Associated Baptist Press - 2/23/2009

Associated Baptist Press
February 23, 2009 · (09-24)

David Wilkinson, Executive Director
Robert Marus, Managing Editor/Washington Bureau Chief
Bob Allen, Senior Writer

In this issue
Upsurge of urban 'creative class' poses challenges to evangelicals (1,454 words)
Churches respond to challenge of new urban 'creative class' (1,309 words)
North Carolina church sets example with eco-friendly building (844 words)
Supreme Court agrees to hear case involvign cross on federal land (622 words)
Russian Baptists denounce bogus newspaper as political smear (570 words)
Opinion: Was Jesus a racist? (978 words)

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Upsurge of urban 'creative class' poses challenges to evangelicals
By Robert Marus (1,454 words)

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- If ever there were an archetypal hangout for what author and urban-studies theorist Richard Florida calls the "creative class," Busboys and Poets at 14th and "V" Streets NW in the nation's capital is it.

The combination bookstore-bar-bistro-coffeehouse-theater sits near the heart of a neighborhood once destroyed by Washington's infamous 1968 race riots but that has risen from the ashes in recent years. Opened in 2005 by an Iraqi-American restaurateur and community activist, Busboys' mission includes offering affordable gourmet meals to the hordes of young do-gooders who make Washington their home, providing a performance venue to edgy artists, selling books on lefty political topics and offering a chic meeting space for activist groups like Code Pink, the women's anti-war organization.

It's filled from early morning until late at night with hungry Capitol Hill staffers, social-justice activists, and couples out for romantic meals -- representing almost every ethnic background, national origin and sexual orientation imaginable.

The restaurant and its neighborhood -- like many gentrifying ones in large cities around the country -- are thriving. One-bedroom condos in the building that houses Busboys still sell for upwards of $400,000, despite the nationwide housing bust that has sent the economy into a tailspin.

But, simultaneously, if ever there were a place that would seem less natural a hangout for your average Baptist, Busboys and Poets is also it.

Therein lies the rub for those seeking to minister to the rising class of young, educated professionals who are revitalizing once-blighted urban neighborhoods -- but largely bypassing their struggling churches.

"One of the most significant challenges is that [neither] many churches nor communities really understand each other," said Ron Johnson, an urban-missions professor at Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta.

"The churches often have attitudes and assumptions about the communities that are incorrect because so many churches have not had conversation with the community in such a long time. And the community often prejudges the silence of the church as being simply an outdated religious institution and not connected with the real world."

University of Toronto professor Florida argued in his groundbreaking 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, that the young, urban creative types who are revitalizing cities tend to be far more socially liberal and tolerant of diversity than the average evangelical. Florida asserted in the book and works that have followed it such diversity and tolerance helps build the "creative capital" that in turn fuels economic growth and creates thriving, successful cities in today's economy.

"I think Florida's right; that diversity is innately attractive to them," said Peter Brown, a senior vice provost and philosophy professor at Mercer's main campus in Macon, Ga. Brown, who has studied the urban-planning school known as "New Urbanism" under one of its founders at the University of Miami, said he thinks many traditional conservative evangelical churches in urban settings simply will be "left behind" by the trend of young professionals choosing big cities -- or urban parts of smaller cities -- over the suburbs.

"I think the folks that they have reached out to and have continued to reach out to are the people who feel alone and lost in the urban world, and ... the churches at least around here continue to move out to the suburbs," Brown, who has directed Mercer's community-development work with blighted Macon neighborhoods near its campus, said.

"But I think this new demographic we're talking about, they don't feel the same. They enjoy the rootlessness; they like being mobile.... They like that excitement and that diversity, and I'm not sure that evangelicals respond to that or know how to respond to it or know what the gospel means in terms of those folks," he said. "They're seekers, but they're not necessarily seeking ... what the evangelical religion has typically offered, which is a combination of community and clarity or certainty."

Chris Hook, 28, a federal employee who lives in Washington's Dupont Circle neighborhood, said he lives where he does because he likes "the proximity, the public transportation, the vitality, and the density that urban settings provide." He said he also appreciates the city's diversity, and chose a church -- The First Baptist Church of Washington, within walking distance of his house -- that reflected that diversity.

