Discipleship Has
Corporate Aspects

David Swanson explains 1 Corinthians 11:17-34:

Racial rediscipleship is both an individual and corporate call.  For example, the apostle Paul told the Corinthian Christians to examine their hearts before taking Communion.  Western people have tended to interpret that individually: “What sin have I committed?  Let me confess that.”  But in Corinthians, Paul was actually calling them to acknowledge their corporate participation in a socioeconomic stratification that has left the poor hungry while the wealthy have too much.  God invites us to examine ourselves corporately and ask, “In what ways have we conformed to the patterns of this world together, and how are we going to live differently together?”

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• David Swanson, Redisciplining the White Church

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In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul is warning us against bringing the hierarchies of the world into the church, whether that be socioeconomic or racial hierarchies.  But you may be asking, how do we bring the racial hierarchies of the world into the church?  That is a fair question because white church leaders have blind spots that prevent us from noticing these racial hierarchies.  Our church has had several different staff members of color that are no longer with us.  Each of the first 6 of these former staff members noted that when there was interpersonal conflict, they felt they were always expected to apologize and never the white person, suggesting we have been subconsciously using white cultural norms for determining what behavior is or isn’t offensive.  During the Christmas season a black leader pointed out that our promoting Franklin Graham’s Christmas Shoe Boxes offended black congregants because Franklin Graham was a “birther”, i.e. publicly subscribed to the idea that President Obama had been born outside the United States.  And while our music is diverse, congregants of color tell me that their perception is that our music is still carefully selected keeping in mind what white congregants will tolerate.  Because of our own blind spots, my fellow white congregants and I are unaware of problems like these until our congregants of color point them out to us.

We must examine ourselves and ask how we, as a body, are bringing the socioeconomic and/or racial hierarchies of the world into our church.