We’ve just begun singing when a man leans over to welcome me to church. He introduces himself, but his accent is thick; I can barely make out a word. Branch? Is his name Branch? (I’ll find out later; it’s Grant.)
I say, “I’m Jennifer,” and a smile shoots across his face. I’m discovering Jennifer is a Shibboleth everywhere we go, an impossible word to pronounce as an American would (unless, of course, you’re American). My new South African friend Grant says, “Do I detect an accent?”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t have an accent, I think. He laughs, “I guess I’m the one with the accent, ay?”
A week later (at church again) I’m introducing myself to a girl on the welcome team. We’re serving together. She says her name, and I repeat it happily: “Amy!” Her eyebrows collapse inward. “No, _______.” I would fill in the blank with her name, but after trying to say it five times I never did get it right. I tell her, “I’m sorry; my mouth isn’t trained to make these sounds. I think I’d have to try ten times.”
She says, “You can try ten times.”
Earlier that day I’m at the public pool with my family. We are the only four white people in a complex filled with 400 or so dark-skinned men, women, and children, all of them yelling and laughing and speaking Zulu and Xhosa and Afrikaans. We stick to the edge and huddle. We don’t mean to huddle, but we do. When we walk home we will hold hands.
These days I am learning a bit of what it means to be other. Sometimes I feel ignorant, unable to decipher language or customs. Sometimes I’m embarrassed, when my pronunciation makes children giggle, when my clothes draw pointed fingers and my whiteness staring eyes. Much of the time (I am ashamed to say) I feel afraid.
Afraid of what?
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When the Dutch arrived at the South African cape in 1652, they brought with them the doctrine of election. Recent “miraculous” events (military victory, protection from flooding, financial stability) had convinced the Dutch that God was intervening on their behalf. They’d begun to see themselves as a new Israel, delivered from the hands of their oppressors for a life of blessing to the glory of God. Thus, when those “chosen” people found themselves face to face with the native residents of the Cape, they immediately couched the relationship between the two in terms of election and reprobation. One member of the Dutch East India Company wrote, “[The Khokhoi] yet show so little humanity that truly they more resemble the unreasonable beasts than reasonable man… having no knowledge of God nor of what leads to their salvation. Miserable folk, how lamentable is your pitiful condition! And Oh Christians, how blessed is ours!”
After claiming the land he needed to operate his refreshment station for passing ships, Jan Van Riebeeck, leader of the Company outpost, erected a barrier (part wooden fence, part wild almond hedge) to maintain separation from the natives. He built the fence only after realizing his elaborate plan to make the Cape an island, separating it from the mainland by way of a massive, winding trench, was cost prohibitive.
Good fences make good neighbors.
It was the beginning of what would become Apartheid, literally (in Afrikaans) “apartness.” Since the very beginning it’s been rooted in (and excused by) religion, a version of Christianity that made itself mainstream and pushed everything else into the category of other.
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In church we’re studying Romans. Paul describes himself as having been “set apart” for the gospel. In small group we talk about being set apart, about what it looks like to be different on purpose.
We talk about Israel and the way God demands difference from the nations around her, no intermarrying, no shared religious practices. Yahweh says, “I am the Lord your God, who has set you apart from the nations” (Lev. 20:24). Moses writes, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deut. 7:6). Later, the church will be called to a similar kind of remarkable difference: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (I Peter 2:9).
God’s people should be other.
Or maybe the people who aren’t God’s people are the others.
Did the Dutch have it right when they arrived in South Africa? Stay separate.
Does God like fences?
It takes reading the Bible in South Africa to ask the question: Is God a fan of Apartheid?
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I’m reading a book about Apartheid, because I didn’t know much, and now I live in South Africa and it seems important. The book is long and dense and helping me understand—both why Apartheid was so particularly heinous and why Apartheid was an easy proposition to sell.
If you, like me, aren’t conversant with South African history, here’s a quick summary: Apartheid was a Hail Mary effort by white South Africans, especially the descendants of those first Dutch settlers (now called Afrikaners) to maintain control of “their” country. With the numbers of black South Africans increasing and the influx of black bodies into previously white spaces, Afrikaners worried about blended blood lines, a loss of culture and language, and of course, a loss of white privilege and power. Apartheid was proposed as a way to keep the races separate. Blacks lived and worked in black spaces. Whites lived and worked in white spaces. Blacks were free to maintain their tribal languages and customs. Whites theirs. Everyone could live among those with whom they belonged.
In an arrangement like this no one had to feel ignorant, embarrassed or afraid. No one had to be the other.
In principle.
But that’s exactly what happened—white South Africans made black South Africans the other. Claiming 75% of the land, establishing English and Afrikaans as the official languages, and prohibiting blacks from voting in elections, they made it clear: South Africa is white. Black South Africans are the exception.
All of this despite the glaring truth: Black South Africans represented 70-75% of the population.
Apartheid then wasn’t just separation; it was oppression, oppression born out of fear. What were the Afrikaans afraid of? Losing power, losing status, losing traditions—they were afraid of becoming the other.
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God calls for His people to be set apart. That’s undeniable. He calls the Israelites and then the church to speak differently than “the nations,” to work differently, to have sex according to different rules, to value human life differently, to respond to offense differently. Romans calls God’s children to be transformed, not conformed. In light of their difference, the Hebrews writer calls God’s chosen people pilgrims, strangers, aliens, and exiles.
