Connecting Culture and Ministry - Part Two

WHAT CULTURE TEACHES[i]

Carley Dodd gives us a more expanded definition of culture. Culture teaches, "Attitudes toward time, property, dress, food, and even the proper distance between people talking to each other all have been determined by culture. Your culture tells you what is beautiful, ugly, sexy or exciting. Your culture teaches you the value of hard work, thrift, privacy, competition, frankness and fair play."[ii] Congregations that wish to plant new churches among new immigrants, who live near their church, would be wise to learn about the cultures they wish to reach. 

SOME PSYCHOLOGY SURROUNDING CULTURAL DIFFERENCE

IN A MULTICULTURAL CONTEXT[iii]

It makes good sense to consider and acknowledge the profound emotional content of cultural difference. Dodd has done some work on the emotional/psychological aspects of racial and cultural difference, and breaks the emotional impact into three levels.

The Personal Level
This level, first of all, is very individual in nature, and begins with a personal question. At what point were you first aware of difference? In this country, for example, it is safe to say that if you grew up as a person of color, your first recollections of difference would most likely be of race. For Anglos who are older, one’s first recollection of difference would most likely be centered on religion or class. In North or South Boston, one’s first recollections of difference might revolve around one’s country of origin. In the small towns of rural America, it could easily be on which side of the "tracks" one resides.

Our first recollections of difference and the emotions connected with them will often become one center around which our lives revolve. Rarely is difference emotionally neutral. Almost always, our understanding of difference is learned, which means that it is taught. It is too often connected with concepts like, “good or bad,” “right or wrong.” Prejudice is not inherently innate; it is learned.

Some suggest that going back in time to examine and understand our first recollection of difference can help us to get in touch with our feelings about religious bigotry, racism, or sexism. Questions and unsolved issues need to be resolved, like: “Where did I get my negative feelings about a specific group of people?” “Where did I acquire my prejudices?”

In the context of ministry, we must develop the understanding that difference is simply that—and nothing more, nothing less. The Church must begin to live out Paul’s declaration that “in Christ there is neither Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free.”

The Inter-Personal Level
The inter-personal level connects us with what is going on between us and other people. Think of yourself as interacting with people who are mostly similar to you (at church, in school, shopping, etc.). Then move in your mind to situations which are increasingly different. Do your emotions change at all, as you shift from one scene to the other? If they do, how do they shift? Can you agree with Malcolm X when he said that we all need to play multiple roles as we move cross-culturally?

At this level, we must always be aware of "where we are." Am I intellectually or emotionally uncreative when I am interacting with someone whose ethnicity is different from my own? Do I find my gut churning when I know the players have changed? How do I feel emotionally when I deal with difference? Do I enjoy meeting people who are different from me (race, culture, religion, language, class, or ideology)?

The Social Level
The following questions relate to our views on the increasing role of difference in American society. What kind of impact does multiculturalism have on society? What difference does multiculturalism make in how I go about doing ministry? What difference will it make as I reconnect with my community? Am I impacting my world in the same way it is impacting me?

Ethnocentrism is the belief that my culture is superior. It expresses itself when I behave as though all other cultures are inferior. This attitude often happens very subtly, and can manifest itself in multi-congregational churches as paternalism. An illustration of a paternal statement would sound like, “We need to tell that other group how to discipline their children!”

We need to assume that other cultures will do things differently, discover how, and adjust accordingly.

What does complex culture look like where you are?

What are some of the differences you have seen and what are you going to do?

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[i] Excerpted from my book “Reconnecting the Church: Finding Our Place in Complex Culture.”

[ii] Dodd, Carley H. 1989 Dynamics of Intercultural Communication. Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown. p.42.

[iii] Dodd, Carley H. and Frank Montalvo, eds. Intercultural Skills for Multicultural Societies. Washington, D.C.: Sietar International. 1987.