Episode 6: Anti-Babylon Ethos

About this episode

Identity is never just academic—it’s lived, felt, and fought over. Imer traces questions of race, belonging, and deconstruction through conversations across generations, including a candid dialogue with a former student, Shaina LaRoche. With voices like Harvey Kwiyani, Brian Stanley, and Neil Shenvi in the background, the episode probes a tension that won’t go away: how do we name the past honestly without losing the gospel itself?

People featured in this episode

Imer Santiago⁠ — Host. Puerto Rican–American trumpeter, jazz musician, and worship leader based in St. Cloud, Florida.

⁠Ted Esler⁠ — President/CEO of Missio Nexus (since 2015). Former church planter in Sarajevo, Bosnia; previously held leadership roles with Pioneers. Author of The Innovation Crisis; holds a PhD in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary.

⁠Harvey Kwiyani⁠ — Malawian theologian and missiologist known for work on decolonizing mission and global/diaspora Christianity. Author of Decolonizing Mission.

⁠Neil Shenvi⁠ — Writer and speaker known for apologetics and engagement with questions of faith, philosophy, and culture. Holds a PhD in theoretical chemistry (UC Berkeley) and studied at Princeton.

⁠Shaina LaRoche⁠ — Former student of Imer’s, featured in a candid conversation about identity, faith, and deconstruction.

⁠Brian Stanley⁠ — Historian of world Christianity and Christian missions. Professor at the University of Edinburgh; has written and edited multiple books on missions history.

⁠Sarah Breuel⁠ — Christian leader originally from Brazil and based in Rome. Founder/director of Revive Europe; has served with IFES and the Lausanne Movement.

Music

Tubby Isiah / Arnos Vale / courtesy of ⁠Epidemic Sound⁠
Out To The World / Theories / courtesy of ⁠Epidemic Sound⁠
Shuta Yasukochi / Komorebi / courtesy of ⁠Epidemic Sound⁠
Cuba Quartet / Caminando / courtesy of ⁠Epidemic Sound⁠
Additional music by ⁠Imer Santiago⁠

Credits

Host: Imer Santiago
Produced by: Arrival Creative
Presented by: Missio Nexus

Show overview

Polyphonic: Mission After Empire is an 8-episode narrative podcast hosted by

Imer Santiago and produced by Missio Nexus. If youʼve ever wondered whether “mission” and “empire” can be untangled—or if weʼve been pretending itʼs simpler than it is—this show is for you.

Imer brings his experience as a musician and teacher into conversations with historians, missiologists, practitioners, and everyday voices—tracing what we inherited, what we missed, and what we might need to admit before we can move forward. Music isnʼt background here—itʼs the glue, the metaphor, and sometimes the argument.

This isnʼt a definitive answer guide, because we probably wonʼt get all the answers before Heaven. Itʼs a place to start listening—polyphonic in the truest sense: many voices, each with its own melody, heard together.

Host

Imer Santiag o is a Puerto Rican–American trumpeter, jazz musician, and worship leader. Heʼs from Lorain, Ohio, and now lives in St. Cloud, Florida.

He studied Jazz at Ohio State University and earned a Master of Music in Jazz Studies in New Orleans.

He serves as Director of Bands at St. Cloud Middle School and performs and leads worship throughout the year.

Transcription for this episode

Episode 6 transcription

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Episode 6, where we talk about tearing ourselves down.

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I’ll get into this a bit more later, but it took me a long time to understand who I was. Was I the gringo in Puerto Rico or the Latino in America? These questions about identity and race are on people’s minds these days. So how do we approach them as Christians, particularly with a complicated past as it relates to missions? I grew up on reggae and I love it.

One of the things that I love about Reggae is its anti-Babylon ethos. It’s the music of the people who are trying to figure out how to survive the oppression of the empires. And so in a sense, it relates with a lot of things that I think about in terms of how do we…

subvert empires in order to share the good news with the world.

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Yup. Bob Marley, Down Babylon. Yes. That’s the, that’s the reggae I grew up on. Still listen to him till today. Come we go burn down Babylon one more time. Men see their dreams and aspiration, a crumble in front of their face and all of their wicked intention to destroy the human race. Music, you’re the key. Talk to who? Please talk to me.