The idea then is that God’s people will be an outside minority. When the masses go one way, the holy few go the other. Unquestionably, God’s people are the others. If you’re His, fully submitted to the cruciform life, you are the one with the accent.
It’s not easy being a pilgrim. Sometimes you’re embarrassed by your obvious difference, by the staring and giggles. Sometimes you feel stupid, bravely holding onto faith while the educated world around you makes you feel small. Sometimes you feel lonely—homesick for a world where you’re not the minority, a place where everyone follows the same rules and shares the same core values and stories. And sometimes you feel afraid, fully aware you’re outnumbered (even if you’re never really outmatched).
Being the other takes courage—courage white South Africa refused to muster in the twentieth century (choosing instead the coward’s path of pretending to be the majority, white-knuckling power for as long as they could), courage American Christians are struggling to muster today.
Here’s what I mean:
In 2020 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque (only 36% of American millennials). This means that religious people of all kinds (Muslims, Mormons, Catholics, Protestants, etc.) exist as minority factions. As far back as 2005, only 22% of American adults attended church weekly or semi-weekly. It’s estimated that after COVID plays out, approximately 7% of regular weekly attenders will not come back.
What does this mean? It means Christians in America are other. We are the ones with the accent.
And that is making some of us afraid.
We don’t like to be embarrassed. We don’t like it when people think we’re stupid. We don’t like being politically weak. We’re afraid that as our country becomes less and less Christian we will find ourselves outmatched, pushed to the side, and powerless.
So what do we do?
Turn the other cheek, walk an extra mile, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, live a quiet life, mind our own business and work with our hands? Live as pilgrims, eagerly awaiting a homeland? Pray, Your kingdom come, Your will be done?
Trust our God?
No. We pretend we’re not the other. We proclaim, “America is Christian.” Our traditions are Christian. Our rules ought to reflect widely-held Christian values. We say, “Non-Christians” are the exception. They’re the ones who’re different. Reprobates. We huddle together and deceive ourselves with large crowds. We white-knuckle the power we have, and reach for the power we don’t with entitlement.
We do all of this out of fear. We do all of this at great risk.
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Here is what I’m convinced is the calling of God’s church in America today: to learn how to embrace our otherness, to welcome our minority status, to stop trying to push to be first and to learn how to be last. To remember, we’re the ones with the accent.
God likes small. He likes outsiders. He likes the unexpected and weak. God chooses to fight for David, not Goliath, Gideon, not Midian, Deborah, not Sisera (this is a long, long list). God “chose the lowly things of this world.”
Paul writes of God:
He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Strong for what? What becomes possible when God makes Paul strong? Does he achieve power? Political influence? Comfort and ease? No. Paul’s strength looks like perseverance in hardship, courage to speak the truth, and the glorification of God.
Oh, and also the growth of the kingdom. Because God did not set His people apart for apartness. This kingdom is no Apartheid system, constructed to keep people separate. Our job as followers of Jesus isn’t to keep people out; it’s to welcome people in. The kingdom of God is permeable, inclusive, inviting. Everyone who wants in can come. Many will.
And do you know why they’ll come? They’ll come, not because Christianity is popular and mainstream (evidence shows Christians are most despised when they wield political or social power), they’ll come because they were intrigued by a small group of people living good, gentle, counter-cultural lives.
Peter writes:
You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God…
It is hard to be the other. I know it is. Pilgrims feel excluded, exhausted, embarrassed. And mostly, if they’re not careful, they feel afraid. I think this is partly why God’s most common encouragement/command/entreaty to His people in all of Scripture is “Fear not.” He tells them not to fear, because He knows they will and because He knows they don’t have to.
Paul says in Romans, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” He says it not because no one is against him; he says it because everyone is against him. And it doesn’t matter.
Paul continues:
Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It’s a good word. One I’ve read so many times I almost know it by heart. It’s the manifesto of God’s minority people, the outsiders, the others. You don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to be in charge or in power or en vogue. His love will make you brave right where you are.
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I wonder today, as I’m reading my Apartheid history book, how things might have been different had those first Dutch settlers seen election as inclusive, expecting to find God’s children among the native South Africans. I wonder what would have happened if Van Riebeeck hadn’t built the fence or planted the hedge. I wonder what might have been possible for the whites and blacks of what would become the “rainbow nation” if those first settlers had embraced their otherness and made every effort to be peaceful, loving, counter-cultural neighbors, not entitled but gracious, not afraid but made brave by love.
I wonder myself what it would look like to follow the first century church’s example, to wear my otherness proudly and humbly, to persevere with hope and suffer with swagger, to be brave when I’m tempted to be afraid. I wonder what might change if the church weren’t so hungry for power and sway and a voice. I wonder what God might do with a nation of Christians eager to be the least of these.
-JL
Things…
Thanks for being patient while I took my time with this essay. It’s a complicated thing, the idea of welcoming marginalization, so feel free to pepper me with questions. I really do think this is the best future for the church.
During the last few weeks I’ve posted a couple podcast episodes. Check out this one about the God who doesn’t need you to build Him a house. Or try another—the latest episode is about the God who makes our battles His.
Finally, I climbed this yesterday (Table Mountain), and I’m feeling pretty amazing about it. I did not want to go one step further, but I did anyway. So glad I did.
This is beautifully written, and so challenging! Thank you for taking the time to parse this out. No one likes to feel "othered", but that's exactly what we are meant to aspire to. Brilliantly put.
I love your good work.