The Bible, Ethnicity, and Reconciliation

What the Bible Has to Say on Ethnicity

• The biblical world was multiethnic, and numerous ethnic groups were involved in God’s unfolding plan of redemption (Abraham, Rahab, Tamar and Ruth, Bathsheba, etc.).
• All people are created in the image of God and, therefore, all ethnic groups have the same equal status and equal unique value (Genesis 1:26-27, Acts 17:26).
• The gospel demands that we carry compassion and the message of Christ across ethnic lines (Luke 10:5-37, Matthew 28:19, Acts 1:8, Romans 1:16).
• The New Testament teaches that as Christians we are all unified together “in Christ,” regardless of our differing ethnicities. Furthermore, our primary concept of self-identity should not be our ethnicity, but our membership as part of the body and family of Christ. Further, our primary concept of self-identity should not be our ethnicity, but our membership as part of the body and family of Christ (Ephesians 2:14-16, Galatians 3:28, Colossians 3:11).
• The picture of God’s people at the climax of history depicts a multiethnic congregation from every tribe, language, people, and nation, all gathered together in worship around God’s throne (Revelation 5:9, 7:9, 10:11, 11:9, 13:7, 14:6, 17:15).

The Problems with Race as a Distinguishing Category

The category of race is unhelpful (and somewhat artificial) because it locates identity in physical appearance. The differing colors of skin that serve as racial markers are simply the result of differing levels of melatonin. The problem of using race as a category is compounded when we acknowledge that it often comes with stereotypes and assumptions that are based squarely upon biological attributes (like skin color and hair texture).

Thabiti Anyabwile, a pastor who was formerly pastor of First Baptist of Grand Cayman for many years. As a “black” man, he explains the hopelessness of using “race to distinguish men and women:

“My barber in the Caribbean looks just like me. You’d think he was an African-American until he opens his mouth. When he speaks, he speaks Jamaican patois so it is clear that he’s not an African-American. My administrative assistant is also proudly Jamaican – very white-skinned. The lady in my barbershop looks a lot like my wife. You might think she is African-American or even Caymanian. She is Honduran. This notion of artificially imposing categories on people according to color – biology – is sheer folly. This is why much of the field on race and ethnicity has largely abandoned the attempt to identify men based on biological categories of race.”

The Preference for Ethnicity as a Distinguishing Category

The bible grounds human diversity in human ethnicity. To use the language of Genesis 10, we comprise “clans” in separate “nations’ that speak different “languages” in diverse “lands.” And with the globalization of the world and the migration of men and women across continents and into cities, these clans from separate nations and with different languages now often live in the same land.

Here the concept of ethnicity is immensely helpful (as opposed to race), for it includes all these considerations and more. Instead of being strictly tied to biology, ethnicity is much more fluid, factoring in social, cultural, linguistic, historical, and even religious. Anthropologists now tend to distinguish differing ethnolinguistic groups in the world based on a common self-identity with common history, customs, patters, and practices based upon those two primary characteristics: ethnicity and language.

Applied to the United States, we are a nation of increasing diversity of people groups: Anglo Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans, Asians Americans and more. These categories can be further subdivided based upon other ethnolinguistic factors, leading us to realize that we are a nation of unique people groups with diverse histories from different lands with distinct customs and even languages.

The Power of the Gospel for Unity and Reconciliation

But, with this understanding we can see more clearly how the gospel is able to foster powerful unity in the middle of great diversity.

Ephesians 2:12-14, 18-19: 12 Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility… 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

From the beginning, sin separated man and woman from God and also from one another. This sin stood (and stands) at the root of ethnic pride and prejudice. When Christ went to the cross, he conquered sin, making the way for people to be free from its hold and restored to God. In doing so, he paved the way for all people to be reconciled to one another. Followers of Christ thus have one “Father” as one “family” in one “household,” with no “dividing wall of hostility” based upon ethnic diversity.

As David Platt says about the unifying power of the gospel: “The gospel does not deny the obvious ethnic, cultural, and historical differences that distinguish us from one another. Nor does the gospel suppose that these differences are merely superficial. Instead, the gospel begins with a God who creates all men and women in his image and then diversifies humanity according to clans and lands (Genesis 10) as a creative reflection of his grace and glory in distinct groups of people. The gospel compels us to celebrate our ethnic distinctions, value our cultural differences, and acknowledge our historical diversity, even forgiving the ways such history may have been dreadfully harmful.”