For many of us represented by the groups of color in the Church, our personal cultures insist that one’s identity is, at least in part, other-oriented. We shape identities based on our family and our community. In the case of those of Arab and Middle Eastern heritage, there is a sense that we are nothing without a family and community to help define us.<\/p>\n
The internal relationships of Arab families reflect this cultural reality. Imagine, for example, a young Arab man named Ibrahim and his wife Mariam who have their first child, a son, whom they name Yusuf. From Yusuf’s birth he will be called Ibn Ibrahim<\/em>, “the son of Ibrahim,” but his parents will also take on new names. They will be from that point on called Abu Yusuf<\/em>, “father of Yusuf,” Um Yusuf, <\/em>mother of Yusuf” by friends and family.<\/p>\n I have heard non-Arabs denigrate this custom: \u201cWhy should I give up my identity just because I became a parent?\u201d But that is really the crux. This approach is not giving up one\u2019s identity but expanding it in terms of relationships. In Arab culture, one is not defined in isolation but in connection, in relations. And that is a lesson those of Arab-American heritage can share with the Church: we cannot be fully who we are meant to be if we remain isolated individuals.<\/p>\n In his prayer at the Last Supper in John 17, Jesus describes how he views the ideal relationship with us: “that they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us … that they may be one even as we are one.” Here, I believe, is the core of Jesus’ prayer and its most complex and mysterious part. When Jesus suggests that his followers can be one as<\/em> he and his Father are one, he takes us directly to the mystery of the Trinity. In distinction from the other Western monotheistic religions, Christianity alone posits the person of God as built on relationship, a unity without uniformity. In praying that we be one as Jesus and his Father are one, he is envisioning a future in which his followers will take their identity in part from their relationships with others, unified but not uniform.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dr. Ryan A. LaHurd is a spouse, father of two, and grandfather of five. He served as president of Lenoir-Rhyne University, Hickory, N.C., an ELCA higher education institution, from 1994-2022. Dr. LaHurd, an Arab-American of Lebanese ancestry, has served as a teacher, administrator, author, and leader in many capacities, including with the ELCA Association of Lutherans of Arab and Middle Eastern Heritage. He and his spouse Dr. Carol Schersten LaHurd are members of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Chicago.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In his Daily Meditation of February 6 on 1 Corinthians 12, Rev. Richard Rohr writes \u201cHumanity consistently has to face the problem of unity and diversity. We\u2019re not very good at understanding it. We habitually choose our smaller groups, because we don\u2019t know how to belong to a larger group. That demands too much letting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/59\/2022\/04\/APPI-Heritage-Dr-Lahurdedit-200x300.png\")
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