Sojourners blog: Beyond ‘Diversity’: New Creation and a Mestizo Vision

Chris Rice blogs for Sojourners on the vision of diversity that God has for the church.

“Integration” and “diversity” do not express God’s purpose for reconciliation deeply enough. What we need is a fresh paradigm that declares our new culture in Christ.

A workshop last month in Cincinnati at the Christian Community Development Association conference (CCDA) confirmed my conviction that Christians need fresh language regarding our mission and identity in a divided world.

During my workshop, I remarked that as “reconciliation” becomes both increasingly popular and contested, and as such potentially unhelpful, the critical question is “reconciliation toward what?” I mentioned two dominant paradigms.

• Integration is the first paradigm — overcoming oppression through social equality and access to mainstream benefits. There has been deep progress in this area, at the same time the fierce historical opposition to racial and economic integration in American life is a sign of a captivity which is yet to be overcome. Yet as early as the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott Martin Luther King Jr. argued that integration would not go far enough to heal America: “The end,” preached King, “is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community.”

Notions of integration easily lead to “equal and separate” and avoid even more difficult and holy work. As Charles Marsh has argued in The Beloved Community, “[W]hile the civil rights movement defeated segregation and forever changed American society, the nation has experienced precious little repentance, reconciliation, and costly discipleship.”

• Diversity has been the other dominant response to “reconciliation toward what?” Over the last ten years there has been an explosion of initiatives and literature around “inclusiveness” and “diversity.” Some Christian denominations and institutions are diversifying their leadership and constituencies in ways which are transformative and should be celebrated. Pastor Mark DeMaz pointed out to me recently the traction that “multi” has gotten in the evangelical world: “multi-ethnic” (InterVarsity Christian Fellowship), “multi-cultural” (David Anderson of Bridgeway Community Church), “multi-racial” (sociologist and author George Yancey). This is long overdue, and Soong Chan Rah’s much-discussed book The Next Evangelicalism shows how far there is to go.

Yet at CCDA I said that “multi” does not capture the work of the Holy Spirit within history powerfully enough. The story of creation and humanity as diverse and good must be completed by the story of God’s redemption of the ways the fall deformed the gift of difference through the trauma of sin. The trajectory of the Christian story is an interruption and transformation of historical identities and fixed groups (Jew, Greek, male, female, slave, free) toward a fluidity of identity and culture: when the Antioch church becomes a new people across these lines, a community and politics (where Jesus is Lord, not Caesar) comes into existence that is so strange, it requires a new language. It is at Antioch that the disciples are first called “Christians.”
If integration and diversity are insufficient paradigms for “reconciliation toward what” in an increasingly multicultural America and world wracked by intensifying polarizations, what’s the alternative?

“Consequently, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh; even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer. So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation…” 2 Cor. 5:15-18

What’s the alternative? I believe we find it in the above passage.

At the CCDA, I suggested that we consider the implications of “New Creation.” New Creation breaks beyond tribal self-sufficiency to a “toward what” grounded in the story and power of God’s gift in Jesus Christ which interrupts the ground of injustice and divides with conversion toward a new community, new desires, and a new Lord.

New Creation is a call to being changed (metanoia) in a visible new way of life and sharing together (koinonia, including a new economic life between rich and poor, see Acts 2 and Acts 4, and including life with strangers who become companions). This is why, for example, I prefer to speak of “interracial” churches. In saying “interracial” (e.g. interracial churches or interracial marriage) instead of “biracial” we point to a cultural intimacy, interdependence, and mutual transformation which is a sign of a “new humanity.” There is a rich literature around “transcultural” or “third culture kids” who make up a kind of “new people” who don’t fit into the homeland their parents left nor the culture they are living in. As a missionary kid who grew up in Korea, I identify profoundly with this.

Yet the English language may itself be so ridden with dichotomies that it cannot capture how New Creation interrupts us in the “sluggish in between” of human life between Jesus’ resurrection and return. But another language does.

Here is how Duke Divinity School scholar Edgardo Colon-Emeric expresses it:

According to the seer of Patmos [John's vision in Revelation 7:9-17 of a multitude from every nation, tongue, language, worshipping the Lamb], the Church is a mestizo assembly gathered from every nation in praise of the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Reflecting on this Spanish word mestizo, Edgardo, who is also the director of Duke’s Hispanic House of Studies, adds:
Mestizo … refers literally to a mixture. The term was first used to describe the children of the violent encounter between European fathers and Amerindian mothers. Neither European nor Indian, these children belonged to a new people, a people of mixed heritage. But this mixed heritage is not simply a historical or ethnic marker; it is also the goal of Christian existence. In the words of Mexican-American theologian Virgil Elizondo ‘the future is mestizo,’ not because of ethnic mixing, but because the new humanity in Christ is a mestizo humanity of Jews and Gentiles.

