Can "White" People Be Saved?

"Fuller's 2017 Missiology Lectures were for me an experience of a lifetime. I am thrilled that the talks presented are now available in one volume for a wider audience. The breadth, depth, and diversity of perspectives-from North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa-and the interdisciplinary approach in tackling the complex issues around race, theology, and mission are highly commendable. The work not only diagnoses the evil of racism, with distortion of mission and damage to Christian witness, but also offers a positive vision of living out who God intended us to be-community in the Holy Spirit-by offering practical guidelines for deconstructing narratives of whiteness and blackness, racial superiority and inferiority. I am so thankful that part of the future is the end of modern mission as we have known it. "For those of us whose skin pigmentation has been labeled black, we shall be delighted that finally the question is asked bluntly, Can "White" People Be Saved? These essays demand, however (without stating it explicitly), that we ask the corollary, Can "Black" People Be Saved? Both whiteness and blackness are 'demons' that ought to be exorcised for us to embrace God's salvation because as the essays articulate, any racial categorization renders some people outside of the category of human. "I commend this volume in its entirety, not because it is infallible on matters of race and theology (for we know it is not) but because it models for us how as a people of God in this historical moment, in our diverse social locations, we may boldly confront, in love and with integrity, the distortions and deformations of the gospel inherent in the partiality and particularity of any location-historical, cultural, racial, or otherwise."