The WHOLE Body of Christ
by David Bartlett
I teach at a seminary where we try very hard to be sensitive to the diversity of the whole body of Christ. While most of the community is of Euro-American descent and the overwhelming majority of the student body consist of anglo Presbyterians, we are delighted that the faculty is becoming more and more diverse ethnically and denominationally and we have hopes that the student body will slowly but surely follow.
Nonetheless two events in the late spring reminded us that while good intentions do not always pave the way to hell they often don’t pave the way to koinōnia either.
The first was our own seminary commencement, held in the sanctuary of a local church. The person presiding over the event reminded us all before the degrees were awarded that this was a worship context and that, therefore, we would be expected to comport ourselves worshipfully. What he meant by that was, no cheering and no clapping.
The problem was that the definition of a worship context was decidedly shaped by the white, middle class, Presbyterian history both of the presider and of the seminary. Many in the congregation came from African American Baptist or AME churches and some from Hispanic Pentecostal churches. They, too, intended to comport themselves worshipfully, so they did what they often do at other services when they want to praise the goodness of God and to rejoice when another member of the body rejoices: they cheered and clapped.
I hope that next year we will think about “worship” more broadly.
The other event was sadder and more serious. After it was discovered that the person who shot a number of students at Virginia Tech was Korean American, the president of our Korean student association wrote to the whole community. The Korean students, he wrote, were not only saddened they were ashamed at the behavior of this person of Korean descent.
The e-mail letters came pouring back. Appropriately many pointed out that the student shooter had been a deeply disturbed young man. Less appropriately, many of us tried to persuade our Korean brothers and sisters that they needed to take a more Western view of the world. If only they had read more Locke or Jefferson (we implied) they would know that responsibility is always an individual and never a communal affair.
Instead of seeking to understand their perspective in order to be helpful, we urged them to adopt our perspective and then take comfort. We did not take much time to think about what convictions might lie behind their sense of shame, and we certainly did not reflect on the fact that their sense of community identity was probably a good deal closer to the self-understanding of New Testament churches than our Kantian individualism. When Paul reminded the Corinthians that they were the Body of Christ he was reminding them precisely that their belonging was at least as important as their individuality.
The tough thing about trying to be a genuinely diverse and multicultural church is this: it takes a good deal of research and a great deal of thought.