Beyond Welcome: Experiencing God Through Your Culture

Artwork showing Jesus being detained by ICE. Image source.

Here's a quote from page 8 of "Beyond Welcome." This chapter is about "assimilation", about the idea that immigrants' cultural backgrounds shouldn't matter, America is a big melting pot, etc. The author says now she doesn't believe in that at all, and it is important to seek out perspectives from a diverse range of people, because people's experiences really are different.

Strangely, this idea had never even presented itself as a possibility in the church. We talked so much about our identity in Christ, and yet all our leaders, authors, and theologians were white men. Never was I even given a framework for considering my own experience as different and in need of processing. In all our conversations about racial reconciliation, not once did I hear a Christian leader suggest that I would experience God differently through my gender, culture, and language-- that God would meet me as an immigrant woman of color. In fact, looking back I see that though these leaders meant well, our conversations never amounted to much except to make white Christians feel better without having to give up power or be uncomfortable.

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Posts about "Beyond Welcome":

Beyond Welcome (a book about listening to and learning from immigrants)
Beyond Welcome: Experiencing God Through Your Culture

Related:

Judges 19