Interview: Christina Edmondson on Reformed Christianity, Race, and ‘Truth’s Table’ (Part 1)

Editor’s note: Read part two of this interview – Interview: Christina Edmondson Talks ‘Incredibly White Spaces,’ Encourages Black Women

Christina Edmondson is the dean for Intercultural Student Development at Calvin College. Edmondson holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Tennessee State University, an MS degree from the University of Rochester in Family Therapy, and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Hampton University. In addition, she brings her training as a Certified Cultural Intelligence facilitator, public speaker, and mental health therapist to the popular “Truth’s Table” podcast. Edmondson is a member of New City Fellowship, a congregation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church where her husband serves as senior pastor.

This is part one of Faithfully Magazine’s interview with Dr. Edmondson, conducted by phone.  It has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

I’d like to start off with something light-hearted. If you could describe yourself with three fictional characters from books, movies, comics, etc., who would they be and why?

I would say from the Black Panther movie, I would describe myself a bit like Nakia, who is the king’s love interest in that movie. So, humor plays a really big part in my life so I would say there’s kind of an I Love Lucy quality. And let’s see. Oh! The Magic Schoolbus teacher. I would love to be a combination of all three of those.

Can you tell me about yourself, your faith journey, and how you got to where you are today?

I grew up in a culturally Christian community. So, I grew up in a space where just about everybody I was around growing up said that they were a Christian. Not in the Bible-belt, but certainly a part of a community where people had a church. So, if you met just a random person, there was a church that they went to. And my mother particularly was active and engaged in church life from my earliest memories. And I would say had a very tangible, evidenced expression of faith, within my earliest memories. I grew up finding my mother—when I couldn’t find her—I found her praying beside her bed, and this could be like in the middle of the day. Or [I grew up] hearing women having friends come over and hearing them go from laughing to just a time of prayer. Even my dad, who I think didn’t have the same kind of church roots as my mom, I remember him just stopping at a red light and saying, “You know, we just haven’t thanked the Lord today,” and just at the red light we were praying.

So, I thought everybody had that kind of stuff going on, but I would say that I had a strong understanding that this is all cognitive, you know, that Jesus is a real person, that Jesus died for people’s sins, but I don’t think I really dealt with the fact that I’m one of those real people with a whole lot of sins until I was probably heading out of high school into college. I was wrestling with questions of faith and need for redemption and not even just so much the sense of like, “Oh, woe is me, totally depraved,” like old school Calvinist stuff, but also just absolutely shocked that God’s love extends to people in this way. So, I began to really be grateful for that. Grateful that God’s love extends to me. And that gratitude I think is the journey of what began to develop my faith. The gratitude to that love that extends toward me.

What it looks like now, it has led me to think about how my faith informs every sphere of my life. My home life, obviously, how it informs my parenting, my role as a spouse, obviously in the local church, but what I do broader vocationally—in academia or in professional settings—informs my thinking of “How do I let my light shine in these spaces?” And, “How can I be an advocate of both grace and truth, and in my really broken and shaky way, point people to Jesus Christ?” In some ways I would say that that describes my faith journey. It’s taken me through a variety of different theological traditions and I have an appreciation for the catholicity of the church. I think that we have a desperate need to hear from every tribe, tongue, and nation to even understand the image of God, and sometimes that is shown through the creative expressions of denominational diversity. So, I tend to have a probably higher appreciation for denominational difference than maybe some people that are in some of the spaces that I find myself.

How did both you and your husband end up in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC)—a so-called Reformed denomination?

I think long before we had any idea of what the OPC was, this would not have been on our radar screen, either one of us. We both grew up in Black Baptist spaces. In his case, Missionary Baptist, Southern context, Tennessee, and in my case, Progressive Baptist, which has a really strong Civil Rights kind of movement strand to it. So we came from a very different background. Although, the idea around the sovereignty and holiness of God, I mean, that is not an exclusively Calvinistic or kind of Euro-centric Reformed notion. I would say many people all around the world embraced “Big God” theology, and I would say that the Black church in America has done that for a long time. So, while we might use different languages to describe some of the things that we’re talking about, I don’t feel like in some ways I have stepped out into a whole new world of theology because I think that I was hearing throughout my entire early childhood this big, amazing God—big in sovereignty, big in power and might, but big in love. So, I had always being told about this God, and that would be the God that I think that people who are very consciously Reformed would say that they’re talking about and pointing to.

