Never, never have I laughed out loud when reading anything that had to do with race issues...until I read Thabiti Anyabwile's Biblical perspective on race (or true lack thereof, actually) in Proclaiming A Cross-Centered Theology:" 'Race as biology' entrenches identity in physical appearance. Ethnicity is something that people of various physical appearances can permeate...ethnic identity definable apart from biology....So let me stake a claim right now: one-half of the T4G speaking panel is black. We call Ligon Duncan. Ligon has more knowledge of Earth, Wind and Fire and Bootsy Collins than most 'bruthas' I know. At T4G 2006, Ligon received from me a lifetime ghetto pass. He can roll with me anywhere. I didn't give the pass to Mark [Dever]. We claim C.J. Mahaney; C.J. is just plain cool. He's a brutha. And we claim John Piper. Piper preaches like a black man. He's a brutha. We don't claim Vanilla Ice. Ethnicity is not that permeable. This is a humorous way of illustrating something of the fluidity of ethnicity."
About his transformation from a racially motivated unregenerate bigot to a redeemed man descended from our common father Adam, Thabiti relates this comical anecdote:
"One of the high points of my more recent past was the privilege of speaking at the Twin Lakes Fellowship in Jackson, Mississippi. Twin Lakes is an annual gathering of PCA pastors, which is a polite way of saying there weren't many bruthas there. In the middle of the talk, it occurred to me where I was--an African-American with two hundred white men--in Mississippi in the woods at night. Now, you know that Jesus did that! Getting me from my racist past down to the woods of Mississippi was a supernatural demonstration of the power of the risen Christ."
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