Christianity and the white middle-class “synonymous”

The latest issue of Concern, the newsletter of South Asian Concern, contains an article by Kumar Rajagopalan from the London Baptist Association who adds his voice to the crowd asking British churches to work hard at distinguishing culture from the gospel.

Many Baptist churches in London are ethnically diverse but the dominant cultural expression of the faith is white middle-class. I seek to encourage, equip and enable churches to be culturally inclusive so that they can bear witness to the reality that through Christ we can enjoy unity in diversity. Some consider this to be either a politically correct or social gospel agenda, but in fact it has important implications for mission. My family is orthodox Brahmin caste Hindu and I am the first to embrace Christ, which I did back in 1985. For the first 10 years of my Christian life I struggled with the question ‘Can I be an Indian and a Christian?’ This question arose because in the Baptist churches that I attended I was given the impression that Christianity and white, middle-class, British culture were synonymous.