Rev. Dr. Dennis R. Edwards speaks at Lincoln Christian University's 2020 James D. Strauss Worldview Lectureship, in a speech propagating liberation theology. Elsewhere in the speech, Edwards cites liberal theologians such as Howard Thurman (a universalist mystic) and Willie Jennings (queer-affirming and pro-animism) to argue that marginalized and oppressed groups "possess unique power to demonstrate the way of Christ," and majority-culture Christians must follow their teaching.

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First Corinthians 1:26-29 [NRSV]: "Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God."

So what Paul tells the Corinthians there about how God operates and how he was at work in their own community as Christians and how he would describe his own ministry, not being one of impressive speech but of a demonstration of the gospel's power, of the Spirit's power. That notion is one that actually carries throughout the whole Bible. God is always using the people that we tend to overlook and think are unimportant or insignificant, who are not the power brokers in the eyes of the world. He uses those people to show the world what he's really like. That tendency still continues.

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The power of diaspora people is a power that comes from being marginalized. It's a power from being on the outside, just like those people that Paul is describing in Corinth. The weak of the world. That's part of what it means to be diaspora people.

So I got into this idea of diaspora people. As I think about it, I considered this scene from the blockbuster movie "Black Panther"...When King T'challa is incapacitated, his queen mother, his sister, their spy, played by Lupita Nyong'o, and Agent Ross, who's a CIA agent, they all come to M'baku to get help from the Jabari tribe. And as they come before him, kind of humbled and broken in their situation, right away, Agent Ross starts to talk and explain the situation. And M'Baku starts to pound his staff and bark, and then the Jabari tribe barks so loudly that Agent Ross has to stop talking.

So I wanted to get up in the theater and cheer and shout and jump, because that's like my life in reverse, because I don't know how many times white people have figured they could speak over, for, or around me. Even if I have education and experience and access to the same that they have, there's a sense that, of course, we center the white voice. That's the person who has authority in those situations. And so, in some ways, Agent Ross speaking up right away is what everybody would expect. And M'Baku and the Jabari tribe shut him down and I felt like, "Ooh, this is, I want to pay attention to this."

Because there are a lot of contexts, including the Christian church in America, where the Christian faith of white people of European descent, is the standard. The faith of marginalized people is respected only to the degree in which it affirms white superiority. But what picture of Christianity is most like that of Christ? What is most like what we just saw in 1 Corinthians?

Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gP0YYnu1BI

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