"I want to be in an environment where we're not all the exact same socioeconomic, demographic, or ethnic background," he said. "Urban churches such as First Baptist allow that in a scope that a suburban church often does not."

Amy Butler could sense the once-blighted Chinatown neighborhood around Washington's Calvary Baptist Church was poised for explosive growth when she was called as the church's pastor in 2003. She was right.

"I remember my first visit to the church and walking around and seeing that sort of edginess and sort of sensing that things were on an upturn. And I had this feeling that, you know, there was nowhere to go but up," she said. "Our congregation is moving in. So, really, it's just been about positioning the church in such a way that we become accessible to our neighbors."

But that could mean difficult change for a church that had been in decline for years and most of whose middle-aged-to-elderly congregation drove in from the suburbs, Butler added.

"The tough thing ... is that institutions are not particularly compliant, they don't change particularly easily. And in order to be the church here and now, we have to adjust."

Some of those adjustments have been ideological. The church developed a motto (complete with logo) heralding that it was "a different kind of Baptist church." Calvary also adopted a policy stipulating that all members "have full and equal access to all pastoral services and opportunities for leadership" regardless of sexual orientation, while respecting the diversity of opinion on sexual-orientation issues among the congregation.

But the church faced less obvious adjustments as well, Butler noted. One was actively marketing itself, adopting what she called "a consumer approach to church."

"On one hand, many churches have taken this approach of, 'We'll have a coffee shop, or we'll give people what they want to bring them in,'" Butler said. "I have been very resistant to that because that's not how I understand my ecclesiology. But I agree that that has to be a reality, and here in D.C., it was easy to identify from the very beginning that the thing that we can give them -- that is our marketing niche -- is community. You know, people are lonely in this city. It's a transient city."

A sense of urban community is important enough to Jay Owen that he and his wife drive in to First Baptist from their home in the close-in Washington suburb of Falls Church, Va.

"Initially, location was simply not a factor in choosing the church," Owen noted. "When FBC fit, it did not matter what its location was.
However, as time has gone on, location has become important to me. I think mainly that is because of the community feel. By having a peer group located near the church, I feel more like I belong in a particular space. The lack of a sense of community has been one of the biggest challenges in my life since ending law school, and the urban church provides that even though we do not live in the neighborhood."

Much of the suburbanization of the United States in the 1950s was a result of young couples looking for idyllic communities in which to raise their children, noted Charles Tolbert, chair of the sociology department at Baylor University. But many of the grandchildren of those couples are moving back into cities to find communities they find idyllic in a different way, because they are diverse, sustainable, walkable and green. "There's a little irony there in the sense that that 1950s America was really full of strong community and, in fact, that strong community is being reproduced in these new urban settings by different kinds of people," he said.

Tolbert said many modern-day white American evangelicals are obsessed with recreating the kinds of communities they imagine existed in that era. The irony is that the new communities don't necessarily reflect their predecessors' social mores.

"What they wish they had actually exists [in new urban communities], but I'm sure there's a sense that, well, 'That's not our kind of people,'" he said.

But Butler said her church's adjustment to its community, although difficult at times, has been worth it.

"I mean, we have a good product; I think the gospel of Jesus Christ is a good product," she said. "And if we build a community that genuinely reflects Jesus' mandate to love God and love others, I think people are going to notice that."

Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press. He is also a member of The First Baptist Church of the City of Washington and a resident of its Dupont/Logan Circle neighborhood.

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Churches respond to challenge of new urban 'creative class'
By Robert Dilday (1,309 words)

RICHMOND, Va. (ABP) -- Lights strung from a sanctuary's ceiling at Epiphany. Art galleries and exhibits. Bicycle repair seminars. Cafes and coffee houses. Worship gatherings in downtown music venues.

In meeting the challenges of revitalized urban neighborhoods across the country, urban churches are rethinking the ways they connect with their adjacent communities, combining an eclectic mix of edgy art and ancient Christian traditions.

