Yes, White people can be saved. In God's redemptive plan, that goes without saying. But what about the reality of white normativity? This idea and way of being in the world has been parasitically joined to Christianity, and this is the ground of many of our problems today. It is time to redouble the efforts of the church and its institutions to muster well-informed, gospel-based initiatives to fight racialized injustice and overcome the heresy of whiteness.

Written by a world-class roster of scholars, Can "White" People Be Saved? develops language to describe the current realities of race and racism. It challenges evangelical Christianity in particular to think more critically and constructively about race, ethnicity, migration, and mission in relation to white supremacy.

Historical and contemporary perspectives from Africa and the African diaspora prompt fresh theological and missiological questions about place and identity. Native American and Latinxexperiences of colonialism, migration, and hybridity inspire theologies and practices of shalom. And Asian and Asian American experiences of ethnicity and class generate transnational resources for responding to the challenge of systemic injustice. With their call for practical resistance to the Western whiteness project, the perspectives in this volume can revitalize a vision of racial justice and peace in the body of Christ.

Missiological Engagements charts interdisciplinary and innovative trajectories in the history, theology, and practice of Christian mission, featuring contributions by leading thinkers from both the Euro-American West and the majority world whose missiological scholarship bridges church, academy, and society.



Johnny Ramírez-Johnson (EdD, Harvard University) is professor of anthropology in the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Seminary, where he also teaches in the Hispanic Center (Centro Latino). His books include A Way Up the Ladder, Motivation Achievement Via Religious Ideology: An Ethnography of a Seventh-day Adventist Puerto Rican Church and AVANCE: A Vision for a New Mañana.







Love L. Sechrest (PhD, Duke University) is vice president for academic affairs, dean of faculty, and associate professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. She previously served as associate professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, and she is the author of A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race. Sechrest served two terms as cochair of the African American Biblical Hermeneutics section in the Society of Biblical Literature, and gives presentations on race, ethnicity, and Christian thought in a variety of academic, business, and church contexts.







Amos Yong (PhD, Boston University) is professor of theology and mission and director of the Center for Missiological Research at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He is the author or editor of over two dozen books, including Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace, Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture (coedited with Estrelda Alexander), Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences (coedited with James K. A. Smith), and The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology.







Andrea Smith is a cofounder of Evangelicals 4 Justice and a board member of the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies. She is currently chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at UC Riverside. Her books include Conquest, Native Americans and the Christian Right, and Unreconciled (forthcoming).



Preface

Introduction: Race and Missiology in Glocal Perspective (Johnny Ramírez-Johnson and Love L. Sechrest)



Part I: Race and Place at the Dawn of Modernity

1 Can White People Be Saved? Reflections on the Relationship of Missions and Whiteness (Willie James Jennings)

2 Decolonizing Salvation (Andrea Smith)



Part II: Race and the Colonial Enterprise

3 Christian Debates on Race, Theology, and Mission in India (Daniel Jeyaraj)

4 Ambivalent Modalities: Mission, Race, and the African Factor (Akintunde Akinade with Clifton R. Clarke)



Part III: Race and Mission to Latin America

5 Siempre Lo Mismo: Theology, Rhetoric, and Broken Praxis (Elizabeth Conde-Frazier)

6 Constructing Race in Puerto Rico: The Colonial Legacy of Christianity and Empires, 1510–1910 (Angel D. Santiago-Vendrell)



Part IV: Race in North America Between and Beyond Black-and-White

7 The End of "Mission": Christian Witness and the Decentering of White Identity (Andrew T. Draper)

8 Community, Mission, and Race: A Missiological Meaning of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Beloved Community for Racial Relationships and Identity Politics (Hak Joon Lee)

9 "The Spirit of God Was Hovering over the Waters": Pressing Past Racialization in the Decolonial Missionary Context; or, Why Asian American Christians Should Give Up Their Spots at Harvard (Jonathan Tran)



Part V: Scriptural Reconsiderations and Ethnoracial Hermeneutics

10 Intercultural Communication Skills for a Missiology of Interdependent Mutuality (Johnny Ramírez-Johnson)

11 "Humbled Among the Nations": Matthew 15:21-28 in Antiracist Womanist Missiological Engagement (Love L. Sechrest)

Conclusion: Mission After Colonialism and Whiteness: The Pentecost Witness of the "Perpetual Foreigner" for the Third Millennium (Amos Yong)

Epilogue: A Letter from the Archdemon of Racialization to Her Angels in the United States (Erin Dufault-Hunter)

List of Contributors

Subject Index

Scripture Index