Dear Editor,
I am writing regarding the expressions used in the recent book reviews under the headline ‘Faithfully reading Scripture through multiple lenses’ on page 28 of the September 2023 edition of en.
Firstly, what is meant by the term ‘Majority World’? Is this another way of saying ‘Global Majority’, a term which some non-white people find insulting and suggests that white people are the enemy of everyone else?
Secondly, I can see that someone who grew up in Britain might read Genesis through the eyes of a culture influenced by the Judeo-Christian worldview, but what is a ‘white’ reading of Scripture? You say there is a ‘non-white’ reading of Scripture, so what is a white one?
I think we need to be wary of suggesting there is a ‘white’ and ‘black’ theology. Voddie Baucham, a black American, in a YouTube video warns of what he calls ‘ethnic gnosticism’, the idea that black people are able to see things in Scripture that white people cannot, simply because of their skin colour.
Yours sincerely,
No name supplied
en’s reviews editor John Woods, responds:
Thank you for your letter. I am glad that people are reading the reviews so carefully.
Majority World or 2/3 World is shorthand for the Global South, where most of the world’s population lives, and where most Christians also live. This shift in focus has not always been reflected in the voices that the whole church has been hearing. Bible commentators are still predominantly Western, male, and white.
The review is not advocating ‘black theology’, there is only one theology – Biblical theology – but it is important to recognise that the cultural lenses through which we read the Bible can both obscure and enrich our reading. The whole church benefits immensely from listening to the collective wisdom of our multicultural worldwide church.