For some 20 years, many of America's cities have been seeing a trend toward reverse migration from the suburbs to increasingly vibrant downtowns. There, the new urban dwellers are finding an array of lofts and condominiums, restaurants and clubs, lively street festivals and vibrant art and music scenes. The urban neighborhoods are attracting artists, musicians and others of what sociologist Richard Florida calls the "creative class," as well as professionals, students and retirees -- all seeking the energy and spontaneity often missing in the suburbs.

It's new territory for many Christian congregations that fled deteriorating downtowns in the 1960s for more fruitful fields of harvest in the burgeoning suburbs -- and now see a growing and culturally influential class of creative people populating inner cities.

"I wouldn't say we're going after a niche market," says Winn Collier, pastor of the newly planted All Souls Church in Charlottesville, Va. The congregation -- affiliated with the Baptist General Association of Virginia -- ministers in Charlottesville's lively downtown area, not far from the University of Virginia. "We want to be a church for the whole city. But one of the cultures that we have a deep resonance with and in which we want to see the gospel take root is the artistic, progressive urbanite."

"These people have an incredible cultural, as well as social and economic, influence," said Pastor Jonathan Dodson of Austin City Life, a Baptist church in the Texas capital's downtown. "They can help renew the social fabric of the city, and if they are brought to redemption, they can apply those redemptive elements to the city as well." To connect with the new urbanites, churches in their midst reflect a potent blend of artistic integrity, authentic community and groundedness -- a sense of place that might surprise suburban dwellers -- while also navigating the tricky terrain of increased diversity and tolerance.

"The creative class moves around a lot, and so they're attracted by the idea of being rooted," said Chris Backert, co-pastor of Imago Dei, a new church gathering people from the Fan and Museum districts in Richmond, Va. "That's why you find them in older, renovated urban neighborhoods, because they find there a sense of rootedness."

That rootedness often is expressed in worship that closely follows ancient Christian traditions -- with a contemporary twist. "We need to be in touch with the broader church," said Collier, whose Charlottesville church follows Celtic Christian patterns of worship.

"We cross geographic lines, and we need to cross historical lines as well. We're asking less and less what radical new things must be done [in worship], but asking what have God's people, when they have been faithful, done to incarnate the gospel in worship time and time again? What are the common themes and strands?"

"We are drawn to the traditions of the ancient church and the teachings of St. Benedict and the Desert Fathers," said Don Vanderslice, pastor of Mosaic, another Austin church with Texas Baptist ties. "There is a strong contemplative and liturgical strain that informs our worship, and we follow the Christian calendar and the lectionary."

A sense of community, especially across social and economic barriers, also is key, Dodson added. "I think the idea of the new urbanism, apart from making it a more attractive city to live in, is to create more community within the city. The church has a big part to play in that."

At Ecclesia, a Baptist congregation in Houston's trendy Montrose district, Pastor Chris Seay has tried to create community by finding the places where "people naturally connect." Identifying those places is "the postmodern equivalent of knocking on doors," he said. It also led Ecclesia to operate Taft Street Coffee.

"When you create space for people to talk and drink coffee, allow a place for people to converse, it creates community," Seay says. "We really believe that to be salt in our society, we need to begin the conversation."

That led Seay, when Ecclesia was first gathering a congregation, to "office" at a local coffee house and bar with a regular supply of tickets to Houston Astros games in his pocket -- and invite people he met to join him at the stadium.

"Baseball's slow pace is beautiful. It allows for conversation and eating in a relaxed atmosphere," he explained.

The result was a number of additions to the church's faith community, including two bartenders who invited friends from their extensive network.

Community often comes out of churches' artistic endeavors, said Sterling Severns, pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church, a 118-year-old congregation in Richmond's Fan District. Last year before Pentecost, the church printed photographs of items from its history and of current ministries and church members, cut the photographs into the shapes of doves and asked members to write prayer requests on the back. For Pentecost Sunday, dozens of the doves hung on strings from the sanctuary's ceiling. "That creative exercise took a group of people who didn't really know each other and helped transform them into the community that people are longing for," said Severns. "By finding a creative way for people to express themselves, it facilitated people getting to know each other."

An artistic vision drives worship at Austin City Life as well. "We very much reflect our surroundings of music," says Dodson, whose church meets in a music venue in Austin's Sixth Street entertainment district.

