The Multicultural Leader

John Wesley on embracing neighbours and strangers

John Wesley said this almost 300 years ago. Seems relevant for our current cultural moment...

 

A genuine Christian “is full of love to his neighbour.”

 

"This is: universal love, not confined to one sect or party, not restrained to those who agree with him in opinions, or in outward modes of worship, or to those who are allied to him by blood or recommended by nearness of place. Neither does he love those only that love him, or that are endeared to him by intimacy of acquaintance…

 

It soars above all these scanty bounds, embracing neighbours and strangers, friends and enemies; yea, not only the good and gentle but also the froward, the evil and unthankful. For he loves every soul that God has made, every child of man, of whatever place or nation."

 

(from his pamphlet/essay "A Plain Account of Genuine Christianity.")

 

my thoughts on how this essay engages with our life in a multicultural context can be found here.

From the Margins to the Centre - new book

The Tyndale Intercultural Ministry Centre (TIM Centre) in Toronto (connected with Tyndale Seminary) has just released a book to which I contributed a chapter. I have been involved with this learning community for almost 15 years. The collection of authors have contributed greatly to my understanding and practice over these years.

From the Margins to the Centre: The Diaspora Effect.

From the Amazon blurb:

This book is a collection of essays written to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Tyndale Intercultural Ministry (TIM) Centre (1998-2018). Each chapter is written by a reflective practitioner engaged in ministry to, through and beyond the diaspora. They write, not as leaders who have all the answers, but as servants of God who are “building the bridge as they walk on it.” The TIM Centre is one of the key pieces of Tyndale’s Open Learning Centre, a strategic part of the ministry of Tyndale Seminary, located in Toronto, one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Believing that mission is not one-directional, “the West to the rest,” TIM Centre sees mission as from everywhere to everywhere, beginning on our doorstep and going to the ends of the earth. As you read this book one theme is constant throughout: We are living in a changing cultural context where the proven solutions of the past no longer relate to the questions being raised in the present. This book challenges us to be aware of the assumptions we bring to our ministry context and to be willing to evaluate them as we engage the global community that now resides in our neighbourhoods. This will require a spirit of humility to listen and learn from people of different cultures that God has brought to our doorstep.

Learning to engage with difference - identity politics in Canada

Or, why I prefer to nod and smile affably and not contribute to the debate on identity politics, while getting on with actually bridging differences.

A lot of the current debate on identity politics tends to emerge from those who hold what are regarded as socially progressive views about these topics. For the sake of argument, I would like to suggest that there are actually two fields of study that are part of this debate. The disciplines of sociology and psychology.

Psychology constitutes, by means of the scientific method, a body of organized knowledge, the purpose of which is to describe, explain, predict and in some cases influence behaviour. "Behaviour" includes conduct and internal processes (thoughts, emotional reactions, feelings, etc) that may be inferred from external actions. 

Sociology is the study of human relationships, the rules and norms that guide them, and the development of institutions and movements that conserve and change society. Sociologists now study the historical development of class relations and its relationship to economic, political and ideological processes. 

For most of the 20^th century, the discipline of psychology was prominent in the public consciousness with such personages as Skinner, Freud, Piaget, Erickson and Rogers. The discipline of sociology grew in increasing significance during the late 20^th century and also has its well-known names: Durkheim, Weber, Foucault, Habermas and Bourdieu.

A simple, however reductionist, summary might be: psychology examines individual human behaviours, while sociology examines collective human behaviours. Again, fearful of simplifying, we might say there is a debate going on about who or what is responsible? Individual human responsibility or collective social systems? Again, fearfully broaching… In the Boushie/Stanley encounter, who/what is responsible? Two individuals making very emotional responses and stupid behavioural choices that ended in tragedy? Or two products of socially pre-determined systems where this outcome was completely predictable? Interestingly, the court system is built on the notion of individual responsibility (intent/behavior) and verifiable proof – thus the outcome of the trial. The popular media and a generation of millennials raised on sociology (systemic responsibility), not psychology (individual responsibility), however, see through the lens of the socially pre-determined inevitabilities of racism and unconscious bias.

In search of more clarity, I would like to introduce the discipline of anthropology into this conversation:

Anthropology is the comparative study of past and contemporary cultures, focusing on the ways of life and customs of people around the world. Applied anthropologists use their knowledge of peoples and cultures for practical purposes. They do this framed by anthropological concepts and a methodology - ethnographic fieldwork - that portrays people in their actual circumstances.                 

