Social identity, ethnicity and the gospel of reconciliation

Abstract

This article attends to the relationship between our ethnic, social and cultural identities, and the creation of the new communal identity embodied in the Christian community. Drawing upon six New Testament texts – Ephesians 2:11–22; Galatians 3:27–28, 1 Corinthians 7:17–24 and 10:17, 1 Peter 2:9–11 and Revelation 21:24–26 – it is argued that the creation of a new and prime identity in Christ does not abrogate other creaturely identities, even as it calls for the removal of such as boundary markers. Catholicity, in other words, is intrinsically related to the most radical particularity, and demands an ongoing work of discernment and of judgement vis-à-vis the gospel itself. Those baptised into Christ are now to live in the reality of Christ who is both the boundary and centre of their existence, a boundary which includes all humanity in its cultural, ethnic, gendered, social and historical particularities.