We ended up I think in these specific OPC circles because we had been kind of self-consciously Calvinistic for quite some time—we would use that word to describe ourselves. And my husband, when he decided what his initial goal in terms of ministry was, was to probably be the most educated Sunday School teacher possible, the most educated systematic theologian/deacon. I don’t think he actually saw himself as a teaching pastor. Until he was around some really great role models who I think showed him what this could look like, I think that that helped him to shift his thinking and embrace more of the call to serve in this capacity.

Around the same time that that was happening, we ended up worshipping at really different types of churches. I mean there was a time when we were worshiping within kind of an African-American church context maybe in the morning and in the evening we would worship amongst more kind of, you know, overtly Reformed, and in these cases, often predominantly White, churches. One of those churches was an OPC church, and the folks there—really the leadership—I think in many ways offered my husband some opportunities to preach and to serve…. So, from that relationship with this particular church, I think it led to opportunities for him to more self-consciously go into a denomination like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

[bs-quote quote=”As I’ve mentioned before, I have an openness to diversity. I don’t think that as a Black woman, even though I have lots of agreement with Presbyterian spaces, I don’t think if I was a single African-American woman, I would have been in these spaces.” style=”style-13″ align=”center” color=”#dd3333″ author_name=”Dr. Christina Edmondson”][/bs-quote]

As I’ve mentioned before, I have an openness to diversity. I don’t think that as a Black woman, even though I have lots of agreement with Presbyterian spaces, I don’t think if I was a single African-American woman, I would have been in these spaces. So, it’s very much my husband is a pastor in this tradition. I don’t mean that to diminish or demean, I just want to be honest that I probably wouldn’t have been in this space independently. You won’t find many African-American single women in these spaces. You won’t, for really great reasons. So, it’s honestly just wanting to support my husband in his ministry call, and also wanting to serve well the local church where God has me. I love the people and the community where I worship every Sunday. We’re probably in some ways an atypical Orthodox Presbyterian Church to people, but they are my brothers and sisters in Christ, and I’m grateful for that community.

You are asked by local churches to be a consultant for diversity. Is this a need in the local church that you see yourself filing? What’s the feedback that you’ve gotten from the churches you’ve been asked to consult?

There is a part of this dynamic when we think about how sin works out through culture and through systems, where we sometimes deal with it like we can educate our way out of it. And I’m an educator. And I’m saying that this is a bit of a problem. I think we forget that in the same way that we can look and say, “That’s emotionalism, our emotions are fallen,” I would that, so is our intellect. Right? So when we attempt to just say we’re going to teach you a bunch of facts and history—which are good like people we need to do that, it’s very very important—I’m not surprised that people hold to mythology instead of moving into dismantling sin which is in systems. Or the sin in which we operate out of and find ourselves privileged by based on who we are and the social strata. I’m saddened by it because it’s sin, but I’m not surprised by it because I think it’s what we do. I think you can give recommendations to the churches and organization about what they ought to do.

One of the first things I do is I assess buy-in. I try to determine how serious people are about really wanting to audit and explore and investigate their practices, behaviors, and philosophies that serve as barriers to being a more diverse community in a variety of ways. Typically, for a lot of organizations, it’s actually not the top-tier leadership. There’s usually someone who’s like a second or third tier within the leadership structure of an organization that is kind of like the true believer around diversity. They’re like, “Yeah, we gotta do this, we gotta change it.” Oftentimes, we honor and appoint leaders who maintain the status quo. What that means is we often are not going to reward some[one] who says, “Yeah, that’s kind of the way we’ve been doing things and our whole philosophy.” I think we’ve got some problems. They may not end up actually being the person that’s the leader. In order to even get elevated to that position, they’re going to need to be people who feel comfortable with you. So I’m not saying it’s not possible, but when leaders begin to shift and do that, then people do push back on them, and they’re going to have to deal with the hostility of those things.

