This review essay is based on the following books:
Miroslav Volf. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, 1996. Ronald Takaki. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, 1993. Stephan and Abigal Thernstorm. America in Black and White, 1997. Andrew Sung Park. The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin, 1993. Andrew Sung Park. Racial Conflict and Healing, 1996.
Miroslav Volf was a professor of theology at Fuller Theological Seminary who now teaches at Yale. A native Croatian, he writes out of his own experience of teaching in Croatia during the civil war in former Yugoslavia. In a time of ethnic conflict, even ethnic cleansing which is a type of genocide, we need a word of forgiveness and reconciliation. Is such a thing possible in the midst of bitterness, hatred and violence? Volf says YES!---that exclusion or ethnocentrism can be replaced by the embrace of reconciliation.
Sometimes people who have experienced suffering and oppression can speak a clear and powerful word that can clarify for the rest of us what an appropriate Christian response should be. Volf does so with both personal passion and theological sophistication. Little theology of this kind exists so Volf's contribution is welcome indeed. In the Preface, Volf describes his dilemma:
"After I finished my lecture Professor Jurgen Moltman stood up and asked one of his typical questions, both concrete and penetrating: 'But can you embrace a cetnik?' It was the winter of 1993. For months now the notorious Serbian fighters called 'cetnik' had been sowing desolation in my native country, herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, and destroying cities. I had just argued that we ought to embrace our enemies as God embraced us in Christ. Can I embrace a cetnik---the ultimate other, so to speak, the evil other? . . .
"My thought was pulled in two different directions by the blood of the innocent crying out to God and by the blood of God's Lamb offered for the guilty. How does remain loyal to both the demand of the oppressed for justice and to the gift of forgiveness that the Crucified offered to the perpetrators?"
How can we celebrate our ethnicity without degenerating into ethnic superiority (ethnocentrism) or exclusion? What is the relationship between our ethnic identity and our Christian identity? Can we maintain both? Must one be given priority? Can I hold strong to my own ethnic heritage and still respect a different ethnic heritage? For Volf, answers center in the cross.
The cross is an example of self-giving love, not only for all sinners but also for all enemies. The cross involved suffering, sacrifice and pain; no cheap forgiveness or cheap reconciliation here. We are offered the grace of God, forgiveness, reconciliation. Can we, will we, offer the same to our enemies? Volf says, "I immediately continue to argue, however, that the embrace itself---full reconciliation---cannot take place until the truth has been said and justice done."
Exclusion or embrace? Only through Christ can "we distance ourselves from ourselves and our cultures in order to create space for the other" person. Does the emphasis on embrace sweep oppression under the rug? Where does justice come in? Whose perspective on justice? We seem to want to define justice more by our own class and culture than by God's universal standards. Must we struggle against injustice before a full agreement on what justice is can be agreed upon? Must we understand oppression before we can understand justice?
The above questions are not idle speculations to Volf. He struggles with them at length and in depth. These are not tangential issues; they go to the heart of the Christian faith. See the end of this article for a list of quotations from Volf.
Next, A Different Mirror by Takaki. In my opinion, Ronald Takaki, a Japanese American, is the foremost historian of ethnicity in America today. He has a doctorate in American history and he has been a professor in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, for more than two decades. His first two books dealt with Afro American studies; two other books covered Asian Americans. This book is a broad survey of ethnic history in America.
Takaki asserts that we need to know more about our ethnic past in order to prepare for our increasingly ethnic future. In the 1990s, "one-third of the American people do not trace their ancestry their origins to Europe." By 2056, the majority of Americans will trace their ancestry to non-European origins. Some America scholars such as Allan Bloom. E. D. Hirsch and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., are worried about the loss of "civilized values," that we are becoming an ethnic "tower of Babel," or that we are experiencing a "disuniting of America."
Instead, Takaki sees this increasing ethnic diversity as an asset, an opportunity; a "multicultural curriculum enables us to reach toward a more comprehensive understanding of American history."
We could, of course, degenerate into increasing ethnic conflict as is happening in many areas of the world. Religio-ethnic conflict has been a tragic part of too much of European history. If Euro Americans (WASP"s) insist on maintaining their superior position, glorifying Western civilization and values and denigrating other cultures and values, then unending ethnic conflict will be our destiny also. But if Euro Americans, and especially Euro Christians, will humble themselves and sit at the feet of an ethnic scholar such as Takaki, repent, and then see other ethnic heritages as of equal value, then we can build a new American culture that will be much better than our often tragic past of Indian genocide and African enslavement.
