A Biblical Guide to the Do’s and Don’ts of Cultural Appropriation

By Dr. Michelle Ami Reyes

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he Christian life is not about what you can do—your rights and privileges—but what you’re willing to give up to lovingly serve others. This ethos should guide our approach, as followers of Jesus, to conversations around cultural appropriation. In 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul says twice, “‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say—but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’—but not everything is constructive. No one should seek their own good, but the good of others” (6:12; 10:23–24). When addressing topics like food and other cultural activities, the principles of building up and benefiting the community are of utmost priority.

Some of us are likely guilty of overemphasizing cultural experiences. We enjoy eating at ethnic restaurants; many of us take gap years after college and travel overseas; some of us have explicitly non-Western décor in our homes and apartments. These can all be good things when we’re seeking to learn about and honor other people’s cultures and put ourselves in the position of a student. My suspicion, however, is that we can often be drawn to other people’s cultures and foods simply because they are beautiful, exciting, and different and feel eye-opening. When this happens, our priority becomes more about how much fun we can have, how “pretty” we’ve decorated our space, or how the experience is supposed to change us as a person, which is an incredibly individualistic approach to culture. We lose the focus on context and the importance of building relationships, and that’s a problem. This is why we need to reconsider our actions and practices. Just because we can celebrate any cultural holiday, visit any country around the world, or cook or buy any kind of food doesn’t mean we should; at the very least, we may need to consider if there is a better approach.

The reality in the first century was that some Christians were asserting their right to eat whatever they wanted, but they were overlooking the context of the food and its original meaning (i.e., that it had been sacrificed to idols). Their actions confused people and even turned them away from the faith. This is the issue that Paul seeks to address in 1 Corinthians, and it remains relevant today. Our enjoyment of food or other elements of a culture can sometimes be entirely divorced from any connection with the people of that culture, and this is a reality that creates genuine hurt and misunderstanding with damaging effects on people and communities of color. For example, people say they love chips and queso or breakfast tacos, but they don’t have any interest in engaging with real-life Mexicans. People buy toy tepees for their kids without any thought or care of how this looks and feels to local Native American communities. I’ve even seen white people organize their own Holi party, an Indian holiday that celebrates the coming of spring, with pictures on social media of them throwing paint at each other, as is customary on that day. But do any of them have a single Indian friend? Were Indians even invited to their party, let alone asked to organize it? Not so much. The point is that real-life relationships must drive our impulse and desire to connect across cultures. We need to take conscious steps to engage communities of people and reconsider the consequences of superficial engagement with another person’s culture.

To be clear, I’m not saying that if you are not Mexican, you can’t eat at a taqueria (or if you’re a white chef, you can’t make a flauta). I’m not saying that if you’re not Indian, you can’t eat chicken tikka masala. But I’m asking you to take a step further. Consider why you participate in or engage with cultural activities or food outside your own culture. As Christians, our focus should be whether the foods we eat and drink, as well as the clothes we wear, the music we listen to and the decorations in our homes, build up the community they represent. There’s no law that says you can’t attend a Chinese New Year festival or wear a cable-knit cardigan with a tribal design. But ask yourself: Does my participation in or use of these things benefit that people group?

This brings me back to our discussion on accommodation and appropriation. The lesson that we learn from Paul in 1 Corinthians 8:1–11:1 is that our participation in food and other cultural activities should only be done in context and for the purpose of gaining greater access to people’s lives and, even more importantly, for their good. Being “woke” (i.e., well informed on issues of culture and race) is not an authentic mark of a true Christian. Instead, as Paul makes clear in the pivotal thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, love must be our defining marker. And to love someone means that you seek their advantage. In 1 Corinthians, we see that the Greek word for “benefit” implies “bringing together,” but its meaning in the discussion of 6:12 and 10:23–24 means to build up. Paul’s frequent use of this word throughout his letter in deliberate rhetoric is an appeal to advantage. When we love someone, we proactively speak and act in ways that are for their advantage. That is true love. Paul says that “knowledge puffs up while love builds up” (1 Cor. 8:1). In other words, make sure that your words and actions are for the loving benefit of your neighbors.

This is why we must engage with other cultures on more than an aesthetic level. Consider what America might be like if people loved Mexicans as much as they loved tacos. How would our society be different if people loved the Black community as much as they loved their music (e.g., hip-hop, R&B, blues, etc.)? When we are engaging with real people across a cultural spectrum, our cultural knowledge will naturally increase. As we listen to real people, we learn what brings them both joy and pain. We learn what is sacred to them, whether values or objects, and why we should not borrow these for our own purposes and agendas. If someone tells you they feel their culture is being appropriated, don’t get mad. Listen, seek to understand, and be willing to take a different step forward.

We shouldn’t pick and choose between people and their cultural artifacts. If we want to truly enjoy another culture— their lifestyle, narratives, clothing, country, music, and food—we first need to bond with someone of that culture. We will need to eat with them, learn to have fun with them, and seek to better understand what affects them, what bothers them, and what they feel is unfair. Our focus is on people and what matters to them, not utilizing objects for our benefit or enjoyment.

Taken from Becoming All Things: How Small Changes Lead To Lasting Connections Across Cultures by Michelle Ami Reyes. Copyright © April 2021 by Michelle Ami Reyes. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.

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Michelle Ami Reyes, PhD, is the Vice President of the AACC. She is also the author of Becoming All Things: How Small Changes Lead to Lasting Connections Across Cultures.