A Framework for Preaching About Racial–Ethnic Identity in Christian Congregations

Abstract

The central question of this article is, how can preachers in multicultural congregations develop an interculturally competent homiletical framework for explications of racial–ethnic identity? This question will be answered in two parts with a special interest in how identity is shaped in minoritized communities: first, through the recognition of intercultural identity construction in dialog with social psychology of race and intercultural communication theory, and, second, through the redistribution of knowledge and wisdom in these fields to build an interculturally competent homiletical framework. In the conclusion, we will consider the implications of this study and discuss opportunities for further research.

1. Introduction

In a racialized society, the explication of racial–ethnic identity by Christian preachers requires practical wisdom, theological reflection, and intercultural competence. Proceed with caution. Discussions of racial–ethnic identity remain fraught on account of the pervasiveness of racism, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia. Unfortunately, some Christian theologies of identity contribute to prejudice rather than eradicating it.¹ Consider the long-term destructive effects of theologies that validate or authorize colonialism, ethnic domination, or white Christian nationalism. To be part of the solution rather than the problem, preachers in multicultural contexts should proceed with wisdom. Now more than ever, they need good frameworks for reflection and action.

To aid preachers in this important work, this article asks, how can preachers in multicultural congregations develop an interculturally competent homiletical framework to explications of racial–ethnic identity? The answer comes in two parts: recognition and redistribution.

First, preachers can engage in recognition through engaging in interdisciplinary dialog with social psychology and intercultural communication theory.² In this article, we will consider the “racial position model” proposed by social psychologists Linda X. Zou and Sapna Cheryan (Zou and Cheryan 2017), and identity avowal and ascription in intercultural communication scholar M. J. (Mary Jane) Collier’s theory of cultural identity (Collier 1998a, 1998b, 2005a, 2005b, 2009; Meyers and Collier 2005; Thompson and Collier 2006).³

Second, preachers can engage in the redistribution of the knowledge and wisdom from these fields to develop an interculturally competent homiletical framework that equips them with the practical wisdom they need to explicate racial–ethnic identity in preaching.

2. Recognition: Racial–Ethnic Identity in Social Science and Intercultural Communication

The first task for developing an interculturally competent homiletical framework is to recognize how racial–ethnic identity construction informs seeing and knowing.

2.1. Problematizing Cultural Identity

Racial–ethnic identity discussions take place within the wider context of discussions about cultural identity, a veritable circle within a wider circle. Discussions of cultural identity remain fraught not just on account of racism, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia but also due to other factors. Words such as “culture” and “identity” have been challenged in recent years. Regarding the former, theologian Kathryn Tanner (1997) writes

It seems less and less plausible to presume that cultures are self-contained and clearly bounded units, internally consistent and unified wholes of beliefs and values simply transmitted to every member of their respective groups as principles of social order. What we might call a postmodern stress on interactive process and negotiation, indeterminacy, fragmentation, confl (Me, and porosity replaces these aspects of the modern, post-1920s understanding of culture, or, more properly… forms a new basis for their reinterpretation).

(p. 38)

Regarding the latter, scholars have also interrogated identity markers beyond the bounds of race–ethnicity in areas such as gender, sexuality, class, and disability, with the recognition by many that these and other markers intersect with racial–ethnic identity as opposed to existing apart from it. For instance, in her book White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response, Jacquelyn Grant observes the ways that race, class, and gender intersect for black Christian women; in so doing, she pushes back against white feminist accounts of women’s experience and black male accounts of the black experience (Grant 1989).

In one sense, the “postmodern stress” on culture as porous and intersectional assists preachers; it helps them understand how cultural identity informs seeing and knowing especially on account of its willingness to challenge reductive binaries. In another sense, however, it falls short of the task of engagement, at least on its own. Preachers also need to know how to address the psychological, social, and cognitive dimensions of racial–ethnic identity formation. To assist in this task, we turn now to social science and intercultural communication.

2.2. Racial–Ethnic Identity and Social Science

Through the lens of social science, the racial position model proposed by Zou and Cheryan (2017) helps preachers better understand how racial–ethnic identity shapes seeing and knowing, more specifically, how stereotypes impact their parishioners.