My friend Edgardo goes on to say, “The church needs leaders who have eyes to see that all ethnic ministries are provisional because the future is mestizo.” To repeat the key claim, “this mixed heritage is not simply a historical or ethnic marker; it is also the goal of Christian existence.”

As I told those who attended my CCDA workshop, I am not advocating being blind to or forgetful of the history of oppression and how this trajectory deforms community, institutional, and church life. A notion of cheap “reconciliation without memory” leads to assimilation into the dominant culture and its values. This is exactly why New Creation matters: We are freed from captivity through shared journeys and communities of conversion which make difference meaningful in an exchange of gifts and a vision of mutuality which is both truthful about the grip of sin and reaches toward a new place of life together.

Through the ministry of Maggy Barankitse in the east African country of Burundi, orphans of violence between rival Tutsi and Hutu groups have lived for years together at Maison Shalom (”House of Peace”). On top of former tribal killing fields, they share intimate daily life with the multiplicity of people who come there including from the “Twa” minority, nearby Congo, and “Muzungus” (outsiders) from Europe and the U.S. Over time, their identities become reshaped and quite confused in this new community. When questioned about her ethnic identity, one orphan speaks of herself as being a “Hutsi-Twa-Congo-Zungu” — pulling all these peoples into a kind of one new humanity.

Integration and Diversity do not state the power of the Holy Spirit’s interruption of history deeply enough. To emphasize Edgardo’s point, “all ethnic ministries are provisional because the future is mestizo.” Diversity and integration lack a telos, a goal, a “for what purpose?” New Creation and a mestizo vision properly understood within God’s work of “reconciling all things in Christ” (Col. 1:15-23) offer a fresh paradigm of “toward what” that is not only deeply transformative but beautiful, a bit scary, and subversive to the way things are. Not to mention a deeper way to holiness and vision which requires God.

Chris Rice is co-director of the Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School. He is author of Reconciling All Things, Grace Matters, and More Than Equals. He writes regularly at his blog, Reconcilers with Chris Rice. This article appears courtesy of a partnership with UrbanFaith.com.

[Editor: To be sure, mestizo isn't a perfect analogy, since they were likely treated better than the fully Indigenous Americans by the Europeans. Nonetheless, the point is a good one.]

Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away-- and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father."

John 10:11-18

Paul said that Christians must be in, but not of, the world. Some Christians have taken that to mean we should be detached from the world, and frankly, I think this is a bad idea.

In the parable of the good shepherd, the shepherd has a vested interest in maintaining the well-being of his flock, because he owns the flock. The hireling, in contrast, doesn't have an ownership stake in the flock.

The Church is a shepherd to the world. We are called to use our moral standing, our human, financial and other resources for the sake of the world. We are called to participate in leading this world to a more just future - perhaps even to the kingdom of God, where the lion can lie in peace with the lamb.

We are not like the executives of a corporation, so it's inappropriate to talk of an ownership stake in the world. We should think of ourselves more as the governing board of a nonprofit. Ideally, a nonprofit's board has representation from all the communities it serves. That way, the organization will (ideally) take into the consideration of the needs of all stakeholders. It will have a direct stake in the well-being of the community it serves.

Clearly God took this concept of stewardship to its ultimate end - God became incarnate in the person of Jesus. God did not come as a Roman, as a member of a conquering empire. God came as one of the victims of empire.

Some in the Church, such as Oscar Romero, have chosen to be martyred for living out the Gospel among the most vulnerable. Most of us aren't brave enough to do that. But we can build our Church to include the poor, people of color, indigenous people, women, people with disabilities and others in our governance.

In the past, we've excluded people. When we exclude a group of people from possibly participating in our governance and then try to serve them, we will probably end up colonizing them instead.

In this age, good steward means representation. Without representation, the Church will be unable - as opposed to merely unwilling - to take into account the needs of all people.

I have great hope for the Church: a Christmas/New Year's message

I have great hope for the Church.

And by "the Church," I mean the Episcopal Church first, the Anglican Communion second, and Christ's universal, catholic church third. I don't mean that I have the most hope in the Episcopal Church, and the least in the universal church. I mean that the Episcopal Church is my spiritual home, and it is a member of the Anglican Communion, which is a part of the universal church.

I have hope in the church because the church is changing. In changing, it is learning a new way of being.

