Multiculturalism: Are We There Yet?

(This is the draft of a piece that I was recently asked to write on multiculturalism for a publication with the General Commisssion on Religion and Race of the United Methodist Church)

By Rev. C. Anthony Hunt, Ph.D.

I am convinced that to speak of multiculturalism in the church today, we must take into account the ongoing complexities of race and race relations across our society. As I write this reflection, America finds itself in the midst of tremendous turmoil surrounding the case of the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida on February 26, 2012. Trayvon’s killing, and the lack of an arrest in his case to-date, conjures painful memories for many of the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, and the 1992 race riots in Los Angeles at the acquittal of the police officers charged in the brutal beating of Rodney King. In the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, Cornel West wrote the provocative book, "Race Matters," in which he appropriately argued at the time that race continued to matter in America. Twenty years later, it is my belief that race continues to matter in America in both the church and society.

We continue to grapple with what it means to interact across cultures, what type of discourse is appropriate in the areas of immigration reform, health-care reform, the ongoing expansion of the prison industrial complex (and disproportionate arrest and incarceration rates for young black and brown men), and ongoing economic distress that points to widening disparities between the richer and the poorer, serving to disproportionately affect African-Americans and Hispanics.

At the election of Barack Obama as the first non-white United States president in 2008, there seemed to be heightened hope that we were closer than ever at arriving at becoming a post-racial society. But as is seen with the rise of Tea Party politics, burgeoning right-wing extremism, and the loudening voices of those intent on “taking back their county,” we are no closer at arriving at post-racism, let alone post-racialism than we were before President Obama’s election.

As with society in general, I sense that these are times in which the church is called to serious introspection, interrogation, self-examination and soul-searching as it pertains to our theological prerogative in light of the claims that the gospel of Jesus Christ continues to make on us to first speak truth to power with clarion voice with regard to the wounds that racism continues to inflict on the church and society. This speaking of truth would lead us to prophetically declare - as did Jesus - that God is indeed concerned about the poor among us (Luke 4:18), and that God is for the dispossessed and the disinherited - the least and the left out. After loudly and clearly speaking this truth, the church must then re-double its commitment to act out and to boldly live what we say we believe. Here our actions must clearly align with our words - our works and our faith must be closely aligned.

What’s most interesting today is how silent many white Christians seem to be when a politician running for national office feels free to state that he is not concerned about the very poor, or when justice is at the least delayed (and at worse possibly denied) in the killing of an unarmed 17 year-old boy in Florida. These are indicators of the work that we who are the church must continue to do if we are to ever arrive at a place of constructive, meaningful discourse as it pertains to multiculturalism, color-blindness and real inclusiveness.