Anthropology has a long tradition in Canada. In fact, Franz Boas, considered by many as a founder of the discipline, did his most significant ethnographic work among Canadian indigenous peoples in the late 1800s. One of his students, Edward Sapir, was chief ethnologist for the Geological Survey of Canada (1910-1925), producing seminal work on linguistics and culture before his death in 1939. He was also an ardent pacifist and humanist who challenged narratives of European cultural superiority over Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Other students of Boas included Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict.

It is within the learning framework of anthropology that I have spent most of my adult life. I was born and raised for the first 11 years of my life in the multi-ethnic mix of 1960s northern Ontario. I was exposed in everyday life to multiple, first-gen central and eastern Europeans, with some Scandinavians thrown in. This social context also included First Nations peoples. As an elementary school-aged observer, the stark reality of “poor living conditions” and “people in distress” was apparent. My parents, primary influencers of my early worldview, spoke of “these poor people who need help.” My parents, generally, had a positive desire to be service-oriented rather than judgmental or derogatory toward First Nations people; this included several summers where we “camped” on, or near reserves, to facilitate religious education experiences. My father tells a story of visiting in Norval Morrisseau’s home in the late 60s.

These early life exposures were fundamental to my understanding of difference. Languages, foods, living conditions, customs, values, were “interesting, but different.” To be explored and understood. I would go on to have other experiences with First Nations friends (Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, Huu-ay-aht First Nation). Further life experience has led me to engage with people and explore cultures in Mexico (6 weeks), Egypt (14 months), Cyprus (1 month), South Africa (6 years), Hungary (5 weeks), Niger (2 months), Ghana (6 weeks), Sri Lanka (8 months), India (2 months), and The Philippines (1 month).

OK, thanks for all that, Dan, so what’s your point?

“Applied anthropologists use their knowledge of peoples and cultures for practical purposes.” How does this knowledge and experience of diverse peoples help us in this current conversation? One of the applications of anthropology is to the discipline of intercultural communications, which aids in the development of intercultural competence.

Intercultural communication is defined as situated communication between individuals or groups of different linguistic and cultural origins. This is derived from the following fundamental definitions: communication is the active relationship established between people through language, and intercultural means that this communicative relationship is between people of different cultures, where culture is the structured manifestation of human behaviour in social life within specific national and local contexts, e.g. political, linguistic, economic, institutional, and professional.

Intercultural communication is identified as both a concept and a competence. Intercultural competence is the active possession by individuals of qualities which contribute to effective intercultural communication and can be defined in terms of three primary attributes: knowledge, skills and attitudes. 

Let’s catch up. Psychology situates the debate in individual terms, sociology as systemic and collective. Intercultural communication (an area of applied anthropology) says, "hold on, let’s sit down and figure out what’s going on and how we can move forward." This debate has individual, social, cultural, linguistic, political, economic and institutional implications. Meaning, engagement and dialogue is complex and any simplistic, reductionist media bites (on either side) completely miss the point.

The person who says “get your act together and pull up your bootstraps, Colten/Gerald” is missing the more complex work that needs to be done. As is the person who says “systemic racism caused this tragedy, we need to deconstruct the system.” It’s clearly both/and. But you know what? – all that takes time and commitment to engage, while suspending judgement in the meantime. And “the meantime” may take a long time.

Intercultural communication/competence provides these clues to the work that needs to be done:

• Am I sufficiently motivated by curiosity, by justice concerns, by empathy (whatever) to engage in a sustained manner, over time, with differences?
• Am I prepared to pay attention to myself (my attitudes, values, behaviours) and to others (attitudes, values, behaviours) so that observations, reflection and insight from experience with difference begin to alter my perceptions, assumptions and sensitivities?
• Will I engage in increasing knowledge acquisition regarding cultures, institutions, histories, values, roles, conventions, and behaviours of the people I find myself among?
• Will I adjust my behavior to the needs of a given cultural context for the sake of respected communication? Will I apply acquired communication practices to my engagement with people of other cultures?

And that’s my point. I’m tired of the debates – they only lead to further polarization, an entry-level phase of developing intercultural competence. I’m tired of the arm-chair, sophomoric social philosophers. I’d rather just sit down and spend some time engaging with, and learning from, someone who sees things different from myself – and doesn’t feel a need to convert me to their way of thinking. Maybe after I’ve listened long enough, I might get a chance to respectfully share my thoughts.

So I would respectfully suggest the beginning point is individual response (engagement, rethinking, changed behaviour) that leads to changes in systems, over time, because enough individual responses produce systemic change. 

Moltmann on racisim and other dysfunctional relationships

In light of ongoing social ferment in 2017 on both sides of the US/Canada border, I offer some insights from Jurgen Moltmann, written 40 years ago. Readers of Volf's Exclusion and Embrace will recognize Moltmann's influence on his thought.