These are some of the lyrics of Bob Marley’s song, Chant Down Babylon, which Harvey just mentioned. Babylon is viewed as Western society and its systems, which have fueled slavery, racism and empire. And music is seen as a way to talk about these issues and heal from them. As a musician, this rings true. And in a way, this is what we’re doing by having these discussions. Trying to make things better for this,

and for future generations. I think before even as a kid I didn’t know that I was bicultural. Over the years I’m in a better position but I think at this point but when I was in college I really struggled like am I American? Am I Puerto Rican? Who am I? Because when I go to the island and I’ve never lived there but I have visited you know six seven times throughout my life they know the moment I speak Spanish it’s a different feel, different cadence, different accent.

Oh gringo. You know they say it plainly but I’m like. They call you gringo? Yeah, yeah. Because they know he’s not from here. Does that give you status? Not to me. I don’t think it does. But there is something about living in the States. I’m sure it’s kind of like, oh you’re from the United States. Your education is different. Whatever. But then when I’m here with friends who are not Hispanic.

Latino, the, oh where are from? Oh, I was born in Ohio. No, no, no, but where are you from? So because of my skin color, my last name’s Santiago, so it took me a while, I’m like, Lord, what do I do with this? This is frustrating, I don’t feel like I fit anywhere. I think he helped me understand, like I’m a bridge. And I think that’s when I started understanding more, like, okay, my path forward is somehow, not that I’ve learned it all, I have it, I’m still on a journey, but if I can help people come along and understand.

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biculturalism, multiculturalism, and be a bridge. So when someone comes from, let’s say they’re visiting from Central America and they don’t speak much English and they’re visiting church, I can help them understand some things. um And then when someone, I get this a lot, I recently I got asked to lead music at a conference that’s coming here to Orlando. um

And they already know, they’re looking for someone, okay, Santiago’s gonna help us bridge the gap, because we’ve got people coming from Africa and from UK. Right. Yeah, so I love being, you know, considering those conversations, but it took me a while to really figure out. Yeah, I would say if I was a 20-something in this current environment, I mean, compared to my 20-something years, I would just say, I almost feel sorry for the complexity.

of the issues and the dynamics that they’re facing. Now, they’re probably looking at me and thinking, well, I feel sorry for you because you lived in a much more racially segregated or racially devised time frame. They might be right about that. I never felt that as a 20-something. But I probably also lived in a much more homogenous environment. So I think it’s only natural that if a young person is thinking deeper about these things than my…

experience forced me to think about them. But wow, every single relationship basically today has identity issues interjected into it. I think we gotta be careful, it’d be easy to be left behind in this conversation or to be tempted to kind of pick a side or to pick a tribe, very dangerous. Some academics believe that race

as an idea, it came about in the last 200 years. And certainly if you study the scriptures, you’re not going to find racial categories used. The scriptures, I do believe, really it has a huge emphasis on understanding people in their ethno-linguistic groups. But what we’ve done is we’ve made skin color a dominant and kind of most important human attribute.

And I don’t think you see that in the New Testament. um I’ve got a friend who’s a part of a large African-American denomination, and he’s been going through an ordination process. he’s, obviously he’s African-American himself. A few weeks ago we were talking about his ordination process, and he said it’s in trouble. And I said, well, why is it in trouble? And he says, well, they put us through diversity training, and at the end of it, I wrote a paper asking why.

our church has a completely black leadership if we believe in diversity. And he said, now they’re having discussions about whether I’m a fit, a culture fit. That’s a real issue. That’s a real issue. again, are we saying if diversity is good, should Sunday morning be a diverse morning? It probably should be. But most of us are going to make choices based on just the data.

we’re gonna want to be worshiping with those that are most like us. It’s probably easiest to get to intimacy with people that are more like you than it is with people that are diverse and not like you. And so, is this just part of the human condition and we’re gonna be living with it? Or are we gonna be purposely trying to create these multicultural spaces like you’ve been trying to create that is a third way basically. So I think these are real issues. It’s interesting just what…

individuals, how we view culture, because ever since I was a little kid, uh I’ve heard the term American church, but from this angle. From birth to the time I went to college, uh I attended an Assemblies of God Spanishspeaking church. And I would say the majority of the individuals who were part of this church were American citizens, many Puerto Rican, but there were other cultures represented as well, Mexican, etc. ah

they would consider English speaking churches American churches, even though we were in the United States. And I heard this term about a week and a half ago. So I was like, oh, you know how they do it in the American churches. And I was like, wow, that’s interesting. That thinking is still existing today that even though we’re in the United States, many are American citizens if they’re not.

if English is not the main language. And it’s not just limited language. No, it’s forms. It’s forms as well. Yeah, so what you’re describing is something that I’ve seen on the field many times. So for example, I was in uh India and we were speaking with a Muslim background believer, so was a Christian, and he was describing to us the ministry that he was a part of in which they were using…

more of a Muslim-friendly or Muslim-contextualized church planning approach in India. But as he described his own journey, uh he was Indian, but he was from the North, which is very Muslim. And when he was first introduced to Christ, he said, I was introduced to Christ through the Hindu Church. And I said, whoa, whoa, what do mean the Hindu Church?

