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Faith Stories

Melting pot, salad bowl, or rainbow

Living in New York City during 9/11, my wife Ana and I were witness to the reality that is America. Ministering to diplomats and internationals at the UN we were part of a community where flags of 191 countries are flying daily. We lived in a global village. We heard reports about population shifts in Europe, refugees in Kosovo, drug wars in Colombia, and many wondered whether the Statue of Liberty would continue to welcome in the words of Emma Lazarus “your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

A Pakistani merchant told us in a photo shop: “we are not terrorists.” East Indian and Arabic taxi drivers flew the largest US flags in their cars. Wives of illegal immigrants related that their husbands delivering food at higher floors of the towers called on 9/11 saying, “it will be all right, I will be home later.” Those were the voices and symbols of a contemporary global village—people, some of whom were perhaps for the last time in their lives, looking at the statue from the towers before they died.

Some of us, who are immigrants to the United States and US citizens by choice, treasure this sweet land of liberty and carry in our hearts the goodness of America at its best.

Sociologists, fiction writers, film producers, and some Church analysts spend their time researching, analyzing, and portraying the flow of foreign born persons to the USA  

Some idealists have kept the melting pot concept—an early 20th century figure that may have been invented to justify the manifest destiny of President Teddy Roosevelt. It may have justified their paternalistic approach to missions. After the racial conflicts of the “black revolution,” we moved to the rainbow analogy. Some denominational leaders, defending the growth of Hispanic, Asian, and Africans evangelicals, invented terms such as “ethnic or multicultural churches.”

Small rural communities across our country resent with justified fear that illegal aliens are taking space in their schools and hospitals. Multi nationals see them as inexpensive labor. A West Texas cotton farmer told me in the 1960s, when I was inviting a “bracero” to the Bible Study of the First Baptist Church in Jayton, that he wished for the workers “hands” to work till sundown. And he added: “preacher you mind your business and I mind mine.”

Whatever term we wish to use, to understand our present predicament, the United States is a land of immigrants. I was overwhelmed when President John Kennedy or his associates mailed me the certificate of US citizenship. Our friends welcomed us with a cake in the shape of an American flag with stars and stripes. In New York during the 9 years of mission service, we invited friends, many of them international diplomats to the 4th of July Macy fireworks. We looked from the balcony of the 37th floor to the East River. We sang a song that captures the feelings and convictions of many, “America, America, God shed his grace on you and crowned your good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.”

David F. D’Amico is a CBF missionary and Senior Professor of Evangelism and Missions at Campbell U. Divinity School.