Cultivating self-awareness involves gathering information from a variety of sources and through differing mediums. When Americans read only American news or watch only American TV, he said, it only reinforces prejudices and confirms the "natural sense of self." "Self-awareness can help us to push back and overcome the powerful cultural tug," he said.
"What is demanded, though, is the spiritual discipline of awareness. That awareness occurs only through an intentional effort to step outside our personal space and see ourselves as others see us."
The process of cultivating "information integrity," Nash said, "helps me to become a citizen of the world, even as I am a citizen of this country. It helps me to distinguish being Christian from being an American."
Nash's understanding of discipleship and conscience harkens back to the that of Roger Williams, the first Baptist cross-cultural missionary. Williams, a champion of liberty of conscience and religious liberty, was offered the pulpit of the congregational church in Boston when he arrived in the New World in 1631. He declined that position because he was opposed to forcing everyone to one worship. Instead he became a missionary to the indigenous people of North America.
Williams studied the language and customs of indigenous North Americas and published the first text on a Native American language. Foremost among his concerns was a desire to share the gospel cross-culturally in a manner that respected the integrity of the consciences of all persons. In his book, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, Williams wrote:
Two mountains of crying guilt lie heavy upon the backs of all men that name the name of Christ, in the eyes of Jews, Turks, and pagans.
First, the blasphemies of their idolatrous inventions, superstitions, and most unchristian conversations.
Secondly, the bloody, irreligious, and inhuman oppressions and destructions under the mask or veil of the name of Christ, etc. (Bloudy Tenent, page 8)
Nash describes an act of distantiation and an exercise of sympathetic imagination as an "intentional effort to step outside our personal space." Williams did this as he learned the language and culture of native Americans. Nash adds an exercise of reflexive self-consciousness described as seeing "ourselves as others see us" just as Williams wrote of seeing ourselves "in the eyes of Jews, Turks, and pagans."
Mission efforts described in these terms are rooted in the same respect for liberty of conscience that undergirds the Baptist concern for religious liberty and separation of church and state. This, more than anything else, is what distinguishes the mission efforts of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship from the thrust of the mission efforts of Southern Baptists since the Fundamentalist takeover.
People with this concern for both the integrity of conscience and of the Christian witness will not be organizing political efforts to force the children of Jews, Muslims and pagans to say state sponsored mandatory prayers in public schools. Neither will they be erecting religious monuments in public spaces.
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One of the things that always impressed me about the early Baptist defense of liberty of conscience for EVERYONE is that they clearly defended it for people they did not like! It's easy for contemporary liberals who are universalists or who have strong interfaith theologies to defend the consciences of others--others seen as "respected others.
Likewise, it is easy for those with exclusionary theologies that draw strong lines between the "saved" and the "damned" (and presume to know who's who as well as God) to deny the Baptist heritage of liberty of conscience and fall back on the Medieval Thomist notion that "error has no rights."
But what is impressive is that the early Baptists clearly disliked many people whose consciences they were willing to defend ANYWAY! John Leland defended the religious liberty of Witches--in an age which did not see "Wiccans" as a harmless-if-weird minority religion, but as demon-empowered tools of evil who could do real harm to their neighbors!
Likewise, when Roger Williams defends the consciences of "Jews, Turks, and Pagans," he's talking about people he clearly dislikes. Richard Overton, John Clarke, Thomas Helwys, could say the same things. Helwys defended the conscience of "papists," not the nicest term in the world for Catholics! "Turks" was a slur-word for Muslims! But it is well worth remembering that Muslim consciences were defended by these early Baptists--along with pagans (probably Native Americans). And they did not see such rigorous defense of liberty of conscience as in any way in tension with evangelism because true evangelism can only use persuasion and not coercion!
O for that "Old Time Religion."
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