In 2017, Zou and Cheryan published what would later be considered field-shaping research on the way that perception and intergroup positioning work among the four largest racial–ethnic groups in the United States: Asian Americans, Latinx Americans, White Americans, and African Americans (Zou and Cheryan 2017). They saw their model as a necessary revision given that the older model presented racial–ethnic identity as a “hierarchy along which Whites are positioned as the dominant and most advantaged group in society while African Americans are disadvantaged and devalued” (Zou and Cheryan 2017, p. 696). Although the hierarchical model helped redress ongoing problems with racism in a racialized society, it did not sufficiently account for how race and ethnicity impact two of the other major ethnic groups: Latinx Americans and Asian Americans. Where do these groups fit into the traditional hierarchical model if at all? Both have experienced exponential numerical growth.

In their model, Zou and Cheryan sought to push race studies beyond a reductive black–white binary and to confront implicit bias across all four groups. Regarding the latter, they took special interest in how each of the four groups described experiences of racism and ethnic prejudice, how they perceived or stereotyped other groups, and how they positioned their groups and other groups along “two axes of subordination”: superior/inferior and American/foreign (Zou and Cheryan 2017, p. 696).

To conduct their research, Zou and Cheryan engaged national survey data, more than 1000 coded surveys, and the latest social psychological research. In the coded surveys, they asked participants to recount their experiences of ethnic prejudice and racism. After surveying the data, their research findings revealed stereotype patterns that occurred across two axes: inferior–superior (y-axis) and foreign–American (x-axis). They called their model the racial position model.⁴ Each of the four groups landed in one of four quadrants or positions across the y-axis and the x-axis. The following graph, Figure 1, demonstrates where each of the four groups landed based on larger societal perceptions or stereotypes (Zou and Cheryan 2017, p. 698):

According to the model, Asian Americans are perceived or stereotyped as Superior–Foreign, Latinx Americans as Inferior–Foreign, White Americans as Superior–American, and African Americans as Inferior–American.

When Zou and Cheryan conducted a follow-up study with Native Americans and Arab Americans, they used the model to determine where both groups landed within the four quadrants. Native Americans were in the same quadrant as African Americans: Inferior–American. Ironically, they were perceived as less American than White Americans, a trend that was “consistent with previous research” (Zou and Cheryan 2017, p. 710). Arab Americans landed in the same quadrant as Latinx Americans: Inferior–Foreign. However, they were positioned as more foreign and more inferior than Latinx Americans; in fact, they were perceived as more foreign and inferior to any other group. Regarding the positioning of Arab Americans, Zou and Cheryan proposed that their “findings may be capturing a specific cultural and historic moment in which Arab and Muslim Americans are perceived to hold a particularly low position in American society” (Zou and Cheryan 2017, p. 710).

The racial position model gives preachers a multidimensional way to understand how ethnic prejudice and racism impact different groups within their congregations. In general, Asian Americans in churches are perceived or stereotyped by others as superior and foreign, Latinx Americans as inferior and foreign, White Americans as superior and American, and African Americans as inferior and American. Although each group is impacted by racial position differently, consider the homiletical impact of words of affirmation for groups that are perceived as inferior or the power of reminders that a group’s members are in a family, knit together into a community, when they are perceived as foreign in their own country.

2.3. Racial–Ethnic Identity and Intercultural Communication

Through the lens of intercultural communication, one aspect of M. J. Collier’s theory of cultural identity, identity avowal, and identity ascription helps preachers better understand how racial–ethnic identity shapes seeing and knowing among parishioners and in society at large (Collier 2009). Avowed identities pertain to the identities that individuals or groups perceive about themselves or claim for themselves on their own and with others, whereas ascribed identities pertain to the identities conferred upon individuals or groups by others and perceived as such by individuals and group members. Collier (1998b) describes the differences between avowal and ascription this way:

In-group cultural identities and relationships with out-group members are constructed contextually through avowal and ascription. Avowal consists of the perceived identity enacted by the self or group members in a given communication situation. In other words, avowal is, This is who I am (we are) as a member(s) of my (our) cultural group… Ascription of identity consists of perceptions of others’ identities and self’s perception of identities attributed to self by other: This is how I see you seeing me as a member of my cultural group here and now.

(pp. 132–33)

Individuals and group members exercise little to no agency over identity ascriptions as these pertain to the perceptions or stereotypes that others put upon them at first glance. Although identity ascription is part of being human and is not always bad, it also has the power to cause hurt and harm to others. For instance, Collier and co-researcher Monique A. Meyers (Meyers and Collier 2005) discovered that, in interviews, judges, attorneys, and advocates ascribed value-based cultural identity judgments toward female abuse survivors seeking restraining orders, having a tendency to see them as deficient, weak, emotional, submissive, and, in some cases, deserving of their abuse.⁵

In contrast to identity ascription, individuals and group members exercise agency when they engage in identity avowal. They enact or claim the identity markers that are most important to them with whomever they please and sometimes despite how others perceive them.