"We have three worship leaders, all remarkable musicians, all write their own music. We delight in seeing these musicians growing in their faith and seeing how it influences their art, and that way it influences the community."

At Mosaic, which maintains an art gallery, "We had to make a conscious decision about how to use limited space, which is valuable," said Vanderslice. "To dedicate space to an art gallery is a strong statement."

The diversity and tolerance that allows art to flourish also stretches churches seeking to engage those who practice and value that art.

"We believe the church doesn't exist to be anti-culture," said Dodson. "Some churches begin with sin; we try to begin with the gospel, which of course addresses sin. But it's a hopeful beginning, not a condemning one. We're trying to take the redemptive approach, though we don't run away from issues."

"The foundation we stand on is respect," Tabernacle's Severns said. "It's not that we're opening the doors to encourage diversity but that whoever walks through the doors deserves respect. It's not diversity for diversity's sake; all God's people deserve respect -- period."

"Diversity is a tough question and stretches us in ways that are messy," All Souls' Collier said. "It comes down to authenticity. If we are a community of faith living out a believer's lifestyle, then a lot of things happen in the context of relationships, and acceptance comes bottom-up, not top-down."

Vanderslice agreed authenticity is critical. "In our worship [at Mosaic] we're not very smooth.... But we're OK with mistakes, with the fact that it's not an air of professionalism but of genuine authenticity. There's a draw there for artists because they know the creative process is not a smooth process. There are lots of mistakes, lots of do-overs.... I think that the liturgy rings true for our people because the liturgy seems creative. It can be messy, but in the end, something beautiful has been created."

Robert Dilday is associate editor of the Virginia Baptist Religious Herald.

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North Carolina church sets example with eco-friendly new building
By Bob Allen (844 words)

RALEIGH, N.C. (ABP) -- Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, which celebrates its 125th anniversary in 2009, is turning heads with a new eco-friendly building addition that eases overcrowding, allows for expanded missions and establishes a strong architectural presence along a prominent business and cultural thoroughfare in Raleigh, N.C.

On Feb. 1, the church dedicated a metal-shingled 9,800- square-foot addition. Although it has already been affectionately nicknamed the "shiny diner," architecturally it is tied in with Pullen's original Romanesque brick-and-mortar sanctuary, built in 1923.

"We've been holding Sunday school in the hallways for more than 15 years, so it was clear the church needed a solution," said Nancy Petty, the church's co-pastor.

More than 200 people have joined Pullen Memorial since 2000, according to the church website, bringing the church membership to 700 and active participants to more than 1,000. Youth and children make up a large part of the growth. Youth Sunday school classes previously scattered throughout three floors now have their own classrooms alongside a new nonprofit Hope Center to minister to the community's homeless, jobless and marginalized.

A 2003 master plan set goals of making the building more welcoming and accessible and expanding the church's mission. "The more we discussed it, the clearer it became that we also wanted to have as 'green' a structure as we could," said Regina Parham, chair of the church's design and construction committee.

Building "as green as can be" while remaining affordable in a flagging economy provided a major challenge.

Since heating and cooling account for 30 percent of an average building's energy consumption and power-plant emissions contribute significantly to air pollution, Pullen Memorial opted for a geothermal heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system.

Composed of 20 wells drilled to a depth of 375 feet to tap Raleigh's average soil temperature of 64 degrees, the HVAC unit cost $170,000 more than a regular heat-pump unit. But church leaders believe the system, with a 50-year lifespan, will begin paying for itself after 10 years.

The system is expected to save $6,000 a year at current energy costs, and will stop more than 250,000 pounds of carbon emissions into the atmosphere -- the equivalent of taking 22 cars off the road each year.

Other green features include orienting the building and placing windows to make best use of natural light. The design provides sunlight to 80 percent of the new space, including work and dining areas.

The addition also implements a "green roof" -- covered with vegetation and soil over a waterproofing membrane -- expected to reduce storm-water runoff, the No. 1 source of water pollution, by 25 percent. An underground cistern captures runoff from three areas, including the original church roof. The water will be used for landscape irrigation. Waterless urinals, dual-flush toilets and water-conserving appliances will further cut water use and save costs.

