Joshua and the White Man

Being Brown in a White World

Spanish cruelty to indigenous people; Codex Kingsborough

It’s an interesting time to be white in the Western world. Perhaps like never before, the “white man,” as he has been named by so many non-white people across the centuries, has had to bear the scrutiny and critique and sometimes outright hate of indigenous and other people of color. Though it may be challenging for the white man, it’s been liberating for many others. This is a post for another day, but I have spent the last 12 years attempting a faithful (to Jesus) deconstruction of and from whiteness. It’s been an interesting, and times very difficult endeavor. I have recently been going through one of those difficult times and I want to share a little bit of that with my readers. This post will be on the personal side, so buckle in.

The Landscape

Off and on, I’ve been reading The Christian Imagination by Willie James Jennings, an incredible book that details the history of racism in western Christianity, beginning with slavery and the colonization of the American continents. I highly recommend this book, but know it’s a difficult read as it puts us face to face with the racist atrocities of the colonial endeavor, whether Spanish, Portuguese, or English. In story after story, Jennings tells how European ideas about the superiority of their culture and worldview, closely associated with the color of their skin, was used to justify the subjugation of indigenous people across the African, North American, and South American continents. The vilest poison of all was the way this colonial system was syncretized with Christianity. The Europeans justified their cruelty, dishonor, and violence by claiming that God had commissioned them with conquering the world in the name of Jesus Christ.¹ Reading this text makes it quite easy to look outside and hate what the white man has done, and sometimes that hate creeps into hating the white man.

Concurrent with this, I’ve been reading and studying Mesoamerican history. This is a twofold endeavor wherein I am trying to learn about the histories of my people, which in itself is difficult. As far as I can tell, my indigenous ancestry comes from regions populated by Nahuatl speaking peoples (Jalisco) and possibly Quauhchichitl or the Coahuila peoples (Nuevo Leon). Currently, the most widely spoken indigenous language in both regions is Nahuatl. One of the first things you learn when studying Mesoamerican history is just how much history has been lost. No, not lost. Irradicated. Literal thousands upon thousands of documents kept by the major indigenous populations (e.g. the Mayans and Aztec peoples) were placed in piles by Spanish missionaries and burned. And when you start digging, you learn it wasn’t just codices and records that were destroyed, but entire tribes of peoples were displaced and killed-off, their cultures, languages, and people driven to extinction by the Spaniards. I may very well be the remnants of an otherwise extinct people whose way of life and history was destroyed by Christian Europeans.

I am deeply grieved by all of this. Early on, I would bring these topics up to my white brothers and sisters in Christ, and I was often met with little or no compassion or understanding. More than once I heard something to the effect of, “Well, isn’t it true that without colonizers you wouldn’t have become Christians?” (Notice the subtle othering in this question.) There’s an irony in this defense, as it was the same justification used by the colonizers themselves. It seems many white people in the US believe this is a silver bullet. “Yes, our ancestors raped and pillaged your people, your cities, your cultures, and your ancestral lands. Yes, we erased entire ways of living and completely altered the landscape, but at least we gave you Christianity.” As if that was supposed to be some kind of equalizer. Now, there is much to be said about a person or a people who, of their own agency, gives up all they have to follow the loving beckon of Jesus Christ, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. My ancestors didn’t give anything up to follow Jesus. Nearly everything they knew was stripped from them, and Christianity was part of that process.

The last time I had that conversation, being told the same thing, I replied, “Something you need to realize is that you will never have to ask face these questions in your own history. The coming of Christianity to your people will never have this dark spot. My ancestors found Jesus in spite of the Spaniards, not because of them.” And truthfully, Jesus found us in spite of the Spaniards.

Coming to an End?

All this had been swirling around in my mind when I went to Prairie Festival 2022, and heard over and over again how big-agriculture is decimating the planet. When the Spaniards brought horses and cattle to the New World, they had a massive negative environmental impact that forced the native peoples to change their way of life. Once again, we see similar things happening through global capitalism. Capitalism, in turn, is inextricably married to white supremacy in the West.² Despite the mounting evidence, people continue to buy the lie that the climate crisis either doesn’t exist, or that climate change isn’t that big of a deal. I know that capitalism is not tied to one race or skin color, but we shouldn’t ignore that capitalism and agriculturo-capitalist practices are the brain-child of Western, i.e., white thought. That people of color buy into this system is not a pass. This worldview is a virus that infects people across cultures and skin tones. We see an example of this virus in the in-fighting between different Spanish speaking peoples and countries, and in the way indigenous people are marginalized in Mexico to this day.

All this began to compound with other, different but not unrelated, issues, a big one being my discovery that the Anglican diocese of which I am currently a part does not ordain women. Going to church that next Sunday was quite difficult for me. I had already been thinking about what it meant for me, as a Chicano (Mexican-American), to willingly be part of a church that largely spread around the world through the colonial efforts of the British empire.³ Did I really want to be in this church with mostly white people? Did I really want to sit and listen to one of two white men tell me how to be a disciple of Jesus, especially when I'm not sure our ideas of discipleship are the even the same? We've had two guest speakers in the five months I've been at this church, and they too were white men.

Jesus is Brown

I can’t remember what part of the liturgy we were in—it was before the homily—but it all became very overwhelming and I wanted to leave right then. I sat down, and started to journal, just processing my emotions, and began to pray. I don’t really remember what I was saying to the Lord either, but I was feeling rather desperate.

As I sat there, eyes closed, I had the closest thing to a vision of which I can speak. I was on a beach along the Sea of Galilee and I felt the warm breeze on my face. Standing there, an arm’s length away, was Jesus. I said nothing to him, but he knew my inner turmoil. He knew I had felt betrayed many times by so many white Christians, that I felt white Christianity was failing. He understood that, no matter how long I had trafficked in white spaces, I am still keenly aware when I am the only, or only one of a very few, brown people in a room.

There was a brief moment when I just looked at him. He had black, wavy hair. He was just taller than me (admittedly, I’m pretty short), but he was stalky. His skin was brown, like my dad’s and his nose was shaped like my mom’s. His eyes were beautiful, a deep, earthy brown. He put his hand out toward me, palm up, and beckoned me, saying, “Come, follow me.”

That was all he said, but in those words, “Come, follow me,” I knew that Jesus wasn’t a white man. By that I mean Jesus didn’t and doesn’t act like the colonizers. He wouldn’t treat me like the Spaniards or the English treated the indigenous peoples of these unbelievable, beautiful continents. I knew that Jesus understood there is a different way to be in the world, a sacred way, a way forgotten by so many Westerners. And I knew it was that raven-haired, sun-kissed, brown-eyed, soil-born Jesus that was calling me to follow him.

1. There is so much to unpack here, and again, this post isn’t going to do that. For that I apologize, but I can assure you I will write about race and Christianity again in the future.

2. You can find a good number of free, peer-reviewed articles on this topic at scholar.google.com. Also, I specify “in the West” because China is a major contributor to the climate crisis, and there are related, but different issues to discuss.

3. Definitely not only through colonization, but it is rather significant.