Although identity avowal can be liberative, e.g., “Latino Strong” or “Black and Proud”, it does not have to be liberative. Sometimes, it further instantiates prejudice. For instance, when Collier and co-researcher Jennifer Thompson (Thompson and Collier 2006) conducted interviews with interracial couples in the mid-2000s, some couples evaded discussions of race altogether in their relationship, and in the interviews sometimes, appealing to how far society had come since these discussions were relevant; some professed to be colorblind. Although this proclivity came from a heartfelt place in that there was a desire to preserve and protect the relationship at all costs even if it meant avoiding difficult conversations, the couples had also evaded discussing complex racial issues and claimed to be colorblind in a society that was anything but colorblind or post-racial.⁶ Their agency prevented them from going deeper together in honest and open dialog.

Individuals and group members tend to make two decisions when it comes to their avowed identities when they are with out-group members. First, they decide on the salience of their avowal; that is, they determine the relative importance of one or two identity markers in a given context. The level of salience differs depending on various factors such as situation, time, interaction, and interlocutor (Collier 2005b, p. 239; Collier 2009). According to Collier, “different cultural identities may become salient depending on who is present, the history of the group, topic and type of encounter or episode, language game in use… particular cultural identities are enacted and become salient and contested in particular historical, political, economic, and social contexts” (Collier 1998b, p. 132).

Second, they decide on the intensity of avowal; that is, they determine how strongly they want to defend their avowed identities if or when these identity markers are called into question, interrogated, or tested. Collier would be the first to point out that, just like the salience of avowal, the intensity of avowal depends on a host of factors in the intercultural exchange such as “situation, context, topic, and relationship” (Collier 2005b, p. 240; Collier 2009).

Perhaps an example of identity avowal and identity ascription will make Collier’s theory of cultural identity less abstract and more concrete. In 2005, Collier published her findings on how racial identity and cultural identifications were discussed and negotiated in interviews with South Africans from 1992 and 1999. The interviewees included white Afrikaner South Africans, white South Africans of British descent, and black South Africans.

In one interview, a young woman named Nomsa, who was a black South African, described a conversation she had with her friend who was a white South African. In the interview, Nomsa described the racial identity that her friend tried to assign her because of how she spoke and the vocabulary she used, what Collier refers to as identity ascription, and the racial identity she chose for herself in response to her friend, what Collier (2005b, October) calls identity avowal:

I think with my friend I think the biggest argument we ever had it was [she asked me] ‘How, why do you speak differently from them?’ This whole ‘them’ and ‘me’. I mean I’m, I AM a ‘black girl, like everyone else, and I happen to speak a bit differently so she has this whole ‘them’ and ‘you’. ‘I’m different I’m not ‘black’ I’m special, you know’. But the way I handled it; I just told her I am too ‘black’ [meaning: “I am black also”], get over it, and she did understand. Cause we are the same, a ‘black’ person is a ‘black’ person, here’s not a different or special ‘black’ person.

(p. 307)

In this intercultural encounter, Nomsa navigated the identity ascribed to her by her white friend, that of someone who was special or different or not like the others because of her vocabulary, and she rightfully turned her friend’s identity ascription on its head. Through identity avowal, she claimed that she was black just like other black South Africans. Her way of speaking and vocabulary did not somehow make her less black. “I am too black”, or “I am black also”, she responded. A black South African is a black South African regardless of how they speak.

The language of identity avowal and identity ascription (in Collier’s cultural theory of identity) provides preachers with much needed frameworks for determining how racial–ethnic agency functions in the lives of their parishioners and in their own lives as well. When they discuss racial–ethnic identity, whether inside or outside the pulpit, they have tools for meaningful discussions. They can describe the identity markers that society ascribes to listeners in terms of their racial–ethnic identities (knowing that the ascriptions will be different based on the social location of the person or persons listening), and they can point listeners to the power of avowing the racial–ethnic identities that are most important to them with whomever they please and despite how others perceive them.