Recycled building materials were used where possible. The wall and roof shingles are made from recycled metal and never will need painting, while flooring is made of renewable resources.

Pullen Memorial has a high-profile location on Hillsborough Street, a historic Raleigh thoroughfare viewed as a front door to North Carolina State University and corridor to the North Carolina Capitol, but primary access to the old building was from a smaller side street.

The new addition opens up access to Hillsborough Street. A contemplation garden of preserved trees and replanted flowers, shrubs and bushes adds a touch of green space open to the public to a crowded urban area.

The addition also allows Pullen Memorial to expand services to the working poor, an emphasis that characterized the congregation at its founding in 1884. Created for people who fall through the gaps in social services, the Hope Center contains two offices for staff, a multipurpose space with computers to aid job seekers, expanded space for tutoring programs and restrooms with showers and laundry facilities for the down-and-out.

Architecture critics have praised the building. New Raleigh magazine described its design as "simple," "confident" and "sensitive."

"This addition to a historic building melds the slope of the earth with new and redefined usable spaces," the magazine said. "The lower story of the building addition cuddles up to the existing structure and acts to negotiate all of the elements of the project: a new chapel and fellowship hall, a roof garden, and a new entrance to the church. A courtyard space outside of the original sanctuary on the Cox Avenue side continues around to the rear of the building and becomes the vegetative roof of the new spaces. This exercise in placemaking yields an elegant transition that weaves the building and its surrounding landscape into a singular architecture."

Another conscious decision for the church involved forgoing construction on undeveloped land. Instead of adding parking, Pullen Memorial members reduced their 28 parking spaces to 14, meaning most worshipers will continue to park at nearby businesses or on the street.

The new building cost $3.7 million. A three-year capital campaign raised $2.2 million in gifts and pledges. An unexpected bequest in 2008 left just 20 percent of total costs to be financed with a bank loan.

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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Supreme Court agrees to hear case involving cross on federal land
By Robert Marus (622 words)

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could lead to the first major church-state decision under the panel's current makeup.

The justices announced Feb. 23 they would hear Salazar v. Buono (No. 08-472). The case involves a cross -- a predecessor of which was first erected as a World War I memorial in 1934 -- standing on government-owned land in California's Mojave National Preserve.

The current version was built of painted metal pipes by a local resident in 1998. The next year the National Park Service, which oversees the land, denied an application to build a Buddhist shrine near the cross.

The agency studied the history of the monument and, determining that it did not qualify as a historic landmark, announced plans to remove it. Congress intervened with a series of amendments to spending bills attempting to preserve the cross.

In 2001 Frank Buono, a former Park Service employee who once worked at the preserve, filed suit with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. They claimed that the cross violated the Constitution's ban on government establishment of religion.

A series of federal court decisions ruled against both the cross and the government's attempts to preserve it through legislative maneuvers. In 2007, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a 2003 law that ordered the government to give the parcel of land the cross sits on to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in exchange for a privately owned plot elsewhere in the park.

"We previously held that the presence of the cross in the preserve violates the Establishment Clause [of the First Amendment], wrote Judge Margaret McKeown in that decision. "We also concluded that a reasonable observer aware of the history of the cross would know of the government's attempts to preserve it and the denial of access to other religious symbols."

McKeown said even an observer who didn't know the monument's history would assume that it was a government symbol, because the vast majority of land in the area is owned by the government -- even if a private organization actually owned the small plot on which the cross stands.

"Under the statutory dictates and terms that presently stand, carving out a tiny parcel of property in the midst of this vast preserve -- like a donut hole with the cross atop it -- will do nothing to minimize the impermissible governmental endorsement."

Supporters of the cross -- including the VFW, the American Legion and other veterans' groups -- argue in a brief that a decision allowing removal of the cross would endanger other religious symbols on federal property, such as grave markers in national cemeteries.

The last time the court handed down decisions involving religious displays on government property was in 2005. That was before Chief Justice John Roberts took over for the late William Rehnquist and Justice Samuel Alito replaced retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

O'Connor -- considered a moderate on church-state issues -- voted against Ten Commandments displays in Kentucky and Texas. Alito is likely to be more open to such monuments on public property.

