Bonus materials for teachers of Calvin Universities Core 100 course. We encourage other listeners to explore our other episodes.
Transcript: Distinctly Christian – Core 100 Resources
Penny: This bonus short episode is especially for Christian teachers, and it references Calvin University's core 100 course. This core 100 course is a gateway introduction to Christian liberal arts education and to Christian perspectives on diversity and difference, global regions and cultures, and sustainability. If you are not involved in Christian education or Covid University's core 100 course I encourage you to explore instead our other episodes for engaging, learning, focused conversations related to a spectrum of topics in diversity and inclusion.
Welcome to the diversity and inclusion for all project supported by Calvin University and the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship. Together, we'll listen to key prospective, build our knowledge, inform our thinking, and get a little better equipped to engage our world.
Alisa: As a person who will be teaching for one hundred, if you were to recommend a brief resource around to that idea, say for use and for one hundred or diversity and difference class in regards to other contacts, what what might such a resource be?
Joe: One of the ones that I like to use, and this could be a fun one for Core 100 is a speech by Kwame Nkrumah. It's a chapter from his book Africa Must Unite. And this was written right in the sixties as the wave of independence is sweeping Africa. And Nkrumah makes the same basic argument. Right. He says what happened here was that the desire to have and to possess created race. Right. And he had a lot of grounds to talk about that. He had studied in the United States. He had gone back to what is now Ghana. Right. And he saw how greed motivated the construction of slavery, the construction of race. Right. Nrumah, you know, is reflecting on a nation that pre independence is literally labeled in a framework of extractive capitalism. It is called the Gold Coast. What is it good for? It is good for gold. Gold that can go to the UK. Right. And in choosing to name the the modern nation state Ghana, he's repudiating that. He's calling back to a history that, again, Eric could talk a lot more about. But right there, you know, this is this is not a recent idea. I think people who are exposed to the idea that really racism created race may feel like that's a modern invention. But that's something that thinkers have been saying for decades, if not centuries.
I think I would encourage students and faculty to read From Every Nation document. I think it even though it's getting older, it was written in 2004. It presents a clear and compelling case for anti-racism based off the idea that racism is structural, is systemic, is embedded in society, and therefore must be cut out. Right. Must be put away. And I think for Christians this ought to be pretty standard fare. Right. The Bible says have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness. Right. Not just ignore them. But to really go after it, to set the record straight. You know, when Zacchaeus, for example, realizes that he has been oppressing people as a tax collector for the empire. Right. He not only pays them back, he pays them back four times what he had taken from them the year of Jubilee, quite famously, whether or not this was ever practiced by Israel in real life is, of course, up for my my colleagues in the religious department, God very clearly calls for the return of lands and says there is no such thing as private property. The Earth is the Lord's, the fullness thereof. The land is mine. You live on it as stewards and caretakers.
I think Christians have been reticent to think about what the implications of the gospel are for how we think about race and racism, when, as Eric says, it has created these policies that are dispossessing people, that are cheating people. It has stolen land. Right. What would it mean for Christians to step into that and say, no, that's wrong, and then the anti-racism pieces and we're going to do something about it? Right. We're going to model confession, repentance, lament, all important, but also justice as agents of renewal. How can we renew it into something that is closer to shalom? All right. That brings us more towards the kingdom of God.
Penny: Some folks react to some diversity discussions with a “don't lay a guilt trip on me” response. However, there are past and current injustices in our society. And there is a place in a Christian response to those facts. That includes both confession and repentance.
Joe: Well, I think guilt has a really rich history within Christianity. If like Josiah, right, the righteous king, when you're confronted with the law, when you're confronted with the will of God for shalom, you rent your clothes, tear your hair where sackcloth and ashes and then do right, then I think you're on your way. So I think the Bible is full of stories of people who are confronted. Right, Nathan, the prophet, prophet Nathan and David, right, when he tells him the story about the lamb and says, you are the man. David doesn't respond. Stop guilt tripping me, man. He is confronted with the truth and he changes his life. Right. That's. In response, you're confronted with truth, you repent. And repentance always involves turning away from sin and towards the good.
Eric: That's transformation, and that's and that's definitely of God.
Micah: and that, I hope, is what characterizes Calvin's approach to this is pretty flat issues we're talking about.
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