3. Redistribution: Toward an Interculturally Competent Homiletic

Now that a survey has been conducted of Zou and Cheryan’s racial position model and Collier’s cultural identity theory (identity avowal and identity ascription), we can turn our attention to the second task: the redistribution of the knowledge gained from these fields for the sake of developing an interculturally competent homiletical framework. This framework can equip preachers with the practical wisdom they need to explicate racial–ethnic identity in sermons. I will propose two building blocks for this framework: first, embrace pluralism and, second, become an intercultural ethnographer.

3.1. Building Block # 1: Embrace Pluralism—It Is Here to Stay

Preachers in multicultural congregations already know intuitively that shifts in demographics will become more important to congregational life in the future. Demographic shifts have already changed the landscape of churches and communities and will continue to do so with increasing force in the years ahead. The same shifts that have taken place in the global church are also taking place in the church in the United States. As early as the early 2000s, sociologist R. Stephen Warner (2006) predicted the “de-Europeanization of American Christianity”. In a 2023 op-ed in the New York Times, pastor and author Tish Harrison Warren (2023) writes

We often hear that the most significant trend in religion in America is the rise of the “nones”, those who profess no religious affiliation. That demographic group is indeed important for the future of religion, culture and politics in America, and as of 2021, Pew reported that 29 percent of all adults identified as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular”. But alongside that trend, the changing demographics of Christianity promise to transform faith and religious discourse. We cannot assume that America will become more secular so long as the future of America is less white.

(online)

Although the demographic shift in the church is still in process, it remains an inherent inevitability rather than a logical possibility. The preachers of today and tomorrow will be preachers in an intercultural church with an intercultural future.

I experienced the power of demographic change firsthand when I served as a teaching pastor at a church in New Jersey in the 2010s. I served at my church for four years. The first year I served there, non-white new memberships (i.e., people joining the church) accounted for 30 percent of new memberships and white memberships accounted for the other 70 percent. By the fourth year, the percentages had flipped with non-white new memberships accounting for 70 percent of new memberships and white memberships accounting for the other 30 percent.

Embrace pluralism (Berger 2014). It is here to stay.⁷ Although the demographic shifts may not happen in the same way that they did at my church, they will happen. Hopefully, most if not all preachers in multicultural congregations have embraced pluralism already in their journey. If they ignore it, they do so at their peril.

The models that have been proposed in this article can help preachers in multicultural congregations navigate the realities of pluralism with greater efficiency and impact, in particular, as it pertains to explicating racial–ethnic identity. In Zou and Cheryan’s racial position model, preachers have access to a model that explains how perception or stereotypes work across the four major racial–ethnic groups in the United States during a time in which the church is faced with a decision: will it embrace pluralism as an opportunity for missions or reject pluralism as a threat to the status quo? Granted, the racial position model does not offer preachers prescriptions, but it is also not designed to do so. It is descriptive. Rather, it offers preachers the language and knowledge they need to achieve deeper contextualization in their congregation. Deeper knowledge of how racial–ethnic stereotypes work means deeper contextualization, and deeper contextualization means greater intercultural competence in pastoring and preaching to laypeople.

Collier’s work in cultural identity theory provides preachers with both descriptive and prescriptive possibilities for homiletical reflection and action⁸ (Collier 1998a). Identity ascription typically arises from trusting perceptive hunches that are stereotypical. People bring preconceived notions or perceptions to encounters with others in intercultural communication, the descriptive dimension of cultural identity negotiation. However, identity avowal does not follow the same pattern. Collier describes what happens when communicators decide on their most important identity markers through salience of avowal and intensity of avowal, another mark of descriptive action. But identity avowal also gives people agency to prescribe identities that counter false perceptions, stereotypes, a veritable counternarrative. Although identity avowal does not always beget liberative praxis, it often does. Consider again the testimony of Nomsa, a young black South African woman, and her interaction with her young white South African friend, who was also a woman. Nomsa “exerts individual agency in this interaction to claim her own identifications” (Collier 2005a, p. 307).

In my judgment, identity avowal opens up creative possibilities for theologically imaginative work among pastors in multicultural congregations. When used rightly, it leads to liberative praxis. Dominant voices in society may ascribe identities to people of color as foreign and inferior or American and inferior (as Zou and Cheryan observe), but preachers can declare that God sees them as family, knows they belong, and honors their racial–ethnic identity markers rather than seeing them as a deficit. No one is inferior who is a bearer of the Imago Dei. When preachers explicate racial–ethnic identity in a manner that activates avowal for individuals and group members, and they explicate Christian identity in a manner that does the same, a word of life (cf. Phil 2:16) may be found on their lips when they preach. They cannot control or commander God’s Spirit in such a way that they can guarantee that it will be a word of life, but they can curate conditions and proclaim gospel realities in such a way that they become bearers of good news for all people.

