Letter from America

Take sa walk down the streets of a city like Seattle in Washington state and then, as if by time travel [Dr Who's Tardis for the British or by Scotty's mythical beam], take another trip down any Belfast street and you will begin to understand the transition that our world is in right now. If you were able to take that same mode of transport and walk down the same city streets 50 years ago I think you will have your observations reinforced. At one time the majority of people in the world were white, today they are mostly yellow and brown, followed very closely behind by black. Today Indiaand China are in the acendency. At one time the world was an agricultural place but today 50% of the people live in the cities. Every year 30 million Chinese are moving from the countryside into the cities which is the equivalent of the entire population of Canada. Today there are more children in Mexico city than there are people in either New York or London. When I was at school London was the biggest city in the world, not so any longer.

Just a matter of weeks ago I visited a member of my congregation [when I say a member I mean someone who is on the edge and only through his aged father] anyway he complained to me for over an hour about all the foreigners who are taking over our country. By our country he meant Northern Ireland. He said that they were getting our houses and being supported by the state. He complainmed about the wave of Muslims who were not integrating into the community. At that time the news was full of arguments about whether or not Muslim women should be allowed to wear the veil. Now the issue of enculturation is a valid discussion but his complaint was based on the fact that this country is a Christian country. The problem was that he neither went to church nor believed in God. He just could not believe in a God who brought suffering into the world and, anyway "no one can prove it".

He was like many people in our society today, a "cultural and political Protestant". While he was calling for the integration of the Muslims he is part of a community who will not live in integration with their Catholic neighbours.

For the Christian this transition from a single identity community to a pluralist society brings opportunities as well as problems. Today we are living in a society which is becoming secular as well as pluralist and the Christian church is going to have to learn how to take advantage of it. To people like the late Leslie Newbigin the world is returning to a situation like th one the early church was faced with. For many years Unionists in Northern Ireland have said that the Catholics will one day outnumber us [they expressed it in much more colourful ways!] and for years we have been told that the Chinese will one day outnumber us. If we take a look at the New testament church we find a small group of Jesus followers trying to practice their faith in church and outside church as part of a polytheistic society dominated by the pagan Roam Empire and they did not loose their faith. When they had to work on Sundays they did so- they worked around the problem by working and worshiping much as modern Christians do in countries like Bangladesh were the religious day is Friday.

What I am suggesting is that we embrace the pluralism we are faced with, not in an attitude of defeat and nostalgia for the good old days but with optimism because, after all our praying for the fulfillment of the Great Commission. The cost in sending a missionary to a country like China or India is great in financial and other ways but today God is actually, by his grace, bringing many Chinese, Indians and others to our shores- the cost of their travel is not on the shoulders of the church but on themselves and the host government so can we praise God and learn how to welcome them and love them? Why would we love these people? Because God loves them as he does those of us who have white skin so we are to lve them also even if we were not commanded to. "Red and Yellow, black and white all are precious in his sight" or do we not believe the Bible?

For the last two weeks I have been studying in America with other Doctoral students from all over the world looking at what the bible has to say about our current world and how to reach them for Jesus Christ. We come from different denominations from Orthodox to Baptist and Presbyterian. We have people working among street children and the women of the night as well as pastors from a great variety of churches. Some of us have white skin, some have brown skin and some have very black skin. On Monday the world will remember the life and work of Dr Martin Luther King jr who reminded us that we are all God's children. That is not some airy fairy universalism but a recognition that God made us all in his image. If that is so how can we be racist? How can we reject the foreigner jus because he is not one of us. The nation state is breaking up and we are returning to the city state and to the alignment of nations and peoples into loose confederations. Today I am more than British, I am more than Irish, I am a European and , at the same time I am primarily a man from Belfast.

Is it not time to embrace the changes and take advantage of them because my task is not to make more people like me, God forbid, but to help them to become the people God intended them to become.