Though brimming with a broad and sophisticated scholarship, Takaki writes with an easy reading prose punctuated with interesting stories, poems and songs. The reader is caught up in the human dimension of ethnic history, not just the tragic side. Multiculturalism can be seen as a threat or an asset. I believe that the reader will conclude after reading this rich tapestry of American history that our future as a nation will be bright if we see our ethnic diversity as an asset.
On the negative side,one of the most important insights to be gleaned from A Different Mirror is the way the British treated the Irish and how this pattern of ethnocentrism was transplanted to America. Before the British colonists landed on American shores, the British had conquered and colonized Ireland. They developed an ethnocentric vocabulary of dehumanization which called the Irish savages and brutes; this type of language and attitude legitimated the acts of violence that followed, including violence and depopulation of the land so the British could settle it. Takaki says the British colonists saw Indians as similar to the Irish; so the colonists repeated the same ethnocentrism and oppression against the Indians. It is almost as if the brutal treatment of the Irish was a dress rehearsal for the later treatment of American Indians and African slaves.
Though I was already fairly widely read in ethnic history, I gained many new insights as I read A Different Mirror. I highly recommend it as a must read.
Next America in Black and White by the Thernstorms. This is a large book (545 pages of text and 124 pages of notes) crammed with historical information, social data and public policy analysis. The historical section (from the rigid segregation Jim Crow era of the South up to 1960) is probably the best part of the book. The third section dealing with public policy and the changing racial climate is the more debatable and controversial section.
At its best, this book approaches a masterpiece; at its worst, it become a bit of ideological propaganda, arguing against almost any and all government action to improve race/ethnic relations. It is a tricky book to read for the average reader because the text flows easily from historical and social fact to ideological interpretation. At times, only an expert will be able to sort out fact from ideology. So, in one sense, this book is a must read, but, in another sense, it is a dangerous read.
Glenn Loury, an Afro American scholar, complains that on the racism issue the Therstorms miss the point when they say the worst of racism is over. Loury asserts that the ethnocentrism problem is worse than the Thernstorms admit, and he is particularly incensed at their assertion that "black failure" is now the heart of the problem. To read Loury's ten page review, see the November, 1997 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
Next, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin by Andrew Sung Park. Few theologians have been close enough to oppression to feel the pain of it and thus be driven to wrestle with it theologically. Therefore a serious discussion of oppression is missing from most theology. Listen to the personal comments by Park, a Korean American theologian:
"Among our family members, my mother has suffered the most: patriarchal suppression and repression, the wars, and the hardship of a preacher's wife. Her life was a series of tragedies and human anguish. She was born in han and died in han [suffering/oppression]. She is the reason I write about han, so that fewer people might suffer as she did.
"The deep pain of human agony has been a primary concern of my theological reflection. This issue of han has been more significant in my life than the problem of sin. Accordingly my theological theme has been how to resolve the human suffering which wounds the heart of God."
Park see the doctrine of justice for the oppressed as important as the doctrine of justification by faith is for the sinner. In fact, he is highly critical of a one-sided emphasis on justification by faith alone. He sees this as overly individualistic. Full salvation must include justice for the oppressed. Love and justice for the oppressed must be put along side justification by faith and grace.
In his next book, Racial Conflict and Healing, Park calls for a theology of society. Right on, but from my perspective Park could have strengthened his theological discussions by going directly to the Scriptures and doing his own analysis of oppression as well as his own analysis of what the Scriptures teach about ethnos and ethnocentrism.
Next, a few quotations from Exclusion and Embrace:
"Europe colonized and oppressed, destroyed cultures and imposed its religion . . . in the name of its own absolute religion and superior civilization."
"" . . . truth and justice are unavailable outside of the will to embrace the other [enemy]. I immediately continue to argue, however, that the embrace itself---full reconciliation---cannot take place until the truth has been said and justice done."
"Our coziness with the surrounding culture has made us so blind to many of its evils that instead of calling them into question, we offer our own versions of them---in God's name and with good conscience."
"[When] Christian and cultural commitments merge . . . it can transmute what is in fact a murder into an act of piety."
"What we should turn away from seems clear: it is captivity to our own culture, coupled so often with blind self-righteousness."
" . . .the struggle against oppression must be guided by a vision of reconciliation between oppressed and oppressors, . . . "
No comments:
Post a Comment