Usha Reifsnider's research among Hindu-background converts in Britain found churches that welcomed them but had not heard them. She and Ed Stetzer discuss muted group theory, language, and evangelism.

The conversation

What is muted group theory, and what does it say about the church?

Reifsnider describes muted group theory, defined by Edwin and Shirley Ardener, through the workplace of the 1970s, where a woman admitted to a dominant group had to act as the men did. Ed Stetzer distinguishes the theory from critical theory and asks why the church should attend to unheard voices. She answers with her doctoral fieldwork: pastors told her their churches were united and multicultural, and she concluded that the people she needed to hear were the converts themselves. In church settings, she says, they used the words that earn recognition and left their pain and struggle unsaid.

How should a church start hearing people unlike its majority?

Ed Stetzer observes that people in a majority culture can feel fear when they stop being the majority, and asks how to respond. Reifsnider says it is easy to point to scripture, and that Christianity is lived through experience. She starts with relationship: coffee, a meal, friendships with Christlike people, built without the obligation to place someone who looks different in the pulpit. She argues that a multicolored church is not always a multicultural one, that words such as family carry different weight for a Western Christian and a Gujarati-speaking migrant, and that pastors should read majority-world theologians alongside their usual authors. Inclusion, she says, does not negate the voice of the majority culture in its own country. Asked by Ed Stetzer about Christian obligation, she grounds it in who Jesus was and says friction produces energy for growth. On the pace of evangelism, she says evangelical urgency produces templates that discard more than they hold. Stetzer replies that his concern is whether Christians share the gospel at all.

From the conversation

"The truth of the matter is that we live our Christianity through our lived experiences. And so people say all the time, 'Your identity is in Christ.' But sometimes the challenge for me is how a majority culture identifies me." - Usha Reifsnider

"Build that relationship without feeling the obligation that I've just have to find somebody who looks different and plonk them in the pulpit to prove that I'm actually being as diverse as I can be." - Usha Reifsnider

"I think the gospel was always meant to be one of movement. The gospel was never meant to be stuck in one place. It was never meant to be just one language or one location." - Usha Reifsnider

About Usha Reifsnider

Usha Reifsnider has served in cross-cultural mission since 1988, with a focus on migrant engagement. She holds a PhD at the intersection of cultural anthropology and practical theology and serves as a Lausanne Europe regional director and on the board of the European Evangelical Alliance. Her book is Unmuted: Speaking to Be Heard.

Website: https://www.ushamattreifsnider.com

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