On Being a Minority
Diocesan Press Service. September 13, 1965 [XXXV-1]
Ralph S. Dean, Executive Officer, Anglican Communion
If this seems a strange subject it is because of reflections that come to my mind as a result of three hectic weeks spent in the Jerusalem Archbishopric. It is a vast area and three weeks is a short time, so that, despite the best efforts of the Archbishop and other friends there, I could see only a fraction of the whole even in the countries I did visit - Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Northern part of the Sudan.
It was my first visit to the Moslem world and was therefore accompanied by all the strange feelings which come from seeing places sacred to the Christian faith in the care of Moslems. But it is not of such things that I write now.
No one can fail to sense the position of the Christian Church set in the midst of an alien culture, nor forget that struggles and strife from at least the seventh century onwards have had their share and left their mark in the present situation. I content myself with the particular place the Anglican Church occupies in the whole vast area.
How tiny our church is in Egypt, where our strength in the past has depended so much on expatriates who are now steadily decreasing in number. How out-numbered the little Arab Church is in Jordan and the even tinier Anglican community in Israel. How sad that the terrible troubles in the Sudan restrict one to visiting the 1,500 or so Anglicans in and around Khartoum and Omdurman, and force one to leave unvisited for the moment at least the 150,000 of our Anglican brethren in Southern Sudan. Small wonder, then, that the word "minority" is never far from one's mind in the whole Jerusalem Archbishopric.
But such reflections need be neither despairing nor barren for there are lessons for all of us to be learned, since our minority position is a fact wherever we live and in the last resort is only a matter of degree.
How should a minority conduct itself? How is it to bear its witness? What are the temptations which press in upon it? These and many other similar questions came to the surface as I talked with the Right Reverend Hassan Dehqani-Tafti, the Bishop in Iran. Our church in that land is tiny too, and though I could not visit it on this occasion, the Bishop made it all vivid to me in Jerusalem where we were attending the Episcopal Synod of the Middle East. A few days previously Bishop Dehqani-Tafti had given a paper on "The Art of being a Christian Minority in Iran" to a Consultation on Religious Liberty in the Moslem Countries arranged by the Division of Studies of the World Council of Churches. The Bishop is well aware of the terrific pressure on the Christian Church to retreat into a "ghetto." He is very conscious of what he called "the introvert mentality. " He is equally convinced that such things must be resisted. This is what he said:
"The strict boundaries of 'ghettos' have been shattered; but the ghetto mentality is still very much there. As far as the minorities insist on being called minorities and on being treated as such this unfortunate situation will persist. Whatever reasoning (historical or religious) may have created the position of minority groupings in the past, I don't believe this state of affairs need go on forever. In order to be a follower of Jesus Christ today in Iran, I do not believe it is necessary to be part of a special minority group. The Historical Minorities such as the Armenians and Assyrians may want to preserve their own language and customs; but those are not essential to Christianity. I believe that Persian Episcopalians should avoid the formation of yet another religious minority group. It must be possible to be a follower of Jesus Christ and yet remain fully a Persian, part and parcel of the Persian Nation."
It was refreshing to listen to him when he went on to say:
"To me there is no contradiction in such a term as 'Muslim Christian', 'Hebrew Christian', or 'Zoroastrian Christian." A Zoroastian cannot help being a Zoroastrian, but he can baptize his Zoroastrianness into Christ. He must not be made to feel ashamed of what he really is, he need not be pushed to forget all his customs and ways of life, he must not be encouraged to change his name. In other words, he must not feel he must become someone else. It is quite unnecessary and even degrading to the personality of man to demand the change of name at baptism. The splendour and the glory of Christianity is that it could bring into one free fellowship all manners of people, God is against uniformity. He wants unity of spirit in diversity of souls. Any Church must be part and parcel of the nation in which she is living and not a closed ghetto. "
Perhaps he summed it up in a nutshell when he said "The art: of being a minority is the art of foot-washing and not the art of building up walls or locking up doors. "
If we are indeed to test our life by our obedience to mission, minority or not, the things he spoke of are relevant to us all, whether we live in Canada, England, the United States or anywhere else. It is for each of us to apply what the Bishop in Iran says to our own particular situation. This is surely mutual responsibility.
Since it was in the Holy City that he and I talked, let me end by using his analogy which is drawn from it:
"The manger in which our Lord was born must have been one of the very ordinary mangers within one of the normal stables of the Bethlehem of that day. Christians throughout the ages have idolized the manger, so much that today the place does not look like a manger or stable at all. It is a fantasy place, completely separated and secluded from normal stables and mangers. This is to a large extent what Christianity has done to the Christian Church, We live in our own fantasy corners away from the real stables of life. This leads to our eventual death. The true stables and mangers of life need us. We must get out of our privileged corners and comfortable places and get into the midst of the life of our nation and the world. "