3.2. Building Block # 2: Become an Intercultural Ethnographer

In Leonora Tubbs Tisdale’s influential book, Preaching as Local Theology and Folk Art, she urges pastors to become “congregational ethnographer(s)” in service to faithful and fitting contextualization (Tisdale 1997, pp. 18, 35, 59–61, 64–76, 91). Drawing on language from cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973) and his notion of a “thick description” of culture, she writes the following (Tisdale 1997):

Preachers need to become amateur ethnographers–skilled in observing and in thickly describing the subcultural signs and symbols of the congregations they serve. The task of congregational exegesis is a ‘microscopic’ one, involving attention to the very local actions and idioms of congregational life. The task is an imaginative and interpretive one, requiring pastors to guess at meanings and constantly to reassess those guesses. And the task is an open-ended one, as the quest for meaning carries pastors into the ever-deepening waters of congregational life with its shifting tides and currents.

(p. 60)

Tisdale’s proposal is not without its limitations.⁹ She offers a general analysis for how to perform ecclesial ethnography, but only in white monocultural congregations. Her proposal does not account for the nuances of a multicultural congregation. Even so, her interest in people and demographics can be a helpful starting point for multicultural preaching.

In her chapter “Exegeting the Congregation”, Tisdale commends seven symbols of congregational exegesis that preachers can engage in to achieve the “thick description” that is needed: stories and interviews, archival material, demographics, architecture and visual arts, rituals, events and activities, and people¹⁰ (Brown and Powery 2016). For the purposes of this article, we will focus only on the symbols that are most relevant to the explication of racial–ethnic identity: people and demographics. We focused on demographics in the last section for Strategy # 1. In this section, we will focus on people as crucial sources of multicultural learning.

She invites pastors to ask the following: Who are the key stakeholders in the church? Who is vocal? Who is silent? Who is considered wise? Who sits on the margins? Who fits? Who doesn’t fit? (Tisdale 1997, pp. 76–77).

Although these questions are important and need to be asked by pastors, they do not seem to get at the racial–ethnic dynamics that shape seeing and knowing in a racialized society. Granted, some racial–ethnic dynamics will come up when a pastor engages in another one of the seven symbols of exegesis: stories and interviews.

Consider how Zou and Cheryan’s racial position model and Collier’s work on identity avowal and ascription might create space for fresh, culturally responsive questions:

• In a multicultural congregation, where do different segments of the community land in Zou and Cheryan’s racial position model with a y-axis of inferior–superior and an x-axis of foreign–American? How might this position make them more or less silent, more or less marginalized, and more or less able to fit in or not fit in within the congregation?

• How does one’s position in the racial position model impact their self-understanding and understanding of others? What are the benefits and drawbacks of this self-understanding and understanding of others? How might preachers address both?

• Drawing from Collier’s work, how might racial–ethnic identity ascriptions (which are more commonly known as stereotypes) adversely impact segments within the congregation, and how might these ascriptions pose a threat to the spiritual, emotional, and psychological wellbeing of congregants?

• What creative possibilities are there for various markers of Christian identity to redress the wounds caused by identity ascriptions or racial positioning? For instance, the Christian metaphor of family could potentially redress the wound of being stereotyped by others as poor or fatherless or being deemed by others as foreign and inferior.

• What overlap or fusion is there if at all between the racial–ethnic identities that parishioners avow and the Christian identities that people avow? For instance, when a person avows their racial or ethnic identity as beautiful as a counternarrative to stereotypes that may tell them otherwise, that same person can find similar affirmations in Scripture; they are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).

The answers to these and other questions will not only help preachers become better intercultural ethnographers. More importantly, they will help them know how best to challenge stereotypes, confront falsehoods, redress wounds, and engage in the work of theological imagination when they preach.

4. Conclusions

The central question of this article was, how can preachers in multicultural congregations develop an interculturally competent homiletical framework for explications of racial–ethnic identity? The answer came in two parts: recognition and redistribution. First, we proposed that preachers engage in recognition in dialog with social psychology and intercultural communication theory, more specifically, the racial position model proposed by Zou and Cheryan and the language of identity avowal and identity ascription as it was laid out in Collier’s cultural identity theory. Second, we proposed that preachers engage in redistribution by developing an interculturally competent homiletical framework that equips them with the practical wisdom they need to explicate racial–ethnic identity in sermons.

