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In most people’s minds “ethnic” or “ethnicity” are terms associated with conflict, cleansing, or even genocide. This book explores—from three perspectives—the significance of ethnic communities beyond these popular conceptions. The first perspective is the reality of the author’s own experience as a member of the Welsh ethnic identity. The Welsh are a small people whose whole existence has been overshadowed by the more powerful English. This is the “margin” from which the author speaks. The second perspective is the Bible and evangelical mission and the third is the unprecedented movement and mixing of ethnic identities in our globalizing world. The book ends with the section on ethnicity in the Lausanne Commitment that, hopefully, marks the beginning of serious consideration by the evangelical missions community of this issue that deeply impacts the lives of many millions.
Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2002. Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity Vol. 129 General Editor: Jan A. Jongeneel Two of the most intense movements for political secession from India had been staged in the two - tribal states of Northeast India, namely Nagaland and Mizoram. Because the two states record the country's highest percentage of Christian populations, Christian missions in the Northeast have been suspected and accused of having played clandestine roles. This book challenges this pre-sumptuous allegation, and proposes that the root of the ethno-political movements must be sought in the identity-formation process of the people. The Northeast tribals' resentment to the depressing political identity imposed on them and their resistance to the threat of domination are identified as the immediate factors for the ethnopolitical revolutions. The development of Christianity in Mizoram is selected as the focus of the study. The Study discloses that the Mizo Christian experience of ecstatic revivals uniquely interlaced Christianity with the people's cultural identity, engendering the spirit of Mizo ethnonationalism. The emergent people's strong sense of identity resisted the threat of cultural domination and political assimilation by the Indic India. Contents: Introduction - Northeast India: - The Problem Child of Modern India - Crucial Milestone in the History of Mizoram - Christianity and the Ethnic Identity - Consciousness of the Mizos - Christianity and the Politics of Identity in Mizoram."
Janette H. Ok argues that 1 Peter characterizes Christian identity as an ethnic identity, as it holds the potential to engender a powerful sense of solidarity for readers who are experiencing social alienation as a result of their conversion. The epistle describes and delineates a communal identity based on Jewish traditions, and in response to the hostility its largely Gentile Anatolian addressees are experiencing as religious minorities in the Roman empire. In order to help construct a collective understanding of what it means to be a Christian in contrast to non-Christians, Ok argues that the author of the epistle employs “ethnic reasoning” or logic. Consequently, the writer of 1 Peter makes use of various literary and rhetorical strategies, including establishing a sense of shared history and ancestry, delineating boundaries, stereotyping and negatively characterizing “the other,” emphasizing distinct conduct or a common culture, and applying ethnic categories to his addressees. Ok further highlights how these strategies bear striking resemblances to what modern anthropologists and sociologists describe as the characteristics of ethnic groups. In depicting Christian identity as an ethnic identity akin to the unique religious-ethnic identity of the Jews, Ok concludes that 1 Peter seeks to foster internal cohesion among the community of believers who are struggling to forge a distinctive and durable group identity, resist external pressures to revert to a way of life unbefitting the people of God, and live as those born anew to a living hope.
Denise Kimber Buell radically rethinks the origins of Christian identity, arguing that race and ethnicity played a central role in early Christian theology. Focusing on texts written before the legalization of Christianity in 313 C.E., including Greek apologetic treatises, martyr narratives, and works by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian, Buell shows how philosophers and theologians defined Christians as a distinct group within the Roman world, characterizing Christianness as something both fixed in its essence and fluid in its acquisition through conversion. Buell demonstrates how this view allowed Christians to establish boundaries around the meaning of Christianness and to develop the kind of universalizing claims aimed at uniting all members of the faith. Her arguments challenge generations of scholars who have refused to acknowledge ethnic reasoning in early Christian discourses. They also provide crucial insight into the historical legacy of Christian anti-Semitism and contemporary issues of race.
Did you know that the Bible has a great deal to say about ethnicity? In this eight-session LifeGuide® Bible Study, Steve Tamayo takes us through passages that open us up to difficult yet important conversations about race, culture, and ethnicity. If ethnicity is a gift from God, engaging this material may deeply transform the way we interact with family, friends, and enemies.