He goes, well, I just mean the Christian church, but they use all the Hindu forms. So the women dress like Hindus and the men dress like Hindus. He goes, now we’re doing a Muslim church. And what he meant by that was it’s a church, but the forms that are there are going to be more acceptable in a Muslim form. You know, this is one of the paradoxes of this conversation is that, you know, we talk about kingdom, and the kingdom should be supracultural.

But when the rubber meets the road, culture is very much embedded in our worship experiences. mean, you’ve done a lot of, when we first met, you were teaching a seminar, or a workshop, on multicultural church. And really what you’re doing is you’re introducing a third culture when you do that. You’ve got the, perhaps the, you know, original culture.

or the dominant, let’s call it the dominant or majority culture, then maybe you have the Puerto Rican culture or minority culture, but you want to have a church in which those things are both expressed and make it multicultural, you’re really creating a third space. And that way it’s not incarnational. Because it’s not truly American. I if I walked into, in fact, as I have visited multicultural churches, they actually feel like me to be a third place.

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They don’t feel 100 % the kind of white-bred culture American church that I would come from. It doesn’t feel like I’m walking into a foreign space though. The sermon may be in English or may be translated.

But it’s not completely foreign to me, it’s a third space. And maybe that is the reflection of the kingdom, because the kingdom is not of any race. That’s a good question. Concepts of white supremacy, concepts of racial superiority, I would say in human history that’s a relatively recent development. So now it’s very hard for us to look at history.

and not push that same grid through all of history. And it probably harms us in understanding what the first century was like. It also harms us in understanding what the mission experience was like 250 years ago. Well, I’ve heard that other countries, I’m trying to think, it was South Africa.

But they’re like, why does the United States, why do you make such a big deal of skin color? So one of the ladies I work with is a counselor at my school. She’s of Haitian background. Her husband is from France, but he’s black.

And he told her recently, don’t understand why here in the United States, and he’s, I don’t know how many years he’s lived here, know, been married for a while, but he’s like, it’s different. And she’s like, it’s true. When I go to France, she’s like, even though I’m dark skin color, I don’t feel like people are looking at me the same way here. So I don’t know if it’s more of an American thing. I won’t say West because France is part of the West as I understand it. So I’m curious how that came about that, you know, if it’s… 12 31

So I worked in Bosnia and you had three different people groups essentially, the Croats, the Serbs, and the Bosniak, or Muslim background people. And ethnically they’re the same, they speak the same language. Yet, in the 90s when I was working there, there was a horrific war about those three groups fighting each other. And the hatred that they had for one another was on steroids. And they would…

meet me and if we got into a serious conversation at some point in time, they would wonder how we could be so hateful toward others. And I’m sitting here looking at them, say, well dude, you were just shooting at your neighbor six months ago. So, I don’t know how to sort all that out, but for sure, the concept, maybe a good concept is othering, looking at others.

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thinking about the differences instead of thinking about how we’re like maybe that’s maybe that’s dominant thing that’s happening here but you know for sure American history is you know deeply tied to racism I we’re it’s embedded in our history we can’t ignore that or write that off or get away from that so you know I think we have honest conversations about that

As we approach these conversations about identity as it relates to race, I was reminded of a story from a black American hero that Neil had touched upon. There’s a great quote from, I want to say it was Frederick Douglass, I think it was Frederick Douglass, who talks about how he delights in learning from the great minds of history, the European minds of history, because he’s like, they don’t despise my dusky skin. They are my peers. I sit at the feet of Socrates.

and brilliant thinkers, and I learn from them because they’re my heritage. They’re part of my, they’re mine because they’re humans. That’s how we should look at the gospel and true religion is that these are not the property of white people. These are the property of people who are made in God’s image and therefore we don’t have to, by the way, that’s true. I should not, it would be insane for a non-Christian who is a white American. Like I’m not gonna listen to that.

missionary from Africa because he’s black. No, if he’s preaching the gospel, you’d better listen. He has an accent. He eats different food than me. I don’t care what he does. He’s bringing you God’s truth. Listen up. So yeah, I’m a little bit incensed by this. I think there’s room for questioning our methods, for asking how can we communicate more effectively? How can we not offend people? People talks about this.