The church is changing to include different faces. Faces from all around the globe. The center of power is shifting away from the West, away from Whites. Many Westerners and many Whites are wonderful people; all else equal, Westerners and Whites are no better or worse than people of any other race or nationality. However, a church that includes people from all around the world, but whose center of power is unduly dominated by Whites and Westerners is not a true church.

Now, of course, the Episcopal Church basically defines itself as the Anglican Province of the United States. It is a Western church, in terms of geography. However, the United States is not ethnically homogeneous. Almost all Americans are descended from immigrants, or else are immigrants themselves.

The face of the Episcopal Church is changing.

In addition to welcoming people of other races, we have welcomed women, and are in the process of welcoming LGBT people. We are not perfect. But the world is not perfect.

We are a church that is learning about environmental stewardship. About development. About human rights. About racism, sexism, homophobia. We are a church that is learning.

We are starting to let Jesus decolonize us.

Working alongside for our nation, our Communion, and the world, we can help find the way forward.

Amen.

Gender diversity alone not sufficient to guarantee high performance

Mark Hulbert, writing for the International Herald Tribune, covers a study that finds that mixed gender mutual fund teams actually have lower performance on average than same-sex teams, and that the same-sex teams, whether all men or all women, had equal performance.

The take home lesson here is that the mere presence of gender diversity is not sufficient to guarantee high performance. Men must be willing to respect women and their opinions - and Wall Street's culture is hostile to women.

Past research has found instances in which gender diversity improved investment performance. E. Brooke Harrington, an assistant professor of sociology and public policy at Brown University and visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Germany, found that, on average, mixed investment clubs outperformed the typical single-sex investment club. She attributed this so-called diversity premium to the additional perspectives included in decision-making when both sexes were present.

Ruenzi said he thought that his findings and those of Harrington were not as contradictory as they might appear. Compared with Wall Street, he said, the typical investment club is far more welcoming to women and thus better able to benefit from the additional perspectives that diversity can introduce into decision-making.

This more welcoming attitude is evident in the composition of investment clubs. Women have traditionally made up about 60 percent of the membership of these clubs, according to Bonnie Reyes, president and chief operating officer of BetterInvesting, a U.S. organization of investment clubs. By contrast, according to Ruenzi, fewer than a third of team-managed mutual funds have even one woman on their management teams. As a result, it is hard to draw firm conclusions about how gender diversity might be affecting fund performance, Harrington said.

She did say, however, that Wall Street was "notorious for being inhospitable to women." When a woman serves on a fund management team whose other members are all men, for example, she may not be willing to share her perspectives and ideas or will not be taken as seriously when she does. As a result, the fund may realize little, if any, of the benefits of diversity, while still suffering from the inefficiencies often caused by intra-team strife.

This is a blog about religion, so obviously this has implications for the church. I think the Episcopal Church is on the right track, but it is imperative that we aim to make our leadership bodies representative of the composition of the church as a whole. It is also imperative that we not pigeonhole female priests, for example, into less prestigious leadership positions.

Female directors improve business performance - has implications for Christian ecclesiology

The Rev Elizabeth Kaeton recently commented that she believes the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops would have issued a vastly different statement in response to the Primates if women were proportionately represented among bishops (they still are not, even though our Presiding Bishop is a woman). Her post is easy to misinterpret as condoning some sort of ontological difference between men and women, but I believe her point is this. Women are less repulsed by those who are not straight. Specifically, they're less repulsed by the thought of two men having (gasp!!!) anal sex. There is evidence to suggest that women in general have less negative attitudes towards homosexuality, so I believe she is correct here. She also asserts that the issues of power and control would be framed in a less hostile fashion if the House of Bishops were half or more women. Here, I do not agree with her, but perhaps I am misinterpreting her statement. I hope she will correct me if I'm wrong.

Nonetheless, the HoB is still primarily male and White. There are a growing number of studies that provide a case for diversity in business. I believe the church should take note. We should resolve to make our leadership bodies representative of the diversity inherent in the human race. That means that down the road, half of our bishops need to be women. 5-10% need to be gay. About 35% (I think) need to be people of color. And so on. MSN Money has an article on women in business leadership positions, which I've posted below.


Having women well represented in the corporate boardroom can help improve financial performance, according to a new study by a group that promotes women in executive roles.

Catalyst, a nonprofit organization focused on women in the workplace, released a report today showing that big companies with the greatest number of female board members on average have significantly better financial performance than those with fewer women.

he report looked at financial results, such as return on equity, at the 500 largest U.S. corporations. Those with at least three female directors had notably stronger financial performance, on average, the study found.

The results suggest that "diversity, well managed, produces better results" for companies, said Catalyst President Ilene Lang.