But the case may turn on a different issue -- whether Buono has the legal standing to assert the case in the first place. The high court's 2007 decision in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation significantly limited most potential plaintiffs' ability to sue over government endorsements of religion.

The justices won't hear the Salazar case until their 2009-2010 session begins in October. While President Bush's administration defended the cross, President Obama's administration may have a view of the First Amendment more in line with the 9th Circuit's. They could withdraw the appeal altogether or simply choose not to defend vigorously Congress' attempts to preserve the cross.

Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington Bureau Chief for Associated Baptist Press.

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Russian Baptists denounce bogus newspaper as political smear
By Bob Allen (570 words)

MOSCOW (ABP) -- Russian Baptists denounced the injection of religion into politics after a bogus newspaper circulated in a mayoral race falsely identified a candidate as a Baptist in an effort to besmirch his character.

According to Internet reports, a counterfeit newspaper stuffed into mailboxes in the western Russian city of Smolensk claimed Baptists were supporting a mayoral candidate in hopes that his election would cause Baptists to rival the Russian Orthodox Church for influence.

"Russian Baptists are for Maslakov!" appeared as a banner headline in the supposed special edition of The Protestant, presumably forged as a political dirty trick.

The article claimed that Baptists all over Russia and from around the world were hoping candidate Sergy Maslakov "will become the first Baptist mayor in Russia" in the upcoming March 1 election. But Baptist leaders said Maslakov, one of 10 candidates running for mayor, is largely unknown outside the region and has no known ties to Baptists.

The article alluded to rumors of rampant sexual immorality and pedophilia among Baptists, and implied Russian Baptist churches are funded largely by Western sources, including the government of the United States.

"Political con-artists are trying to turn the respected, 140-year history of Baptists in Russia into a horror story in hopes of helping and hurting certain political parties," said Vitaly Vlasenko, the Russian Baptist union's director of external church affairs.

Vlasenko accused campaign workers of "sowing hatred between the [denominational] confessions," an act he termed "ugly and totally unacceptable."

The article reportedly included comments falsely attributed to the head of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists from an interview that did not take place. The paper carried photos of Baptist leaders with mismatched captions that identified them with incorrect names.

Viktor Ignatenkov, pastor of First Baptist Church of Smolensk, told the Slavic Legal Center the candidate has no relationship to Baptists and has never been a member of a Baptist church. He said the anonymous authors apparently intended to inflame irreligious strife with statements about Baptists that are patently false.

Anatoly Pchelintsev, a university professor and chief editor of the Religion and Law journal told Slavic Legal Center that Baptists have never conducted themselves in ways described in the newspaper or interfered in political activity. He joined Russian Baptists in saying law enforcement should investigate who was behind the publication.

Smolensk, with more than 300,000 citizens, is one of Russia's oldest cities and scene of some of the heaviest fighting during World War II. Located on the Dnieper River, it is a port city and important rail junction for distribution of agricultural products and other goods.

It is also hometown of the new Russian Patriarch, Metropolitan Kirill, who supports better relations between the Orthodox Church and other faith groups.

Vlasenko of the Baptist union called the bogus publication a "nasty farewell" and "grievous insult" to the patriarch, who was metropolitan of Smolensk from 1991 to 2008, and said it "besmirches that which it intends to defend: the Russian Orthodox Church."

Tensions between Orthodox leaders and minority faiths are not uncommon in the former Soviet Union. Last year a court in Smolensk dissolved a Methodist church for having a Sunday school attended by four children, but Russia's Supreme Court later reversed the decision.

The First Baptist Church of Smolensk, on the other hand, was recognized by the government of Vladimir Putin with a medal recognizing its social ministries.

The International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague, Czech Republic, recently sponsored a groundbreaking conference aimed at improving Baptist-Orthodox relations in European contexts with an Orthodox religious majority.

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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Opinion: Was Jesus a racist?
By Miguel De La Torre (978 words)

(ABP) -- Our faith tells us that anyone can come to Jesus. The evangelistic message is that Jesus will turn no one away. We can come just as we are, ill and diseased. All who seek healing will find salvation and liberation in the arms of Jesus, for his unconditional love accepts everyone -- regardless of their race or ethnicity. Or does it?

