In a two-part report for NPR's The Tavis Smiley Show aired June 3, producer Roy Hurst explored the legacy of blackface minstrelry. (Available only in audio format.) Ironically, Hurst says, as racist as blackface was, it may have reflected a kind of admiration of African Americans - a loving appreciation for the African American culture. A blackface performance by Entertainer Al Jolson (a Jewish Lithuanian US immigrant) was even chosen as the first movie to feature sound.

But Hurst finds a crucial difference as explained by cultural historian Kelly Madison. She asks, "Is the love in the context of domination?" Her thoughts are crystalized with this keeper of a phrase: "There's a difference between loving the people and loving the culture of the people."

This insight is one we Presbyterians would do well to mull over as we engage in cross-cultural mission.

Madison explains further: "I mean, love implies oneness. People didn't want to really embrace African American people, because if you are one with the subordinated group then you are subject to violation just like they are. But at the same time the African American cultural expression is so compelling that people are wanting to be a part of it but it has to be done in one step removed because it's a love relationship in a context of domination. For decades that step removed was represented by the blackface minstrel's mask."

We could talk more about blackface minstrelry, but I want to extend her insight to our field of Christian mission. As Presbyterian congregations catch the frontier mission vision and directly find their role with a church-planting focus among a given unreached people group, how are we doing on Madison's question? Are we loving the actual people or only the more abstract culture of the people?

This hits me close to home. I consider myself a student of other cultures. I love to encounter them, learn about them, and even be challenged by them. I've also been frustrated by other cultures and exhausted by their ways, a sign of more deeply encountering them beyond experiencing them as a tourist. But I too need to hear Madison's question ringing in my ear, calling me to love the people and not just their culture.

Put another way, tourists love cultures, too. They typically experience a culture "one step removed" by dipping only one toe, figuratively, into the culture. A tourist's love relationship with a people group may well be a relationship in a context of separation, represented so well by the gleaming air-conditioned tour bus that whisks tourists away from the deeper realities of a people and its culture. Call it Encounter Lite.

Ok, so away with masks. Away with separation. What helps us get beyond the one-step-removed position of loving the culture of the people and on into the Real Thing, loving the people?

There are many ways, but let me point out one. Carol Johnson, ministry coordinator of University Presbyterian Church (Seattle)'s Language Institute for Refugees and Immigrants, once told me that the greatest gift we English speakers can give to a non-English speaker is to learn their language. English is at the top of the world's heap of languages, so we don't have much incentive to learn other languages, while speakers of other languages have many incentives to learn ours. Love for a people is a great incentive to learn their language.

I once visited a Presbyterian church that was hoping to have some impact on the Kyrgyz culture for the cause of Christ. The church so far had not even met one Kyrgyz person. But already several of their members were taking classes in the Kyrgyz language at the local university. "That's so, when we finally do meet someone from Kyrgyzstan, we can greet them in their own language!," gushed a Presbyterian woman enthusiastically. This, I would suggest, is an example of gearing up in mission to love the people and not just the culture.

If we love the people we want to interact with them - on their terms, in their culture, minimizing separation and masks. I don't promise it will be easy. But it will be servantlike, Christlike. And that's better by far.

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death -- even death on a cross." (Phil 2.5-8 NRSV)

Links listed:
www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1919122
www.upc.org/page.asp?id=27#LIR

-- Dave Hackett