THIS collection of essays is a welcome contribution to the growing understanding of what it means to be intercultural, although its origins and application are somewhat limited.
Those of us who have grown up within one dominant culture — white, English, middle-class, and historically colonial — are being challenged by the increasing diversity of our society to move from assimilation (“you need to become like us”), through multi-culturalism (“we can offer you a place in our world”), to becoming genuinely open, all-encompassing, multi-ethnic, and non-racial, welcoming the gifts that others bring and seeing difference as potential rather than threat.
This book is a call to shape our churches so that they mirror this kind of community and become an exemplar to the wider world. It draws on the way in which the Trinity embodies both unity and diversity, and the Cross shows God rejecting the kind of power on which empires are built. It uses the metaphor of tapestry from Colossians, and the image of family from Ephesians.
There are stories of local churches changing their worship to incorporate what different groups of people can bring and moving from more “Western” models of leadership to ways in which more people can be heard and contribute. A few contributors, including Sharon Prentis, from the C of E’s Racial Justice Unit, widen the scope to see action for racial justice as a vital part of the Churches’ mission and service.
All this is good, but one could hope for some wider horizons. The book is largely addressed to independent Charismatic churches, as if this were the natural expression of all migrants’ Christianity, whereas the majority of churches in the majority world are episcopal and liturgical, and their members opt for the same when they move. We know that they have not always been welcomed by the established churches, but, here in south London, those who originally came as immigrants and have built their life here are today rejuvenating Roman Catholic and Anglican parishes in ministry, worship, and outreach.
Much is said about leadership, but, given the background of most of the contributors, it is of a rather self-authenticating Free Church kind rather than based on anything inherited such as episcopacy. They rightly criticise the misuse of power, from the exercise of colonial authority during the missionary period to ways in which non-dominant groups are excluded today, but they avoid difficult issues, such as how bishops are exercising their power in the majority world or how certain charismatic individuals rise to powerful and sometimes well-paid positions in the diaspora.
One might also question their rather idealistic talk of “the Bible” without facing up to the unavoidable racism in the Old Testament, currently influencing not only Israeli Zionism, but also much American conservative Evangelicalism.
They understandably prefer the New Testament, which breaks through all of that, and, in particular, Peter’s radical if, at first, reluctant conversion at the house of Cornelius. Much is made of what Paul says in Galatians about Jew and Greek, men and women, slave and free, with the admission that this has been only partly carried through in the life of the Church, but with one interesting suggestion that the author is not discounting the differences but dismantling the power dynamics that exist at the point of difference.
Finally, while intercultural churches are presented as showing an alternative community to the world, little is said about that world and, in particular, about the fact that we now live in a multi-faith society. It therefore lacks the wider insights of Martin Snow’s An Intercultural Church for a Multicultural World (Books, 27 June 2025).
We cannot live in a Christian bubble. If our faith impels us towards a more embracing interculturalism, and to work that out in the life of our churches, how do we then also apply it to our relationships with other faith communities? And how do we uphold it when challenging those who want to go in the opposite direction in the name of white Christian nationalism?
The Rt Revd Michael Doe is a former General Secretary of USPG, now serving as an honorary assistant bishop in the diocese of Southwark.
Polyphonic God: Exploring intercultural theology, churches and justice
Israel Oluwole Olofinjana, David Wise and Usha Reifsnider, editors
SCM Press £40
(978-0-334-06658-3)
Church Times Bookshop £32
