AMERICAN CHRISTIAN exceptionalism focuses on a narrative of success and victory. When suffering occurs, it’s considered a hindrance to the work of God in the world. The narratives of suffering communities, therefore, are ignored or removed from the dominant narrative of triumph. Stories of successful church plants and growing megachurches with huge budgets are front and center in how we tell the story of American evangelicalism.
Spanish-speaking storefront churches embody a profound, faithful spirituality in the midst of suffering. However, for many white evangelicals looking for the next magic formula to grow their churches, these churches may be deemed too small and even “illegal.” Many Korean American immigrants gather at five every morning to pray at their church before embarking on a 12-hour workday. But this expression of spirituality may be ignored among the latest evangelical church fads, because it is spoken in a foreign language or in English with an accent. Native American Christian communities that offer spiritual rituals to the heart of disenfranchised Natives are perceived to have exotic pagan practices that are syncretistic and are inferior to the rich tradition of services such as those of Taize. African-American evangelicalism is considered an inferior brand of evangelicalism, with its emphasis on justice and race issues discounting its leaders from key positions of leadership.
Nonwhite expressions of U.S. evangelicalism, therefore, are often portrayed as inferior to the successful formula for ministry put forth by many white evangelicals in mainstream U.S. Christian culture.
Self-perceived exceptionalism coupled with an unholy pursuit of triumphalism emerges from a dysfunctional theological imagination among U.S. evangelicals that perpetuates an increasingly dysfunctional religion in a diverse world. Despite this, white evangelicalism clings to the assumption that its worldview and cultural engagement is the appropriate and non-negotiable one.
From an essay by Soong-Chan Rah in Still Evangelical? Ten Insiders Reconsider Political, Social, and Theological Meaning, edited by Mark Labberton. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426, www.ivpress.com.
Soong-Chan Rah, the Robert Boyd Munger professor of evangelism at Fuller Theological Seminary, is author of The Next Evangelism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity.
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