Musings On Ethnicity

Growing up in rural Ontario, north of London, I had little exposure to ethnic concerns apart from what I saw or read in the news reports. I heard ethnic slurs as a young boy although I never used them but my first personal exposure to ethnic issues occurred as a young boy in 1967. In raising money for our baseball organization my coach promised to take whoever sold the most chocolate bars to a baseball game in Detroit. I'd never been to a major league baseball game and I was determined to win! My brother and I with the help of my father sold around $370 worth of bars at 50 cents a bar! My brother and I won and were promised we would be taken to a game but the ethnic based riots in July 1967 in Detroit led to postponing that promise until 1968.


There was no real ethnic diversity in the schools or churches I attended as I grew up. In the mid-1970's I attended seminary in Philadelphia and this was my first exposure to ethnic diversity. I lived in the dorms which were really only two floors of single rooms with a common kitchen and washroom facilities for all the men on each floor. We ranged in age from those still in their teens [like myself] to older men in their forties or fifties and we came from all parts of North America as was obvious by the various accents! There was also ethnic diversity and I thought nothing at the time of using the same common kitchen cutlery and dishes or washroom facilities. Strangely, I first noticed ethnic diversity driving home from church services on a Sunday morning. As the congregations gathered outside after their services I saw several different ethnic churches but none that were ethnically diverse! I knew even as a young Christian this wasn't God's intention and as churches we weren't fulfilling God's redemptive plan to unite all nations in Christ! My final two years at the seminary I worshiped in the small church that met in the chapel at the seminary. This church was ethnically diverse and eventually the pastor married a lovely young lady from that congregation uniting in marital communion their ethnic diversity.


As an avid sports fan, I was aware of the bigotry in major league baseball that arose in the late nineteenth century that Jackie Robinson became famous for challenging when he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. As a Boston Celtics fan I was aware they had been instrumental in challenging the monolithic ethnic nature of the NBA. A recent book, Rebound! Basketball, Busing, Larry Bird, And The Rebirth Of Boston (MVP Books, 2008) even argues for the role of the Celtics in helping address ethnic issues in Boston. As a sports fan I've often viewed these ethnic issues through sports lenses.


In recent years, several sports movies have attempted to portray the ethnic tensions and prejudice that prevailed in North American society in the 1960's and 1970's. Glory Road recalls the struggle of the Texas Western College [now University of Texas at El Paso] basketball team to integrate their team and its impact on the small town of El Paso, Texas in the mid-1960's. The ethnic significance was that Texas Western started the first completely African American lineup and won the NCAA championship in 1966! In the movie, some of the controversial scenes of ethnic prejudice were Disney's “creative liberty” to enhance the theme of ethnic tensions. These “creative liberties” by Disney also are found in the movie, Remember The Titans the story of the 1971 T C Williams High School football team from Alexandria, VA who won the state championship. In 1971, three high schools in Alexandria were combined to form two junior high schools and one senior high school of junior and senior students at T C Williams. This required players from the previously ethnically segregated schools to now play together and compete for starting positions on the football team. Yet, T C Williams was previously integrated. As portrayed in the movie, African American Coach Herman Boone did get the head coaching job at T C Williams unexpectedly over Coach Bill Yoast and Boone did integrate the team by having them train at Gettysburg College. The success of the team did have a positive effect on the ethnic tensions in Alexandria.


In Acts 8:1 we read that persecution of the Christians in Jerusalem led them to scatter throughout Judea and Samaria and in this way the gospel spread. God can accomplish his redemptive purposes in many ways! I wonder if God is actively integrating churches in North America that have been slow to see His vision. A recent study indicates that churches are beginning to reflect more ethnic diversity. “We're far from a color-blind society, in religion or anything else, but there is some movement in churches as well as elsewhere,” said Mark Chaves, professor of sociology, religion and divinity at Duke University and lead researcher on the project. The study found that some congregations that were previously all-white now have a couple of minority families as members. Chaves said mostly black churches did not report a comparable change (Adelle M. Banks, “Churches More Diverse, Informal Than 8 Years Ago” Dec 26, 2008).

We are now witnessing greater ethnic diversity particularly in the major metropolitan centers of the world. D A Carson notes, “In some cities the pace of this change has been stunning. A bare three decades ago, Toronto was still largely white and at least substantially WASP. Now the United Nations says it is the most ethnically and culturally diverse city on the continent — and that includes Los Angeles” (“Challenges for 21st-Century Preaching”). While this stat has been disputed, Toronto is certainly one of the more ethnic diverse cities in North America and this has implications for churches and the gospel.

This provides for us in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) an opportunity to take the gospel to the “nations” that are literally in our neighborhoods! It also means our churches should reflect God's intent of unity in Christ with ethnic diversity as we seek to testify to the God who loved the world in all its ethnic diversity so much that he sent His Son, Jesus into the world to die to save sinners from every ethnic group (Jn 3:16). May our churches reflect God's eternal plan to gather people of “every tribe and language and people and nation” around His throne to worship Jesus (Rev 5:9)!


Randy Mann