live and work with Christians in quite a few Western cities, from Saint Gallen in Switzerland to Saint Paul in Minnesota, and from Nottingham to Oxford to Liverpool, here in the United Kingdom. Thus, my thoughts on the subject being discussed in this book have been shaped by countless opportunities I have had to interact with Christians from Europe and North America, to observe and ask questions especially about Christian mission in the context of segregated Christianity in the West.
I have drawn insight from numerous people – too many to count. However, I have to mention a few friends. I am deeply grateful to Alexander and Annette Teifenthaler of Feldkirch in Austria for both opening the door to Europe for me and for acting on their faith that God uses people of all races. Without their trust and help, my journey would have been very different. I am also thankful to Christopher Daza for helping me make sense of the segregated Christianity that I first saw in Europe in 2000. He helped me develop the initial argument for the anti-segregation missiology that appears in this book. Here in England, I am greatly indebted to Philip Mountstephen, Paul Thaxter, Jonny Baker and Cathy Ross, and Colin Smith who made a home for me at the Church Mission Society (CMS) in Oxford and modelled for me the intentionality required to diversify mission teams to reflect the global nature of God’s kingdom. During my stay in Minnesota, USA, I was nourished by the works of such scholars as John Perkins and Virgilio Elizondo, both of whom are pioneers in this discourse. Their dream of a desegregated Church is what informs my vision for a multicultural kingdom. Their words helped me continue on my path when I experienced racial marginalization especially among my white Evangelical friends in the United States.
I also have to thank my many students of mission who are scattered across the country – maybe the world. I am certain I learned more from them than they did from me. Their questions on the subject of ‘race and the mission of God’ allowed me space to critically reflect on some of the issues discussed in this book. Without them, this book would not be what it is.
Finally, I have to thank my parents, the Reverends Jonathan and Hilda Kwiyani of Chiradzulu in Malawi. Their ministerial experience and wisdom often prove helpful to my process of writing. I am blessed to have them around. Also, my three schatzilles , Nancy, Rochelle and Roxanne. Their hope for a more desegregated kingdom will one day be answered.
While writing this book, I lost two very close friends, Eric Msampha and Gabriel Diya. It is to their memory that I dedicate the book. Their passion for the work of the ministry will live on.





mosaic /mə(ʊ)ˈzeɪɪk/
noun: mosaic; plural noun: mosaics
• a picture or pattern produced by arranging together small pieces of stone, tile, glass, etc. For example: ‘mosaics on the interior depict scenes from the Old Testament’.




1. The Kingdom of God is Like a Mosaic
After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. (Rev. 7.9)
I usually discuss my missiological writings with my mother. Her name is Hilda, and she lives in Malawi where she has led a congregation for more than 30 years together with my father, Jonathan. I find her to be a great critical sounding board who helps me disentangle some of my thoughts when they become convoluted. Her experience and wisdom have been significantly helpful to me along my journey of thinking about mission in a context that is extremely different from where I grew up. The first time I brought to her the argument of this book, she was both excited and perplexed. She was excited because she hoped to get some theological insights out of this book to help her shape the multicultural community that she leads in rural Chiradzulu, in southern Malawi. Diversity for her and her community is a social phenomenon that happens naturally without any theological intentionality, and she hoped that in this endeavour she could find ways to embed her praxis in solid theological foundations.
Yet she was also perplexed, because to her cultural diversity among Christians is a given. There is no other way to conceive of the ekklesia apart from it being a multicultural community of followers of Christ worshipping and serving God wherever they have been scattered around the world. After a few days of careful reflection on the subject of this book, she asked me: ‘What do you mean when you say a multicultural kingdom?’ She needed an explanation because as far as she is concerned it does not make sense for one kingdom to have two cultures. The kingdoms that she knows, especially those in southern Africa, have one culture, or something extremely close to one culture. They are established around a set of kingdom-wide values and languages that make it impossible for people to have more than one culture. No sane king would allow a multiplicity of cultures in his kingdom. A few days after this conversation, my mother called me to correct herself. She had realized that cultural diversity among Christians in the world means exactly this – the kingdom of God is elastic enough to hold all cultures of the world. Indeed, the kingdom of God is one in which all nations, tribes and tongues belong. She gave me an example that drove the point home; the United Kingdom is one such kingdom. The English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish live together under one monarchy.
Still, she was bewildered to hear that Christianity here in Europe and North America has not yet figured out how the nations, tribes and tongues can belong together in worship, that the body of Christ in the West is segregated, that even among African Christians in Europe and North America it is almost impossible to have a multicultural church. She could not understand that in the West, generally speaking, black Christians worship with fellow black Christians; white Christians worship with fellow white Christians; the same goes for Latin American and Asian Christians. She was taken aback when I told her of the ‘black majority churches’ in London (which is a more generous way of describing Nigerian congregations, Ghanaian congregations, Congolese congregations, and many others). ‘Why do you have to qualify the nature of a congregation by race, ethnicity or nationality? How can that be?’ she wondered. I told her that both in the United Kingdom and in the United States, more than 85 per cent of all congregations are made up of people of the same race (and usually of the same social status). Suddenly, she remembered some words of Martin Luther King: ‘Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week.’ I said that Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour today, just as it was 50 years ago. She went quiet on the phone for a few moments, and then, in a disappointed motherly tone, she said, ‘Tell your friends, you do not know what you are missing.’
My mother lives in rural Malawi and so her concern for cultural diversity is not based on racial segregation – she probably has never had a racist encounter in her adult life (she spent her first 15 years on a colonial farm in Zimbabwe). Her immedi