He went out of his way to not offend people except when it came to the gospel. He’s going to become all things to all men so he can win some, which means adapting his clothing, adapting what he eats, adapting all these things. What he does not adapt is the gospel because that is a rock. That is the truth that we have to hold to that. But is this an antiquated idea that we should move beyond skin color or should this be a primary marker for consideration?

Ted said we needed to have honest conversations about this and an honest conversation I was about to have. Hello friend. How are you? Good. I have brought friends here. morning. Wow. So anything you order from here is going to be great. already know you don’t need to keep it here. That is so funny. may not consume it right now. I know it’s early, but at some point this is a great cookie. If you’re into cookies. Shaina is a former student of mine.

She’s about to move to New York and pursue a career as a singer. And I like to think that I had a part to play in that. We grabbed coffee a while back and she had a lot of interesting thoughts on these topics. I wanted to hear what someone from the younger generation had to say. I also wanted that cookie. Thank you. I appreciate you looking for someone of our generation.

Cause like, yeah, we can be annoying, but we have a lot of thoughts. Right.

You know?

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I mean, you guys were all so annoying when you was going to say, we’ve all been through that phase. Everyone has been annoying, but you know, I think my generation is just like exceptionally loud because because we have so much access to the internet. You know, we’ve had access to the internet since we were kids, so.

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Unfortunately, there are some people who think, I have a thought and everyone needs to hear about it. Sometimes it’s like, please be quieter. But you know, I appreciate that you guys do want to hear what I have to say at least.

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I met Mr. Santiago in high school. I went to an arts high school. I was a vocal major and he was the director of the jazz program. The high school that I went to, like you have your different majors, voice, band, orchestra, writing, drama, tech. But for the most part, if you’re in vocal jazz, what they’re going to teach you is like,

The classical side of things, right? That’s just… That’s standard. But I was just like, I know that, especially with my upbringing, I grew up listening to gospel, but also jazz and R &B and stuff like that. I was like, I know that even as wonderful and lovely as this classical stuff is, I want to branch out and learn how to perform and do other things. And honestly, I was like…

I didn’t know that I could audition to be a vocalist in the jazz band until I saw people who were singing in the jazz band and I was just like, whoa, how do I do that? And they’re like, you need to go and talk to Mr. Santiago about it. I was like, okay, sure, why not? I did it, made it in, and then from there it was kind of just like, oh, this is a completely different vibe. was much more…

Brown, the jazz band. was like they also did a lot of salsa and like other other types of you know jazz and stuff but I was just like it was great. was exactly what I wanted to do and so I was like I the first time I ever like performed like jazz was like with Mr. Santiago and I was just like oh this is

This is much better for me. This is much more suited for me than the classical route. And then from there, we just kind of like kept in touch. had asked these questions about what the true music was and what I should be playing years ago. I had also been in a years long search to understand my identity and my place in the world. So I wanted to see where she was at. So who is Shane Elorosh? Introduce yourself to the world. First and foremost, black.

woman, right? Because that like absolutely shapes like who I am and my identity and my worldview. was raised going to church, so I know a whole lot. I feel like a lot of my character has to do with, you know, being raised in church and having, growing up in a religious family. I was also musical, so like I can’t separate my church identity from my music identity. I was always, and I…

hopefully will forever be an inquisitive type of person and be like, well, why are things done that way? You know, and that has led me to an era of like a few years ago, like deconstruction and deconstructing like everything. Like we see all these injustices like going on throughout the planet. I mean, even from just the global north and the global south, you know, stuff like that. And I always wonder like, well, why is it like that? And

Someone who’s trying to look for reasoning behind certain things and trying to find justice. And I think that my personality and my experience have all gathered together to create who I am. And yes, obviously I’m a musician too, so whenever I get a chance, I’m gonna sing about it.

as as long as uh… and i think about other things too sure you know you can’t be sad like to me all the time and i think that’s what makes that the entirety of who i am

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was curious where she would end up. We had talked about the faith over the years and I knew she had entered this new phase of deconstruction. But I wondered how deep it had gone. Earlier, I talked with Harvey about this concept of deconstruction and particularly as it relates to experience with missions. But it could certainly apply more broadly as well. From his perspective, it’s really about a disconnect between what we’ve been told the truth is.

