History's Horrors
Interview with Joshua Settles, part 2by Paul Grant
Joshua Settles is an InterVarsity team leader in Knoxville, Tennessee. After two years on the Pilgrimage for Reconciliation, including last year’s visit to South Africa, he helped lead the 2005 Global Project in Ghana. This is part one of a two-part interview. Part one is here. This week’s feature article, by Eileen Hocker, describes a visit to a Ghanaian slave-trading station from the early days of American history. In this interview, Joshua Settles describes his experience at the same “Cape Coast Slave Castle”.
When in the trip did you visit Cape Coast?
It came near the end of our project, after our time in the villages. At this point, we parted with our Ghanaian students, and headed down to the castle with our team. At first we toured the castle as staff, and the next day we returned with the students.
Describe your experience.
Shalom cannot be codified and distilled into a perfect ideology that is then pursued. It is, rather, a shared relational experience, a reality that exists only in communities of grace and truth.
– Joshua SettlesThe place itself is a tourist place. There’s also a lot of commercial activity in the neighborhood. Some fishermen have a dock right there. It’s kind of interesting to have this big historic site right there.
When we went in, the first place we went was to the male slave dungeon. It’s a very large facility, and quite intimidating. Hearing the history of it, and simply being there was a priceless experience. At first my feelings were fairly conflicted. I wasn’t exactly angry, and in some ways there was a little joy for me – that I could come back and be in that place.
But more than that, I felt a deep sadness and brokenness. One of the first mission churches in Ghana was there in that castle. There was an African who was ordained there, and served that congregation. That church was located just above the male slave dungeon.
That contrast was really striking. There had to be someone experiencing some kind of conviction, or dissonance, that they were having church right above where three hundred people are crammed into this dungeon – this hole in the ground, with three small windows for ventilation. The incongruity was really striking.
I felt a lot of sadness. The tour guide said that it was here that the African family was broken. A lot of my sadness was over the sense that the cultural dissonances between the US and Ghana were a lot harder for the black students to deal with, than for the white students. The Black students already experience cultural dissonance here, at times, but then to go to Ghana and also experience dissonance, reinforces the sense of homelessness.
It was hard to stand there in that dungeon and feel, the family was really broken here. And it wasn’t a voluntary breaking, such as in immigration. That was hard.
How did that experience impact your faith?
It is as if another chapter has been added to my ethnic identity formation. And having my identity highlighted in a very personal way was affirming and powerful. I feel bad, because some of the black students had a harder time, but I didn’t. And it was kind of nice, because in the US, even to this day there’s a degree of color prejudice within the black community. It was kind of nice to be somewhere, where to be as dark as I am was actually a benefit.
There were countless times when people just started speaking to me in Twi – I mean, I looked Ghanaian to them. It’s the physical features. If you saw an average collection of Ghanaians, you’d think they were black Americans.
Also, it was affirming to realize that there are elements of my spiritual DNA that come through the African lineage and traditions, elements I wasn’t necessarily aware of. I was able to see God’s hand throughout my ancestors’ faith.
Can you share an example?
The consciousness of spiritual realities. It was woven into my experiences growing up. It’s not mainstream evangelical thinking, but it’s part of the everyday lived faith in Ghana.
Or the duality of male and female relationships is another good example. There are some dysfunctions that have appeared as a result of slavery, but the way that women are viewed in the black community is different than mainstream America. In the African American church it’s much more accepted for women to have leadership roles. But then to go to Africa, and to see it played out as well.
When I first came into the evangelical world, some of those parts of my spiritual heritage felt at odds. There’s scriptural basis for a lot of these values, particularly for the spiritual realities, but it’s not reinforced in the evangelical community. It was affirming to go somewhere and see it, and to know that these are some things that God has planted in African society, that we need to listen to.
Even the ways we are known – our identity. Whenever I would ask someone in the village, how many siblings he or she had, they would always say, “We are six,” or “We are eight.” It points to a different way of identifying oneself. I exist in community, and my identity is not independent from those around me. That was affirming in some ways.
In the black American church, we’ve often been at odds with those lessons from our African past. We felt that they were somehow less Biblical or less Godly – and that’s not necessarily true.
Bonus Question: What do you want Ghana, and America, to be like three hundred years from now?
I don’t know that there will still be a United States as we know it now. I think what we’ll see happen, is that the center of Christianity, if there is one, will no longer be the Western world, if it ever was. I would like to see the people of Ghana continue to integrate their vibrant cultural tradition and life, with this very real gospel, and to do it in a way that speaks anew to the world, addressing the world’s transcendent and deepest concerns.
I’d like to see them wealthier, or at least more comfortable. But I’m wary. I don’t want to see the Ghanaians to be wealthier as much as I want Americans to be less materialistic. I don’t want Ghanaians to remain in abject poverty. More than that, I want to see the US come to a place where our material resources don’t hinder us from understanding and listening to those who don’t have them. Money can make you deaf. Shalom cannot be codified and distilled into a perfect ideology that is then pursued. It is, rather, a shared relational experience, a reality that exists only in communities of grace and truth.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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