Racial, ethnic, and social diversity in the early church
by Ian Paul, Psephizo:
I cannot quite believe that I first wrote this three years ago; it seems like yesterday. As with the debates on sexuality, the debates on racial justice in the Church of England seem to be becoming intractable. The more we debate the question, the further we are from a common mind, and the more entrenched the views become. And, also as with sexuality, the Church appears to be failing to engage with the one vital resource that it has at its fingertips: scripture.
What we find in the New Testament is a deliberate description of the apparently effortless diversity of the community of those following Jesus. Yet it was not in fact ‘effortless’; the heated debate about gentile inclusion shows that, at one level at least, this diversity was hard-won. But the basis of it was the ultimate biblical vision found in the Jewish scriptures: that ‘all nations’ would be drawn to the God of Israel; salvation is ‘from the Jews’ (John 4.22) but it is for the whole world.
And this diversity was not a result of a commitment to diversity as the end goal, but (ironically) a natural by-product of ‘exclusivism’, the belief that ‘there is no other name under heaven by which people can be saved’ (Acts 4.12). If there is no other way to be saved, all must be included in the invitation to repentance and forgiveness (Luke 24.47).
So let’s explore what this diverse community looks like…
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