In a social context where often we are only getting perspectives that represent a humanist worldview (i.e., a world with human capacity for self-improvement at the centre) or distorted Christian civil religion (with Christian semantics employed in the service of patriotism), we need to take the time to reflect more deeply on a revealed tradition that for millenia recorded a perspective on the distorted human condition that can only be rectified by outside intervention. We can't fix this of our own accord. History is witness to that reality.

"Birds of a feather flock together." But why? People who are like us, who think the same thoughts, who have the same things, and who want the same things, confirm us. However, people who are different from us, that is, people whose thoughts, feelings and desires are different from ours, make us feel insecure. We therefore love those who are like us and shun those who are different from us. And when these others live in our midst expressing their need for recognition, interest, and humanity, we react with defensiveness, increased self-confirmation, anxiety and disparagement. This anxiety is indeed the root of racism, anti-Semitism, discrimination against people with disabilities, and, not the least, the lack of relationships in the congregation. "Birds of a feather flock together": that is nothing other than the social form of self-justification and the expression of anxiety. This form of self-justification, therefore, never appears without aggressions against that which threatens its security. It has no self-confidence. It has no ego-strength.

"Accept one another." As we have seen this imperative unfortunately has its limitations. The roots of these limitations lie deep within ourselves. They appear in our anxiety about ourselves, and then in the self-justification which is so deeply ingrained in us. 

"Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you" (Romans 15:7). Only this attitude can give us a new orientation and break through our limitations so that we can spring over our narrow shadows. It opens us up for others as they really are so that we gain a longing for and an interest in them. As a result of this we become able actually to forget ourselves and to focus on the way Christ has accepted us. 

... We can mutually accept each other because Christ has accepted us...

(from Jurgen Moltmann, The Open Church: Invitation to a Messianic Lifestyle, SCM Press, 1978.)

Planting and leading multicultural churches

Experimenting with the idea of slidedoc a la Nancy Duarte. This is a representation of several of my thoughts in a simple, to-the-point format.

 

 

Download Developing Multicultural Churches -Sheffield 2016 (pdf version)

 

free to assimilate -- free to not

Charles Taylor reflects on the challenge of creating national/cultural identity around shared values when some who are "different" want to assimilate and some don't -- they want to maintain their "other" cultural identity and relationship networks. Who's to say who is "right"? He argues that the more multicultural a society becomes due to desirable immigration, the more societies inevitably evolve to include multiple frameworks for living together cohesively. [full article here ]

Now the obvious fact about our era is that, first, the challenge of the new arrival is becoming generalized and multiplied in all democratic societies. The scope and rate of international migration is making all societies increasingly "multicultural." Second, the response to this challenge of the "Jacobin" sort - a rigorous assimilation to a formula involving fairly intense inner exclusion - is becoming less and less sustainable.

This last point is not easy to explain, but it seems to me an undeniable fact. There has been a subtle switch in mind-set in our civilization, probably coinciding with the 1960s. The idea that one ought to suppress one's difference for the sake of fitting in to a dominant mould, defined as the established way in one's society, has been considerably eroded. Feminists, cultural minorities, homosexuals, religious groups, all demand that the reigning formula be modified to accommodate them, rather than the other way around.

At the same time, possibly connected to this first change but certainly with its own roots, has come another. This is an equally subtle change, and hard to pin down. But migrants no longer feel the imperative to assimilate in the same way. One must not misidentify the switch. Most of them want to assimilate substantively to the societies they have entered; and they certainly want to be accepted as full members. But they frequently want now to do it at their own pace, and in their own way, and in the process, they reserve the right to alter the society even as they assimilate to it.

The case of Hispanics in the United States is very telling in this regard. It's not that they don't want to become Anglophone Americans. They see obvious advantages in doing so, and they have no intention of depriving themselves of these. But they frequently demand schools and services in Spanish, because they want to make this process as painless as they can for themselves, and because they welcome such retention of their original culture as may fall out of this process. And something like this is obviously on the cards. They will all eventually learn English, but they will also alter somewhat the going sense of what it means to be an American, even as earlier waves of immigrants had.

The difference between the earlier waves and the Hispanics is that the Hispanics seem to be operating now with the sense of their eventual role in coetermining the culture, rather than this arising only retrospectively, as with earlier immigrants.

This reflects, I believe, the new attitude among migrants. The earlier sense of unalloyed gratitude toward the new countries of refuge and opportunity, which seemed to make any demand to recognize difference quite unjustified and out of place, has been replaced by something harder to define. One is almost tempted to say, by something resembling the old doctrine which is central to many religions, that the earth has been given to the human species in common. A given space doesn't just unqualifiedly belong to the people born in it, so it isn't simply theirs to give. In return for entry, one is not morally bound to accept just any condition that others impose.