"Bringing women on their boards to represent the stakeholders really gives them a better company and better performance," Lang said. The correlation was found throughout an array of industries, she said.

The study looked at three financial measures -- return on equity, return on sales and return on invested capital -- at companies in the Fortune 500 over the 2001-to-2004 period.

Those years were chosen because they were part of a financial recovery period after significant stock-market turmoil.

In return on equity, on average, companies with the highest percentages of female board members outperformed those with the least by 53%, the study found.

In return on sales, the companies with more female board directors outperformed by 42% on average and in return on invested capital, by 66%, Catalyst said. [Editor: return on invested capital is a key measure of a company's profitability, and is indeed harder to manipulate.]

The group said it chose these three benchmarks, rather than things such as earnings or stock-price movement, to try to best track how a company performed financially.

Different voices around the table
Because of movement in and out of the Fortune 500, there were 520 companies in the analysis. Several academic experts worked with Catalyst researchers to compile the report.

Females are still a small minority in the boardroom, holding 14.6% of Fortune 500 board seats in 2006, down slightly from 14.7% in 2005, according to earlier research from Catalyst.

If the pace continues, it would take about 73 years for females to be equally represented on boards, the group projects.

Myrtle Potter, a director at Amazon.com (AMZN, news, msgs) and FoxHollow Technologies (FOXH, news, msgs) who was not involved in the preparation of the new study but reviewed the results, said the data showed women board members can have a major impact.

"I have believed all along that having different voices around the table makes a difference," she said. "It just goes to show that there is still a need for greater diversity on boards at publicly traded companies."

This article was reported and written by Martha Graybow for Reuters.

Statements on diversity by the CEOs of healthcare orgs: Mayo Clinic vs Sisters of St Mary Health Centers

Definitions of diversity

Mayo:

Diversity refers to all the characteristics which distinguish individuals or groups from one another. It includes distinctions based on race, color, creed, religion, gender, age, national origin, marital status, sexual orientation, veteran’s status, disability, or status with regard to public assistance.

SSMHC:

It is the policy of SSM Health Care to provide equal opportunity for all persons and to prevent discrimination and harassment on the basis of: race, color, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, religion, religious background, sex, marital status, pregnancy, physical or mental disability, age, sexual orientation, veteran status, current or past military status, citizenship, genetic makeup, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law and/or our mission and values. This policy relates to all aspects of employment, including recruitment and selection, training, promotion, job classification, staff development, supervision, transfers, compensation, discipline, assignments, layoff and terminations.

Rationales for embracing diversity

“Diversity is a core value for Mayo Clinic. To best serve our patients, we must attract and retain the best and the brightest minds from the broadest talent pool. The more diverse we are, the more attuned to our patients we’ll be.”

“By embracing this statement, Mayo benefits from different viewpoints and perspectives, greater innovation and creativity, and a broad pool of qualified staff members that will enable us to recruit and retain the best talent.”

Dennis Cortese, President and CEO, Mayo Clinic

"Because SSM Health Care is dedicated to serving all people, the employees at our health facilities must reflect the communities we serve … We want people of all cultures and backgrounds to feel welcome and comfortable when they are guests in our facilities. … Currently about half of all executive positions within SSM Health Care are held by women. I’m very proud of that accomplishment because we worked hard to achieve that goal. We are also working hard to achieve equally positive results in all other areas of diversity. Our reasons are simple. SSM Health Care is committed to caring for persons in body, mind, and spirit. We want our patients to feel that they’ve received the kind of care that touches their souls. To be sure that we provide the highest quality, most compassionate care, we must have a diverse workforce of people who are committed to quality and service."

Sr Mary Jean Ryan, FSM, President and CEO, SSMHC


There's a very subtle difference. Mayo Clinic is committed to diversity in terms of its instrumental value: patient care and quality of staff.

SSMHC is also committed to diversity for its instrumental value, but also for a deeper reason. At least as far as statements made on each organization's website go, SSMHC seems to place more intrinsic value on diversity than Mayo does.

I'm not trying to diss Mayo; they're second only to Johns Hopkins in terms of medical care, and they are making efforts to engage diversity. Their reasons are exactly what you should expect from any medical provider, nonprofit or for-profit (Mayo is the former). Instrumental reasons alone should be sufficient to make efforts to recruit diverse medical staff and to ensure care for diverse patient populations.

However, at SSMHC, diversity seems to be more of a core, fundamental value. It's kind of like the difference between a calling and a profession. There are a lot of professionals in, say, public health. They're very good at what they do. And then, there are some people who are called to do this, like people are called to the priesthood.

Which one am I? We'll see.