Can "White" People Be Saved?: Triangulating Race, Theology, and Mission (Missiological Engagements Book 12)

by Willie James Jennings

The reality is that much of what we call the Old Testament was forged out of the experience of exile within and out of the Babylonian empire. Post-Christendom missional perspectives cannot be comprehended so long as Christian mission feels itself sustained by political power and economic means. Instead, once we recognize that Israel’s witness and mission to the nations were forged not out of the strength of the Davidic or monarchic regimes but resounded through the weakness of exile and its aftermath, then we realize that Christian mission itself might proceed from a similar posture. In fact, this was precisely the mentality of the followers of Jesus as Messiah since their apostolicity, here understood by their being sent to bear witness to Jesus, was launched not from the halls of colonial or imperial power but from marginalized statuses as “exiles of the Dispersion,” as one of their foremost missionaries put it (1 Pet 1:1).27 My main point is that such an exilic and diasporic identity that transgresses conventionally ordered borders—indeed, that seeks joining based not only on modernist racial constructions but on the basis of our shared dirt-based experience as Willie Jennings especially, but also Andrew Draper, reminds us—is part and parcel of, rather than accidental to, the Christian missionary way of life.