A few weeks ago President Obama spoke to the largely Muslim, Arabic speaking world. It was a striking moment. The first television interview of Obama’s presidency was not with Brian Williams at NBC or Christiane Amanpour at CNN, but Hisham Melhem of Al-Arabiya. Instead of answering questions about U.S. health care or joblessness, Obama talked about King Abdullah’s proposal to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Image - Rachael Lyric

It was remarkable not simply in the history of U.S.-Arab relations, but for the contrast such an image presented with the previous administration. George Bush had his defenders in the Arab world, but millions felt his view of the Arab world was condescending, out-of-touch, and heavy handed. A reporter threw his shoe at the former president during a news conference and became an international folk hero.

Obama’s strategy to win favor was not simply to change policies. In the interview Obama communicated empathy. This was a statement that Americans are ready to treat Muslim countries as partners and equals. Rather than potential points on the “axis of evil,” or dependent allies to be taken for granted, Obama moved to symbolically affirm the equal humanity of Arabs generally, and Muslims in particular. Obama pointedly mentioned his Muslim family members, the Muslim heritage reflected in his middle name, and his life and travels in the largest Muslim nation, Indonesia. Along with his well-publicized roots in East Africa, Obama embodies what he intends to communicate: that we are part of one human family.

While this certainly sends a message to the Arab world and other places feeling forgotten by the world’s largest economic power, it potentially sends one to Americans as well. We are a nation among nations. We are fundamentally the same as those remote from us. There is no “other;” there is only “us.” If the election of Obama signals the beginning of a “post-racial America,” perhaps we are on our way to a “post-nationalist nation.”

It is an overstatement, to be sure, to say that this president would move the country away from our national identity. Half the job, after all, is to remind us that “only in America,” in “the Greatest Country on Earth,” could this or that ever occur. But if there is a vision of a post-nationalist world, Christians should understand this better than anyone. Though some recent generations of Christians have had an almost unmatched nationalistic fervor, throughout our history we have also affirmed a universal humanity that has been a powerful force in the practice of our faith. From abolitionists arguing for the equality of white and black Americans, to contemporary Christian Peacekeeper teams, Christians have found connections across cultural, social and national boundaries.

In the 21st Century, this has taken on a new, and startlingly widespread character. In 2002, New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof called U.S. Evangelicals “The Newest Internationalists” when he discovered that millions of evangelical Christians were traveling around the world each year to build homes, install water filtration systems, teach English and conduct recreational camps for children.¹

These trips, known as Short-term missions (STM), are a common fixture in churches around the country. They bring Americans in contact with people outside the United States who live in urban slums, refugee camps, and other situations of quiet desperation. It would seem that if anything had the potential to help Americans understand our common humanity, transcending nationalism for a universal view of the Church, it would be these face-to-face encounters, which involve meeting needs, exchanging stories and sharing lives.

However, these encounters, like Obama’s interviews or Bush’s speeches, tend to be highly mediated affairs. They are not pure exchanges in which human beings come together without precondition, prejudice or prior knowledge. The peoples receiving these teams of (usually) white, (relatively) wealthy, and (always) earnest Americans see the imbalance of power and resources very clearly.

Although they affirm the common faith we share, the members of these foreign communities approach the encounter with a desire to be hospitable and accommodating. They do this not simply because it’s “their culture,” but because the consequences of offending such guests could also mean significant losses–of material resources, social standing or even spiritual authority–in their own community.

The American travelers, for their part, have been prepped, equipped and commissioned. In the past 40 years, since the first incarnations of these STM teams in the 1970s, sending organizations have gotten better about stressing the need to be respectful and humble and to avoid cultural faux pas that have been stereotypical of Americans abroad. Yet these travelers are also preconditioned to experience these encounters in ways that work against their appreciating the transcendence of national, cultural and social barriers.

Part of the current rhetoric of STM is “I received more than I gave” or “They were poor, but so happy!” or “They were so gracious even though they had nothing to give.” In other words, I thought I had a lot and they had so little, but it turns out that I had so much to learn from them. The takeaway here is gratefulness and humility. Wealthy, harried suburbanites learn that money isn’t everything.

Another phrase common to these trips is “I saw that God was bigger than I knew.” These trips become occasions for spiritual growth and encounters, a pilgrimage experience in which the loss of comfort–the physical and cultural dislocation of the team members–draws them together in a community of equals while dramatically revealing their collective need for God.

It is important to point out that the basis for these ideas is often not in the experience itself. Before they leave home, the expectations of many mission groups are so shaped by the testimonies of previous teams and the concerns of youth leaders, mission pastors and financial supporters that the teams start with these understandings of what they will encounter. Like tourists who stand in line for hours to see the authentic statue of David, or travel to just the “right” spot on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon for the iconic view of a national treasure, the short-term missionary discovers in her experience exactly what she expected. Her experience was out there, just waiting for her to visit.

The short-term mission becomes less an occasion to encounter people as they really are, than a time to see the fulfillment of the constructed reality they have been conditioned to imagine. It is comforting to see poverty as a blessing. As wealthy Americans benefiting from centuries of colonialism and contemporary trade policies that privilege commercial Iowa farms over small Jamaican landholders, we can avoid the difficult discussions of what to actually do about these inequalities. We become grateful, but as a colleague who also studies STM recently remarked, is gratefulness really a sufficient response to profound human need?

As we embark on pilgrimages of spiritual encounter, the poor can become a shrine in our journey of personal growth. We “see” God in a new way, but the people become a backdrop, a prop in our personal drama of spiritual renewal. This does not make it impossible to have deeper human encounters, but it does inhibit our ability to learn much about the real lives and stories of those we go to serve. We’re too busy encountering God to see his people clearly.

There is a third familiar narrative in these trips that might seem just the thing to overcome these problems. As many have said, “Even though we couldn’t speak the same language, I knew we were both worshipping the same God.” Isn’t this the expression of common humanity we might hope for? Certainly, this experience of Christian community can lead to a view of shared humanity and respect for others.

However, it can also produce the erasing of difference, the denial of an appreciation of a people’s unique identity and a refusal to acknowledge how these differences are structured in hierarchies of power and privilege. Obama’s word to the Arab world was not, “Our differences do not matter.” Rather, it was that in acknowledging equal worth and respect, we could work towards understanding the real concerns we each have. Transcending parochial nationalism does not require sameness. It requires respect.

Christians should be able to demonstrate a powerful ability to overcome division. Beyond respect, Christians have a profound mandate to love. Short-term missions need not lead to the reinforcement of privilege or the erasing of difference. Some who travel do find a deep fellowship with believers in other places. This is most likely to happen when the uniqueness of their experience is appreciated in the context of our spiritual family ties.

The main difference between trips that make this connection and those that do not is often the narrative with which they begin. Developing real partnerships of mutuality and respect requires more than the correct rhetoric. However, if we don’t at least start with the correct way of speaking about those different from us, the task becomes far more difficult.

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¹Nicholas Kristof, “Following God Abroad,” nytimes.com, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E0DF1238F932A15756C0A9649C8B63&scp=1&sq=Following%20God%20Abroad&st=cse. <2.20.2009>

Brian M. Howell is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.