Two new features arise from this shift. First, the notion I attributed to Hispanics in the United States has become widespread - namely, the idea that the culture they are joining is something in continual evolution, and that they have a chance to codetermine its future. This, instead of a simple one-way assimilation, is more and more becoming the (often unspoken) understanding behind the act of migration.

Secondly, we have an intensification of a long-established phenomenon, which now seems fully "normal" - that is, where certain immigrant groups still function morally, culturally and politically as a diaspora in relation to their home country. This has been going on for a long time-think, for instance, of the "Polonia" in all the countries of exile. But whereas it was frowned on, or looked askance at, by many people in the receiving society, or where toleration for it depended on sympathy for the cause of the home country (the Poles were lucky in this respect), whereas people muttered darkly in the past about "double allegiances," I believe now that this kind of behaviour is coming to be seen as normal.

Of course, there are still extreme variants of it which arouse strong opposition, as when terrorists use the receiving countries as a base for their operations: but that is because these manifestations shock the dominant political ethic, and not because of the intense involvement in the country of origin. It is becoming more and more normal and unchallenged to think of oneself and be thought of as, say, a Canadian in good standing, while being heavily involved in the fate of some country of origin.

New edition of The Multicultural Leader

JUST RELEASED: Second edition of The Multicultural Leader (kindle)

(print version here).

The first edition came out in 2005, but I had basically written all the content in 2001-2003. That makes the content definitely more than a decade old -- but we've all been learning so much since then! Hence the reason for this second edition.

The book is still being used as a text in a variety of institutions in Canada and the USA, so an update was necessary to do justice to the burst of new material in this field. Interestingly there is still very little written in a substantial way about leadership in multicultural churches for the Canadian context. Most of what has been published over the last decade or so is all couched in American context.

Additions have been made to Section 1 on A Christian View of Multiculturalism, updating current thought from Canadian author Will Kymlicka and American writers Branson and Martinez.

Section 2, Defining the Multicultural Leader is largely untouched with just the additions of a few more illustrative stories.

Section 3, Becoming a Multicultural Leader, has the most substantial updates, adding another 20 pages to the book. In the original I briefly touched on Milton Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity; in the update I go much deeper in the relevant applications of this model and assessment framework, now with a decade of experience using this tool in leadership development contexts. I add specific insights from the work of Darla Deardorff on processes for developing intercultural competence. Most of the charts have also been updated and some new ones added.

I think the main reason that I have gone to the effort of updating the book, is that there is still very little written on the specific leadership attitudes, knowledge and skills required for pastoring multi-ethnic faith communities, particularly in the Canadian context.

Please feel free to get a copy and do a review for academic purposes, or post a note on Amazon or GoodReads.

Finding Our Way - guide to action

The Centre for Community-Based Research has released the next piece of their multi-year research project (The Role of Churches in Immigrant Settlement and Integration). This guide to action is a very usable booklet with straight forward, introductory thoughts, and then a whole bunch of practical, do-able suggestions for local church involvement.

Finding Our Way uses accessible language for people who aren't researchers or academics. The design is very user-friendly.

"Seeing" from the other's perspective

As I engage with students around the topic of cultural self-awareness, we often talk about our views of "the other." Using the frame of the Intercultural Development Continuum, we talk about the minimization of difference, where we place "the other" in our familiar categories; we talk further about recognition and acceptance of difference, where we explore the categories of "the other," in order to see and understand from their perspective, through their lens. This takes work -- it calls me to suspend my own judgements, so as to truly hear.

This video clip focusing on a photograph taken by a Basel Mission leader of a Ghanaian family provides interesting insight into this process of exploring the categories of "the other." It takes time and effort to go this deep into the differences, but one is richly rewarded.

https://crcc.usc.edu/reading-an-image-in-the-other-context-a-visual-essay/

 

Role of Churches in Immigrant Settlement & Integration

The Centre for Community Based Research (Kitchener,ON) is working on a multi-year project seeking to discern what role churches are playing, or could play, with newcomers. This follows on their earlier project, Welcoming Churches. I was invited to participate in both of these projects as a "key informant." 

For this project "Role of Churches..." we were asked:

• What short and mid-term changes in vision, structure and process would best enable church groups to be more effective in supporting immigrants and refugees to settle and integrate?
• How could the role of immigrant church leaders be maximized in order to advance these changes?
• What are the current research and knowledge capacities and gaps of church groups in addressing the needed changes?
• What promising practices, structures, and partnerships currently exist?

A full copy of the National Key Informant Report can be downloaded.