A Biblical Vision for "Intercultural Competency" waspresented by Dr. David P. Gushee at the CCCU's AIC Presidential Symposium at Union University. Dr. Gushee is a Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University.
Our conference planning committee decided that the only way we could host this event with integrity was to be transparent about the realities of our context, even though you come from various parts of the nation and face your own particular challenges.We have hoped that by being straight forward about where we are, and who we are, and the particular challenges that we face here, in our context, that this could stimulate each delegation to be equally honest about your own context and its challenges.
Here in the mid-south - for most of us at least- the phrase "intercultural competency" makes us immediately think about race. And race makes us think about black and white southerners living our largely separate lives, divided (and in a strange way united) by our painful shared history, a history we can hardly bear to articulate, and which we cannot even agree on how to describe, even if we were to try to give it words. While racism has rightly been described as "America's original sin" (not just the South's original sin), it has certainly manifested itself in some especially raw and malicious ways here. We live with the echoes of that history never quite out of earshot.
And race is not just an issue from our past. Racial divisions, tensions, separations, and prejudices are very much alive and present among us to this day. I am or have been reminded of this in many ways during my 8 years here in Jackson, as all of us are who live in Jackson, Memphis, or other towns in our region.
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