and what our experience in the world ends up being. The understanding of mission that we see here in the West is not really reflected when people go to other parts of the world, especially for the younger generation. They go in thinking mission is this, and when they get there, they realize actually it’s more complicated and it’s difficult for us to process. And once they begin to question that, they…

They begin to rethink their faith, so to speak. This is the thing that we’ve believed all along. How come we didn’t know about this? And then they begin to deconstruct their own faith. And they end up moving away from the faith altogether. Or they can be Christians by name only. And many don’t really want anything to do with the church anymore because they realize that actually.

the Christian faith has been part of the European narrative, the European effort to dominate, colonize, civilize the world. So was this similar Shainaʼs experience? And why to hear more about her personal faith journey over the last few years? Yeah, my faith journey would probably scare a lot of people. Because I grew up…

very Christian and very SDA. And once I decided, I’m like, there’s a lot of inequity and injustice going on. And I know that a lot and it’s going to sound crazy, but it ties in with white supremacy. Christianity and white supremacy are best friends. uh

So the way that we think about Christianity and as we know it, like we got to go to every, all the ends of the earth, the ends of the planet and like tell people it’s not just about the love of God. But remember, like one of the main reasons colonialism exists is because people were trying to spread their love of God. know how many people, millions of people who die, you know, because you need to convert to what we believe and how we believe and

Like that even takes place even still today. know, like people trying to police other black and brown people into working, you know, and believing in uh one specific way. Which stuff like that still happens today. I was just reading uh there’s a country in Africa where a few pastors were killed because they didn’t convert from Christianity to another religion.

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And they were asked, everybody who wants to convert to this religion, go here if you want to stay as a Christian and they’d be headed. So I’m like, and this was like probably in the last few years. Um, it blows my mind that it still happens today. You know, that religions. So I.

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A while back, I was just like, I don’t think I’m Christian anymore, right? And specifically in terms of the religion. Not that I don’t believe in Jesus Christ.

As a matter of fact, Jesus Christ seems pretty cool. We have a lot of ideas.

Right? I think Jesus would see like what or sees what Christianity has done. I think Christianity is the bloodiest organization on the planet.

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uh… and historically historically well and i think that that i’d like to say sometimes that the sometimes the messenger doesn’t do a little deliver the message adequately right you like the message but you mentioned even g g’s i are you agree on some things that i think i think the messengers of that wrong a lot and it’s sad so there’s mess everywhere we go i’m i’m curious

Can there be, not at the nomination, I’m not gonna take it from the 30,000 foot view, but the local level, can there be Christians who get together and say, you know what, we know there’s a screwed up past in history, but golly, God help us to do the right thing. Like with humility and with respect, can we do the right thing and love other people and still hold fast to the teachings of Jesus, but we’re not going to force people to do this and we’re gonna respect.

the atheist and the Muslim and the gay person and lesbian, whether they agree with us or not. Can it be done a different way, I guess is- Yes, but they’d have to change their worldview from everything. So remember how I said, like, Christianity is malignant? And you know what malignant is, right?

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I think of malignant tumors. cancer, right? Like cancerous. So it’s like, well, I’m going to grow here and here exponentially, and I’m just going to keep growing. And it’s actually to the detriment of a person or a group of people. I’m tired of hearing about stories about a Christian missionary who went to some random isolated island off the coast of Africa or went to a random tribe in the Amazon.

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and tried going after these indigenous people when they’re known to be like do not do not bother us though my head’s not that we are fine and this like and then and then they’re viewed as the bad guy for killing a christian missionary you know i’m just like

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Not to be whatever, but if he didn’t go and he knew that they were violent and hostile, if you will, and know, some may say hostile, some may say protective, right? Right, right, right. Of their culture and their people and their way of life. Like, why would you go there anyway? Why would you do that? If Christianity as we know it did not exist, we would not have this severely unjust system.

Something’s going on. Yeah, I hope they’re okay.

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Yeah, the severely unjust system, which aligns so well with my three big things. Like every single problem on the planet comes from these three things in no particular order. Capitalism, Christianity, ah white supremacy, capitalism, and the patriarchy, right? Those three things are like…

best friends because there are ways to control a populace, know, the population. And some people really, really do benefit from Christianity while others really, really don’t. Like almost everything related to this topic, this isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. It’s true that some people have benefited from Christianity more than others, but it’s more complicated than that. Take slavery, for instance. It’s complicated again, though. I mean, British.

The British aristocracy are largely responsible for opposing slavery, technically on a global scale, even using their navy to shut it down. uh Yet they were also at the forefront of propelling colonialism forward. So there’s so many difficult layers to this issue that uh I think it’d be really hard to not look at it.

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through uh anything other than a black and white lens.

Does it feel at times like maybe there’s a bit of an overreaction to the ills of the missionary movement? Yes, I think so. um The post-colonial mood of today deals with passionate moral indignation. Great. uh

But actually so did the missionaries in the past. They had their passionate moral indignation. And the post-colonial theory rarely makes distinctions between types of external influence. It talks about the colonial project as if it was one thing. And in fact, it was many different things.

You had different colonial nations competing with each other. You had missionaries competing with merchants and merchants competing with colonial authorities. You have all these different influences, often at war with each other, but interacting on each other in subtle ways. And that’s why I think it’s important to try and introduce elements of ambiguity.

into the narrative. Yeah, it’s great to be concerned for justice, for racial justice, but actually most of the Christian missions in the past were passionate about racial justice, but they had their blind spots, but so do we. And I think it’s the job of a historian, and perhaps particularly a Christian historian as I would regard myself, as helping people to see the blind spots.

both in the past, but also maybe our contemporary blind spots. Thank you. I believe that’s critical what you’re saying because every generation it seems like has their blind spots, but also has their elements of passion and focus. Yeah, absolutely. I think we sometimes imagine that we are the one generation in history who see things as they actually are. And every other generation somehow got it disastrously wrong.

But now we’ve cracked it. We see it perfectly. No.

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Right. I’ll tell you one of the things in my life that’s helping me see my blind spots. It’s my three children. uh I’m trying to be a great dad and you know, I think I’m doing a decent job, but there’s times when they’re like, Dad, have you thought about this or they point out inconsistencies in one’s actions at times. And it’s a beautiful thing because I appreciate their boldness and their their they feel the vulnerability. They can ask me these things, but that’s one of the

things that has really in my life taught me like, yeah, I’ve got blind spots. I might think I’m gonna, you know, I’m doing some things different than the generation before me, my parents, but there are still areas where I can grow from. Brian had mentioned the post-colonial mood of today. What does he mean by post-colonial? I caught up with Neo to get some more thoughts on this and how it could potentially affect the sharing of the gospel itself.

all critical theories try to understand how power works to divide society into oppressor groups and oppressed groups along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, physical ability, and so forth. But they think that that happens through what’s called hegemonic power. Hegemonic power is the ability of the ruling class, whether it’s whites or men or heterosexuals or imperialist nations, to impose their values on cultures such that some other group is marginalized. So

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Their idea is that, men impose patriarchal values on culture so that women become oppressed, or that whites impose white supremacist values and norms on culture so that people of color are oppressed. Well, in a mission’s context, the most relevant factor is that, post-colonial theory, the imperialist power imposes their economic system, but also their values and norms and way of life and way of thinking on the colonized people.

in a way that appears eventually to them to be normal or natural or objective or even God ordained. So, and that’s true of all critical social theories. There always is a ruling class imposing their ideas on culture in a way that seems normalized and objective and neutral, but which actually serves to justify the power and privilege of the ruling class. Well, within missions, what you get is people seeing Christianity as this colonialist force.

It’s a way of thinking, a Western, white, heterosexual, patriarchal way of thinking that is imposed on indigenous cultures and therefore is inherently oppressive. And of course, Christians defend ourselves. say, no, no, no, Christianity is objectively true and we’re just bringing to you God’s objective truth that we all submit to. And they would say, of course you do that. You’re colonizer, right? All colonizers just justify their own power and privilege by appealing to some objective

narrative. Whites do that, men do that, heterosexuals do that, the ablebodied do that, but in reality these are all power plays. Well, once you adopt that lens for thinking about truth and about knowledge and about power, goodbye to the gospel as objectively revealed by God for all people. That’s an oppressive way to think about the gospel, according to them. So that’s deadly for missions work. It’s literally destroying missions.

If you can’t affirm that, there is an objective truth that we can know objectively, that’s for all people, it’s not just a power play, well, why even, you can’t even do missions unless you can establish that reality, which obviously it is true. It’s a deeply Christian way of thinking about reality. So I would say right off the bat, we have to immediately say that post-colonial theory, insofar as it denies that we can know objective truth and that it is not just a power play.

