Towards a Theory of Race Supporting Mission as Intercultural Reconciliation
I am involved in advocacy for a post-supersessionist vision of Christian mission. My proposal is mission as intercultural reconciliation, hereafter referred to as MIR. The biblical basis for MIR is found poignantly in Paul’s declaration:
For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; (New American Standard Version, 1995, Eph. 2:14-17)
Unfortunately, this vision was thwarted by supersessionist theology that abolished the Jewish expression in the church. This biblical interpretive framework affirmed that, “the promises and commitments of God would no longer apply to Israel because it had not recognized Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God but had been transferred to the Church of Jesus Christ which was now the true ‘new Israel’, the new chosen people of God” (Cunningham, 2017).
The prophetic symbol of the “one new man” formed of formerly alienated peoples was substituted by a vision of a church united by the nullification of cultural identity. The instinct of catholicity was born out of which came emphases on episcopal lineage and uniform doctrine and practice. The history of Christianity that ensued has been one of serial fragmentation with each separating group claiming to represent the purest culture, devoid of human infiltration and contamination.
My context of service is the Iberian diaspora – Spain, Portugal and their colonies in the Americas – where I have served as a missionary for the past 30 years. In his book The Christian Imagination, Willie Jennings (2010) argues that Christian identity became encompassed by European (white) identity during the colonial era through Catholic missions springing forth from the Counter Reformation in the 15th century. This Christian identity had been wholly removed from Muslim identity during La Reconquista when the Iberian Peninsula was retaken from the Moors, just as it had been removed from Jewish identity during the Inquisition.
Although supersessionism came to prominence as early as the second century, it was at the commencement of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism that this doctrine became the rationale for the displacement of indigenous peoples and their categorization according to their proximity or distance from the “people of God” embodied by the white European colonizers. Willie Jennings (2010) proposes that supersessionism is primordial to the development of the modern concept of race, i.e., origin of race as supersessionism, hereafter referred to as ORS.
But some have argued that the ORS thesis asks the supersessionism of 15-18th century Iberian Catholic colonizers to bear more responsibility than is reasonable (McDermott, 2023). I believe that ORS has potentially fruitful ramifications for post-colonial race relations. I agree with Jennings that Iberian Catholic colonialism in the early modern era contributed to the Western concept of race. That theories of race based in Western colonialism have had catastrophic effects on humanity is something I take for granted. However, I feel that some social science research on racial theory is based too heavily on a US-American perspective. Both CRT and ORS are cases in point, borrowing too heavily on the US-American historical experience to serve as a global paradigm for racial justice today. In fact, this paper will explore the ambiguous meaning of the term race as it is used in the U.S. versus Europe. The thesis of this paper is that ORS is helpful to mission as intercultural reconciliation, but it requires adjustment to engage the European/Iberian context.
In this essay I will give a brief presentation of Jennings’ ORS thesis followed by a section contextualizing ORS within Critical Race Theory (CRT). In the late 20th century, CRT emerged in the US-America becoming one of the most prominent recent developments in the social sciences related to race in the popular imagination. This body of inquiry critiques the foundations of modern liberalism, being skeptical towards the ideas of equality and Enlightenment rationalism. CRT focuses on the formation of social roles, patriarchy, forms of domination, and is concerned with addressing historical wrongs in legal and practical ways (p. 5). CRT also draws upon critical white studies, which investigates the essence of whiteness and its prominence related to understandings of race (Farmer & Farmer, 2020).
The next section of the essay critiques ORS considering the European and Iberian context. Here I will draw from European and Iberian analysis of popular contemporary US-American race theory. Since the ORS thesis is little known in European social science literature, I focus on the reception of CRT as a proxy. My premise is that both ORS and CRT are part of the US-American genealogy of black civil rights theory (and praxis) and both theories share many common themes. To conclude, I will offer some suggestions for post-supersessionist mission as intercultural reconciliation (MIR) in the European/Iberian context.
davidjdawson 