“The Gospel” and White U.S. Evangelicals

God embraces all kinds of people - all around the world and across the generations - who trust and follow Jesus: that is great news! It is also great news that these varied people are transformed together into the Pauline “new man,” with Christ as the head. Furthermore, the good news of Jesus Christ is that he has ushered in God’s kingdom rule - marked by justice, suffering, and humble service - with weak outposts established in this age as foretastes of the coming new heavens and new earth.
  This all-encompassing great news is “the gospel” of Jesus Christ.
  Anecdotally - but typically, I believe - since the late 1950s "the gospel" I have consistently heard in U.S. Evangelical circles is, “Jesus died on the Cross for your sins. Just believe in Jesus and you will be saved and go to heaven.” That message's focus is on God’s love to meet each individual’s need for a Savior and forgiveness of sin.
  What that message does not explicitly address, however, are corporate and public matters - be they racial, political, economic, ethical, or ecological. In defense, we white U.S. Evangelicals are quick to argue that "the gospel" has corporate and public implications, but the core message is an individual and spiritual one: “Jesus died on the Cross for your and my sins.” Even so, that limited message does not convey the biblical gospel's full message.

Contextualized and Hamstrung

We white U.S. Evangelicals (speaking as a generalization) are convinced that the individual, spiritual message is “the gospel” because, subconsciously, certain key aspects of our basic human identity as white U.S.-Americans tune into select notes of the biblical symphony. We are individuals more than communal. We are monolingual and monoracial. Functionally, then, to white U.S. Evangelicals God is also monolingual (English) and is concerned about what matters to me and my kind of people, e.g., our health care, property values, financial security, and national prestige. Our religious concern focuses on saving souls through “the gospel” of Jesus. Our other concerns, however, tune out God and the Scriptures at corresponding points so that we can pursue our own well-being. At the same time, we presume upon God to bless us and to turn a blind eye to justice and mercy in relation to others who are different.
  Because white U.S.-Americans are in the linguistic-racial majority, domestically we are largely unfamiliar with the realities and needs of speakers of other languages and people of different races. Internationally, because of U.S. military and economic power we disregard the legitimate needs and concerns of fellow human beings of different countries. In our lack of self-awareness of being part of a bigger world, we U.S. Americans universalize and make normative our particular groups; for example, we assign names such as “Evangelical Theological Society,” “Evangelical Missiological Society,” and “Christianity Today,” without such qualifiers as “U.S.” or “North American.” Our contextualized, white-U.S.-Evangelical relationship with God is intertwined with our being hamstrung by our linguistic-racial confinement, lack of particular self-awareness among the wider world, and U.S. power. We U.S.-Americans can thus point out human rights abuses and atrocities committed by others while failing to see our own logs of injustice and terrorizing military activities.
  Our predominant white-U.S.-Christian metanarrative includes the myth of a predominant Judeo-Christian foundation; other intermixed foundational realities such as ethnic cleansing and racial exploitation are ignored. Since we assume U.S. moral leadership in the world, we also assume that God thus favors whatever white U.S. Evangelicals understand will enhance U.S. power, security, wealth, and prestige. “The gospel” itself, however, as an individual and spiritual message does not explicitly address such corporate and public matters as race, politics, and economics. For us white U.S. Evangelicals, saving souls is our (and God's) primary religious concern. We approach other areas of life in the (allegedly and fundamentally) Christian U.S.A. as only indirectly affected by “the gospel” - while we in fact treat those other areas according to our own self-serving image.

A Fuller Gospel

It takes a more representative humanity to understand the fuller gospel conveyed in the Bible. That is especially the case when limited groups - in the present case, white U.S. Christians - have sufficient economic, military, and socio-political power to keep others at a self-protecting distance. The biblical gospel is great news individually, collectively, and publicly for all Jesus-believing people and for the environments we inhabit.
  As the Book of Acts demonstrates, the only way for Jesus’s followers to come to grips with the full, collective, public, and biblical gospel is through actually interacting and living together in our differences of ethnicity, language, socio-economics, nationality, and otherwise. The early monolingual and monoethnic Christians of Galilee would never have had to work through the painful but exhilarating realities of God’s Spirit transforming them into a new humanity in Christ without Pentecost, without being brought together in Antioch under the new label of “Christians,” and otherwise being forced out of their own homogeneous circles. The Jerusalem Council of Acts 15, Paul’s theological argument in Romans for Jewish and Christian believers in Rome to accept each other, and most of the New Testament would be unfathomable apart from the integrating process recorded in Acts 2-14.
  Similarly, we white U.S. Evangelicals will limp along with a deficient individualized, spiritual “gospel” apart from being forced out of our self-protecting and self-serving homogeneity, then actually interacting and living together with those who are different. Embracing, not resisting, the integration of churches, neighborhoods, schools, businesses, and other groups that shape identity is vital for more fully understanding and practicing the biblical gospel. Trying to recover an alleged golden age of pre-1960s (pre-Civil Rights and pre-Immigration Act) racial homogeneity, economic prosperity and exploitation, and military superiority might fit with an individualized spiritual “gospel,” but it is not a fuller kingdom gospel-driven way ahead. May the fuller gospel of God’s kingdom shake us who are white U.S. Evangelicals and bring more glimpses of justice, suffering, and humble service, all in Jesus’s name and empowered by the Holy Spirit.