PUBLIC LECTURE:
IRT Public Lecture Features Luis Rivera-Rodriguez

On Thursday, November 2, 2006, the Institute for Reformed Theology welcomed Luis Rivera-Rodriguez to Watts Chapel at Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education to give the final lecture in a series presented in conjunction with the “Race and the Reformed Tradition” colloquy.

In his lecture entitled “Visions for a Multicultural Church,” Rivera proposed three different and, in some ways, competing models of ecclesiologies for the multicultural-multiracial church.  Before addressing these proposals, he gave two reasons for why he used the language of race in talking about the multicultural church. The first reason is that in popular, public, and academic discourses in the United States, it is common to combine the concepts of race and ethnicity.  In explaining the second reason, he posited that the language of “race” and “ethnicity” is part of a racialized and racist ideology that originated with and has been sustained by white Euro-Anglo groups in modernity and has political functions that serve to distinguish groups as “others” in order to justify their subordination. One, therefore, needs to be alert to the ideological and political content and function of the terms “multicultural” and “multiracial” and the relationship to the racialized society in which we live.

Rivera described his three proposals: 

1. The Color-Blind Ecclesiology: In this perspective, races and cultural groups are recognized but the differences are downplayed.  God is interested in the common humanity that binds us. The church should welcome those with seeking hearts and offer them a community that affirms them in their individuality and personality. Multiculturality in not an end or a mark of the church, but a consequence of being a church concerned with reaching out to all people in witness and service.
2. The Multiracial Ecclesiology: This movement grew out of groups of multiracial parents concerned about their experiences as multiracial couples and their concern for their children’s right to claim their mixed biological and cultural heritage.  Here, the multicultural church becomes a space where people of different racial/ethnic backgrounds or people of mixed racial and cultural backgrounds are welcomed and affirmed. God accepts, enjoys, and sustains diversity in creation and humanity.
3. The Anti-Racist Ecclesiology: This approach is defined by the concern for overcoming racism. In order for the church to become truly multicultural and multiracial, the church must participate in the dismantling or racism by understanding and addressing structural racism and working toward a personal conversion and institutional transformation.  This church will embrace racial and cultural diversity as it confronts and transforms the sin of structural and spiritual racism. 

In his conclusion, he stated that it is the job of the seminaries to contribute their scholarship, research, and teaching to answer the question, “What is the church that we envision and what is the profile of the religious leader for the multicultural church?”

Dr. Rivera is an associate professor of theology and the director of the Center for the Study of Latino/a Theology and Ministry at McCormick Theological Seminary. A native of Puerto Rico, Rivera served nine years with the Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico before joining the McCormick faculty in 1995. Prior to that, he served as a lay pastor for nine years in churches of the Puerto Rico Baptist Churches. He holds degrees from the University of Puerto Rico (B.A.), the Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico (M.Div.) and Harvard Divinity School (Th.M., Th.D.). His recent research and teaching focuses on the theological, ethical and interpretive challenges posed by the experience of global migrations and the formation of diaspora communities. He is co-editor of Diccionario de Intérpretes de la Fe (also in Portuguese and English) and contributor to the Encyclopedia of Religion and Violence (Routledge), Character Ethics and the Bible (forthcoming WJKP), Shaping Beloved Community: Multicultural Theological Education (WJKP 2006), and The New Lectionary (forthcoming WJKP). 

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, FALL 2006, VOL. 6, #2.