The first major biblical commentary from the pen of N. T. Wright While full of theological import, Paul’s letter to the Galatians also captures and memorializes a significant moment in the early history of Christianity. This commentary from N. T. Wright—the inaugural volume of the CCF series—offers a theological interpretation of Galatians that never loses sight of the political concerns of its historical context. With these two elements of the letter in dialogue with each other, readers can understand both what Paul originally meant and how his writing might be faithfully used to respond to present questions. Each section of verse-by-verse commentary in this volume is followed by Wright’s reflections on what the text says about Christian formation today, making this an excellent resource for individual readers and those preparing to teach or preach on Galatians. The focus on formation is especially appropriate for this biblical letter, in which Paul wrote to his fellow early Christians, “My children—I seem to be in labor with you all over again, until the Messiah is fully formed in you!”
Contemporary social theory has been much concerned with the re-assertion of ethnic identities in both Western and non-Western politics. This international collection of twenty-one essays contributes to the wider conversation by examining the construction and contestation of ethnic identities both within the Bible itself and in biblical interpretation. An introductory essay brings into focus the main themes of the book - ethnocentrism, indigenity, concepts of culture and the politics of identity - and highlights the ethical issues arising. Part One explores selected texts from the Hebrew Bible and from the New Testament, making use of methodological perspectives drawn from a range of disciplines. Part Two, Culture and Interpretation, looks at examples of how ethnicity figures both in the popular use of the Bible and in professional biblical interpretation. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.
How did the Jesus movement-a messianic sectarian version of Palestinian Judaism-transcend its Judaean origins and ultimately establish itself in the Roman East as the multi-ethnic socio-religious experiment we know as early Christianity? In this major work, Hellerman, drawing upon his background as a social historian, proposes that a clue to the success of the Christian movement lay in Jesus' own conception of the people of God, and in how he reconfigured its identity from that of ethnos to that of family. Pointing first to Jesus' critique of sabbath-keeping, the Jerusalem temple, and Jewish dietary laws-practices central to the preservation of Judaean social identity-he argues that Jesus' intention was to destabilize the idea of God's people as a localized ethnos. In its place he conceived the social identity of the people of God as a surrogate family or kinship group, a social entity based not on common ancestry but on a shared commitment to his kingdom programme. Jesus of Nazareth thus functioned as a kind of ethnic entrepreneur, breaking down the boundaries of ethnic Judaism and providing an ideological foundation and symbolic framework for the wider expansion of the Jesus movement. Joseph Hellerman's Jesus and the People of God takes a whole new approach to understanding the social dynamic at work in Jesus' public teaching and ministry . an important breakthrough in Jesus research . [that] deserves a careful hearing. - Craig A. Evans, Payzant Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Acadia Divinity College, and author of Jesus and his Contemporaries. Has the recent phase of the quest of the historical Jesus properly stressed those ways in which Jesus broke from the prevailing nationalism of his day? Hellerman puts it all together, offering a compelling portrait of the Jewish Jesus who nevertheless saw the fulfillment of Sabbath and festivals, temple and purity laws in him. - Craig L. Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Denver Seminary, and author of Jesus and the Gospels.
This study sheds new light on identity formation and maintenance in the world of the early Christians by drawing on neglected archaeological and epigraphic evidence concerning associations and immigrant groups and by incorporating insights from the social sciences. The study's unique contribution relates, in part, to its interdisciplinary character, standing at the intersection of Christian Origins, Jewish Studies, Classical Studies, and the Social Sciences. It also breaks new ground in its thoroughly comparative framework, giving the Greek and Roman evidence its due, not as mere background but as an integral factor in understanding dynamics of identity among early Christians. This makes the work particularly well suited as a text for courses that aim to understand early Christian groups and literature, including the New Testament, in relation to their Greek, Roman, and Judean contexts. Inscriptions pertaining to associations provide a new angle of vision on the ways in which members in Christian congregations and Jewish synagogues experienced belonging and expressed their identities within the Greco-Roman world. The many other groups of immigrants throughout the cities of the empire provide a particularly appropriate framework for understanding both synagogues of Judeans and groups of Jesus-followers as minority cultural groups in these same contexts. Moreover, there were both shared means of expressing identity (including fictive familial metaphors) and peculiarities in the case of both Jews and Christians as minority cultural groups, who (like other "foreigners") were sometimes characterized as dangerous, alien "anti-associations". By paying close attention to dynamics of identity and belonging within associations and cultural minority groups, we can gain new insights into Pauline, Johannine, and other early Christian communities.
Exploring what the Bible says about ethnic identity and drawing on his own journey to self-understanding, Orlando Crespo helps you discover for yourself what it means to be Latino, American--and, most importantly, a disciple of Christ.