Matthew 15:21-28 recounts the story of a Canaanite woman who came to Jesus desperately seeking a healing for her daughter.

The Canaanites during Jesus' time were seen by Jews as being a mixed race of inferior people, much in the same way that some Euro-Americans view Hispanics today, specifically the undocumented. The Canaanites of old -- like Latino/as of our time -- did not belong. They were no better than "dogs."

For this reason Jesus' response to the Canaanite woman is troublesome. When she appealed to Jesus to heal her sick child, our Lord responded by saying: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not good to take the bread of the children and throw it to the dogs."

No matter how much I try to redeem the text, I cannot ignore the fact that Jesus called this woman of color a dog! I am forced to ask the uncomfortable question: Was Jesus a racist?

In this story, I find myself relating more with the Canaanite woman than with Jesus.

When Arizona recently passed Proposition 200, a template for subsequent legislation throughout the country that restricts or denies medical and other services to immigrants who lack documentation, I was reminded that we are the dogs of society.

When congressman and former presidential candidate Tom Tancredo states that Hispanics are "coming to kill you, and you, and me, and my children and my grandchildren," I am reminded that we are the dogs of society.

When Latina/os are more likely than the general population to lack basic health coverage, less likely to receive preventive medical examinations, and less likely to receive early prenatal care, I am reminded that we are the dogs of society.

And when Latino/as are more likely to live with pollution, exposing them to greater health risks, I am reminded that we are the dogs of society.

In the fullness of Jesus' divinity, he had to learn how to be fully human. His family and culture were responsible for teaching him how to walk, how to talk, and how to be potty-trained.

He also learned about the superiority of Judaism and the inferiority of non-Jews, in the very same way that today there are those within the dominant culture who are taught America is No. 1

For some, this superiority takes on a racial component where European descent makes one more advanced than does Hispanic ancestry. The minority who insist on voicing their superiority can easily be dismissed as racist and thus ignored.

However, there remains an unexamined majority who are complicit with social structures that -- whether they like it or not -- are racist in their favor. They may not go to the extreme, like Jesus did, in refusing a medical healing to a woman of color while calling her a dog; nevertheless, the inherent racism in the medical establishment accomplishes the same goal without having to overtly refuse a healing or call people of color dogs.

Latino/as as today's dogs is evident in a quality of health care that ranges from poor to non-existent.

Nevertheless, for Christians, the imago Dei finds its fullest expression in the personhood of Jesus as he turned many "rules" upside down. This is a truth that even Jesus, in his full humanity, had to learn.

To deny this woman a healing and call her a dog reveals the racism his culture taught him. But Jesus, unlike so many within the dominant social structure of today, was willing to hear the words of this woman of color, and learn from her.

And thanks to her, Jesus' ministry was radically changed. The Canaanite woman responded by saying, "For even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters."

Her remark shocked Jesus into realizing that faith was not contingent on a person's ethnicity. In fact, Jesus had to admit that this was a woman of great faith.

This woman of color had to cross the "border" demarcated by Jesus' culture. But she crosses this border not to worship her oppressor (Jesus), but to demand an equal place at the table of the Lord. She demands to be treated as an equal.

It matters little if she belongs. It matters less if she has proper documentation. Her daughter was sick and because of her humanity, she was entitled to a healing. She was more than the dog he called her.

Up to this point, the gospel message was exclusively for the Jews. In Matthew 10:5, Jesus sends his 12 disciples on their first missionary venture. He clearly instructs them, "Do not turn your steps into other nations, nor into Samaritan cities, rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

Yet five chapters later, Jesus encounters the Canaanite woman who existed on the margins of his society. She challenged Jesus with the good news that healing was not the exclusive property of one ethnic group. Instead, healing should be available to all who come.

Jesus learned something about his mission from this woman of color. How do we know this? By the end of his ministry when he gives the Great Commission, he commands his followers to go out to all nations, not just the people of Israel.

Now, if Jesus is willing to learn something from the margins of society, from those who he was taught were his inferiors, no better than dogs, shouldn't Euro-Americans who call themselves his disciples today be willing to do likewise?

-- Miguel De La Torre is associate professor of social ethics at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver.