Multicultural Kingdom

3 years ago

Why Multicultural Church is so important

Harvey Kwiyani starts his book by painting a beautiful word picture of what a truly multicultural church should look like. He argues that the church should be like a mosaic, made up of 'many national, tribal or linguistic identities belonging together' and that the mosaic artist is God. He then moves on to looking at how the church has entered an era of cultural diversity, including in mission, using the two World Missionary Conferences of 1910 and 2010 to pinpoint the changes. Finally, he looks at how churches can make an effort to be multicultural, including some very helpful practical steps that can be implemented. Kwiyani makes a clear distinction between multi-national and multi-cultural. Interestingly, he is the first author I have encountered who includes class divisions in his descriptions of cultural diversity - as someone who has felt very out of place in a 99% middle class church, that resonated with me! Sadly, I felt the book was let down a little by some sloppy definitions - 'Christian' is sometimes used to refer to someone who is following Jesus, sometimes to someone who has a vague generalised belief in God and sometimes as a synonym for 'Western'. He also comes out with some frankly confusing statements about Christianity, for example, stating that 'Christianity is becoming not just a non-Western religion but also a non-white one,' (later, he does acknowledge that 'Christianity, right from its beginnings, has been a multicultural religion'.) Having said this, I still recommend this book highly to anyone who is part of a church, but especially to anyone in a leadership position. Kwiyani makes a clear case for every church to be multicultural since every church is part of a multicultural society. It is a call we cannot ignore.

Philippa Scott

Unknown