It’s not compatible with Christianity at all. Neo is saying that if we adopt the framework where power or privilege is what determines truth, then the foundations of the gospel itself have been shaken. If we can’t rely on the truth of God found in scripture, we will end up in a morally subjective world where whoever is most powerful determines what the truth is. There is no longer true truth. This relativistic worldview is often found in other religions of the world.

I was reminded of this one day as I jammed with a couple of other local musicians. We were rehearsing for a show and during a short break, we got onto the topic of religious belief and whether absolute truth exists or if it’s purely pragmatic. So, and a lot of people who follow the philosophy that I, I’m a student of all religion, but they want to know, is it real?

I’m not interested in whether it’s real, my Buddhist friends will say to me, is Jesus real? And I said, what kind of question is that? What does real mean? Does it influence your life? Does it guide your daily walk? Does it inform you of how to be a better human being? If it does, real, not real.

oh Well, you study all religions and you’re a Buddhist. I said I never said I was a Buddhist. I don’t believe in Buddhism. I believe in love. This is an incredibly talented musician and I appreciated him sharing his beliefs openly. I see the immogul day in him.

But if we adopt the relativistic view of the world like this, Christianity loses its distinctiveness. And if it isn’t really the truth, then what would be the purpose of sharing with people who have never heard? So maintaining the truthfulness of scripture and the objectivity of the faith is really important. I did love, there were many things I loved about your talks and one is that you continually return to God’s word is this, this.

This is our truth right here. You know, we’re judging everything uh through the lens of scripture as opposed to taking critical theory or whatever the ideology is and then trying to pick and choose, you know, what we want from scripture. Something I was thinking about as I listened to you today and also recently, uh a scripture concept of Imago Dei, right? The image of God in each human. that’s something that as I get on my journey as a worship leader that uh seeks to

combine different cultural music elements and languages and whatnot. And I get pushback sometimes, well, why do we have to do this? And one of the things I say is don’t you believe that God’s is in every human. And so I believe in every culture you can find some good things. You kind of alluded to that. There could be some amoral things, but for me to assume as a Hispanic American, you know, that my culture has everything I need and others don’t, that doesn’t

feel right. So I’m curious if you could speak into a little bit of the Imago Day and how um that plays a role into whether it’s missions or how we approach even like if I’m introducing a new song to a church in a different language or how that could help maybe, I don’t want to say justify, but help set a context to help folks who don’t understand why do we do missions, why do we have to sing in a different style that’s not what I prefer. So one thing I point out is that

critical theory depends on dividing people up along lines of race, class, and gender. There has to be an oppressor, there has to be an oppressed group. That’s sort fundamental to their theories. Whereas the Bible tends to unify people across lines of race, class, and gender. And one of the ways it does that is through the imago dei, the idea that we’re all made in God’s image. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, rich, poor, male, female, we’re all made in God’s image and like this. And therefore, we are fundamentally the same, right? Where there’s no true other.

that they’re totally unlike me. And I think that can also play into how we appreciate other cultures, that we don’t have a monopoly on humanity. We don’t have a monopoly on uh what is right and wrong, not morally, but just like the right way to have to sing. Tell me in the Bible where we have the right rhythm or the right instruments in the Bible. There’s not a list of those things. God wants us to express His

praise and glory in our language, in our musical style, that’s fine. And in Revelation 7 and 9, we see that all nations and peoples and tongues and tribes will be gathered around the throne, worshiping the Lamb of God. That will be a reality in the New Heavens New Earth. And so we get a foretaste of that today in church as we gather in a multi-ethnic uh community. Now, I grant it, if you’re living in

Northern Sweden and it’s all Swedish people. Yeah, okay. You don’t have that it’s not a bad thing It’s not like you’re a handicapped second-class Christian because they’re all Swedes But but to the extent that you live in a multi-ethnic community a multicultural community that your neighbors are multi-ethnic and you’re bringing the gospel to them then you organically are going to create a multi-ethnic church and Then there is gonna be legitimately there’s an intention like well, I want to sing this way. I’m gonna know I want to this way I want to wear this to church. No, I don’t want to wear that church

And this is where we have, it’s like, well, what do do then? Well, guess what, guys? We have the Bible. Paul in 1 Corinthians in Romans talks about what do you do when you have disparate groups of Christians with different scruples, different eating habits, stuff, whatever it is, you deal with charity. You genuinely, you lay down your own rights for the sake of the unity of the body. You want to edify others. So with music, say, you know, this is a continual problem at, you know, every church that is growing and that has many different cultures in it.