Although insights from social science and intercultural communication give preachers the language they need to build a homiletical framework that is more interculturally competent than it would be otherwise, the insights gained from these two fields only take them part of the way.

At least two opportunities for further research arise as a result of this study. First, further research can be conducted on how to move from an interculturally competent framework for preaching toward practical strategies that can be deployed. A question that has not been answered in-depth in this study is, which concrete practices and practical strategies can be pursued as a result of the insights gained from interdisciplinary dialog? Second, further research can be conducted to bring racial–ethnic identity into dialog with Christian identity. This possibility was hinted at in the sections on embracing pluralism and becoming intercultural ethnographers, but it remains as underdeveloped. To be sure, significant research is still to be performed on the fusion between racial–ethnic identity and Christian identity. It represents fertile soil in homiletics. At present, most of this soil remains untilled.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Footnotes

Notes

1. For examples of Christian theologies of identity that catalyze racism, nationalism, or a combination, see Gorski et al. (2022), Abanes (1996), and Zeskind (1986).

2. In hermeneutics and phenomenology, another helpful conversation partner is Paul Ricoeur and his work on “the course of recognition”. Ricoeur argues that one is called to the work of recognizing oneself and one’s identity, and also called to the work of mutual recognition, or the self in relationship to those who are different and in relation to the world. For more on the course of recognition, see Ricoeur (2007).

3. I also draw from Zou and Cheryan’s work in my discussion of how stereotypes, racism, and racialization adversely impact seminarians of color (Alcántara 2020).

4. Zou and Cheryan acknowledge and appreciate that their model is not devoid of being influenced by other models. They show how their model interacts with three other models of racial–ethnic perception: the ABC Model of stereotype content that prioritizes “agency/socioeconomic success and progressive-conservative beliefs”, the SCM Model’s axes of warmth–coldness and competence–incompetence, and the Image Theory Model’s trifold of “relative power, relative status, and goal compatibility” (Zou and Cheryan 2017, p. 698).

5. Meyers and Collier (2005) discovered in their survey of interviews that court officials (judges, lawyers, and advocates) perpetuated “dominant and oppressive discourses” that had a direct and negative impact on how women (especially minorities) were perceived in the courtroom (p. 267). The interviewees often cast women as weak, submissive, and sometimes deserving of abuse (pp. 268–70).

6. Thompson and Collier (2006) drew six conclusions on cultural identity from surveying the interviews with interracial couples. For conclusion five, they write “Emphasis on similarity and their relationship is manifest through race evasive and power evasive discourse by some couples who for example, circumvent any debate about racial issues and institutional forces outside the relationship by talking about how progressive things are now, and not needing to ‘think’ about issues like racial difference” (p. 503).

7. In the final book he published before he died, sociologist Peter L. Berger (2014) continued to reject the basic tenets of secularization theory, arguing that the most significant challenge facing North American society and the church was not secularization but pluralism. He writes “Secularization theory, based on the idea that modernity necessarily brings about a decline of religion, has for a time served as a paradigm for the study of religion. It can no longer be maintained in the face of the empirical evidence. A new paradigm is needed. I think that it must be based on the many implications of the phenomenon of pluralism. I propose that a new paradigm should be able to deal with two pluralisms—the co-existence of different religions and the co-existence of religious and secular discourses” (p. ix).

8. For instance, Collier (1998a) uses her work on identity avowal and ascription to promote intercultural friendships. In these friendships, interlocutors aim at the same goal, an ideal: avowed and ascribed identities match in the intercultural encounter (pp. 370–78).

9. For a critique of Tisdale’s approach as being too monocultural and local, see Kim (2010).

10. In her co-authored book Ways of the Word, Sally Brown (Brown and Powery 2016) critiques and builds on Tisdale’s seven sources of context. She contends that preachers must consider three vantage points in congregational life in the work of contextualization: the close-up view of a congregation’s symbols and stories a la Tisdale, the wide view that looks at the cultural dynamics that operate in a local congregation, and the hidden view that examines the power dynamics in the church. Regarding the third vantage point, Brown writes, “Preachers need to know who exerts control over decision-making processes and who is marginalized… Tracking the flow of power in a congregation is crucial to wise pastoral leadership” (p. 117). For the purposes of this article, the two vantage points that would be most relevant to racial–ethnic identity would be the wide view and the hidden view.

Footnotes

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Figure

Figure 1. Zou and Cheryan, “Two Axes of Subordination”.

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