When we talk about helping churches or organizations to deal with their implicit or explicit barriers to a more cross-cultural or intercultural community, we just have to have some real honest conversations about the losses that are going to come, the frustrations that are going to come, the distrust that’s going to brew, the resistances that’s going to come, and the very real spiritual principalities. We’re talking about some sinful dynamics at play that people are going to come up against. This is not just as simple as, “Okay, well, we know that this group of people they like this type of food typically.” Um, no, this is much deeper, y’all. This is much deeper than a song choice. And I think most people have not been honest about that. So it doesn’t surprise me when you just write off, “This is what you should do” that people demonstrate some kind of resistance, even if it’s resistance with a smile. Even if it’s a resistance that says, “Well, eventually we’re going to get there,” or, “Now’s not the right time.”

You are also a co-host for the “Truth’s Table” podcast with Ekemini Uwan and Michelle Higgins. You all have discussed many important topics on the podcast. What has been your favorite aspect of being a part of the show. What has been the most difficult aspect?

My favorite part of it is friendship. We really do take seriously trying to hold a space where three friends who have these cultural commonalities and deep faith commonalities come together and just chop it up about whatever we want to talk about. I mean, a lot of people do this with their friends. They just don’t record it. So that’s one of my favorite aspects of it, is that we can come together and just shoot the breeze about things that are important to us. And we can cry and we can laugh and we can eventually and hopefully point to the reassurance that we have in Jesus, that He is with us and we are going to a place together that’s been prepared for us. That is what I enjoy about it the most. And the fact that people can share in that—people who identify with us in terms of maybe checking some of the same cultural and communal boxes, but even people who don’t….

I think that’s a beautiful thing because one of the things that’s dear to me is the sense of appreciating the differences that make a difference while at the same time appreciating what we have in common. It’s very difficult for people to hold both of those things at the same time. That’s really a part of our intercultural growth, and the Apostle Paul to me is one of the best examples in Scripture outside of Jesus who’s able to do those things, who can see his differences that make a difference and can use them strategically to point to the gospel. At the same time, can lean into what we have in common. You see that in his interactions as the apostle to the gentiles, right? So, I love that people who are not a part of the group can relate to it, yet at the same time we are committed to holding space for Black women and seeing them as not other or odd but as people made in the image of God.

I would say the most difficult aspect of it… I mean, we’ve had some controversy that you might be aware of. I think what’s been difficult is how to deal with that in a way that attempts to cover when appropriate, even someone who’s been hurtful towards you for the sake of the reputation of the gospel, and at the same time, when to expose mistreatment that’s rooted in bigotry. Because that’s also a grace, when we call out what’s wrong with our system or what’s wrong with us and we move toward repentance and restoration. So, that’s been the difficult part, it’s been figuring that out. When people, you know, slander us on a personal level or as just a show or assume our intentions or assume our philosophies or our thinking, they are often people who would identify as believers. I would say even more so than that. They are people who are leaders among believers—they’re like clergy. So, what should I do with this? How are other people experiencing this and interpreting this and what is it doing and [how is it] damaging them? Is there a vicarious trauma that’s taking place when people talk about their experiences and they point to a reasonably orthodox view of Scripture and still get attacked because they’re saying that we should repent from the wickedness of racism or sexism or misogyny, fill in the blank? That’s been the part that’s been difficult, because you have to figure out how to do that well and at the same time we don’t want to make the table about responding to people that don’t understand us because then we lose the focus on the people who we want to focus on, which is a table built by Black women and for Black women. It points to Jesus. So that’s been the most difficult part.

Editor’s note: Read part two of this interview – Interview: Christina Edmondson Talks ‘Incredibly White Spaces,’ Encourages Black Women