What kind of music do we use? that’s, that’s one thing I just say is if you go into that conversation thinking I know what music I want and that’s going to be how it is, where I’m going to leave. Paul would say, put on the mind of Christ. That’s not how Jesus thought. Like I’m going to get my way and no, Jesus, you know, came to the world and was born as a human being, as a servant and laid out his life to serve us. And Paul and Jesus say, now do that for others.

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So your mindset should be, how can I lay down my preferences for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of the kingdom, for the sake of my brothers and sisters in Christ? So I just say, right off the bat, if you’re leading with, want my rights, you’re leading with the wrong foot. And I think that’s actually, I that’s part of the sanctification process that happens in these diverse communities, that we’re forced to be selfless. Look at me, when you get married or have kids, you thought you were very selfless and holy and sanctified.

And then you had kids and realized that, no, I’m actually very impatient. I want my way. I want my convenience. And you’re forced to in that family to give, to serve, to be, you so I just think there’s lots of, I’m not saying that if you go to a mono-ethnic church out in, you know, Alaska, it is, nothing’s wrong with you. I’m just saying that we should be able to celebrate organic diversity within our churches and then incorporate that in our worship, in our.

You know, the potluck afterwards, even the language of worship. I go to a church that has a Spanish campus, they speak Spanish speaking campus. And this is totally reasonable, right? They want to speak in their native language. And yet sometimes we hold joint worship services where they will worship in Spanish and they will translate the words that are in Spanish on the screen in English. We know what we’re singing, but I always love those services, which reminds me.

God’s kingdom is not yours. It is God’s. And you will be worshipping beside people of every tribe and tongue and nation. And this is a taste of that. And again, I love those services because it takes me out of myself in the best possible way. It’s good to be reminded that it is God’s kingdom we are seeking, not our own. And as I hear some of these critiques, I wonder,

How many people end up leaving the faith or at least determining that missions is no longer worth doing? I do think that it’s fair to critique mission, especially its colonial legacy. Actually, we do well if we, people in mission, took on that process and reflected on the implications. Of course, many end up really

deconstructing themselves totally out of the faith. But there are others who end up thinking actually the sharing of the good news, the gospel of Jesus is critical but it does not have to go with sharing our civilization with the world. Right? And it’s those people that I find quite interesting.

In that then they begin to find ways to share the good news without the props of the empire, but going differently with a different posture. They have realized that actually we can do this, but we don’t need all that that’s gone with mission before. think that Harvey is sort of a model for us.

He has thought long and hard about these issues, and yet he hasn’t abandoned the faith or his desire for missions to continue on. He says it’s acceptable to critique missions, but that he finds the people who don’t lose their faith to be the most interesting. There is more nuance in that outcome. But as we consider these things, we have to remember that there are billions of people in the world who have still never heard of Christ. So we have to be thoughtful about how we approach these discussions.

The need in the world is overwhelming. I’m more familiar with Europe, being here for 15 years and serving specifically have the privilege of traveling across Europe the most. But the times that I’ve been in places in Asia and in Africa and seeing the overwhelming world, it’s like just a simple question of asking Jesus, where is my place in your great commission and to obey fully and not hinder.

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I don’t know, that’s a word that I’ve been carrying in my heart for the American missionary movement, that the concern and the discussion for colonialism will not actually hinder the uh impetus uh for the missionary movement. We need all hands on deck. We need Brazilians to go. We need Americans to go. We need Italians to go. We need, you know, middleeasterners to serve where they are and to serve.

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where it’s needed and then reach. So I think it’s deep partnership, yes, and deep commitment to give our lives to the mission that we’ve been called. Deep partnership and deep commitment. Perhaps going deeper than surface level is the key. Deeper than skin color, deeper than culture, deeper than our individual identities. Finding the ways we are the same rather than the ways we are different, like Neil said.

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Not that we ignore the other aspects of ourselves, but we prioritize the most important thing, our commitment to God and making His name known among the nations. But even if we get our priorities straight, there are still practical questions. How should the work be funded? Who should be making decisions? And should the work really be global or should we focus more here at home?

47 58 Polyphonic, Mission After Empire is hosted by me, Imer Santiago, and produced by Missile Nexus and Arrival Creative. Thanks for listening.