Wheaton Ethics Center

Is Evangelicalism Only For White People?
Dr. Bacote's interview with Lisa Fields founder of the Jude 3 Project

Is Evangelicalism Only For White People? | Dr. Vincent Bacote What does it mean to be Black and evangelical?Lisa Fields sits do...

Black + Evangelical was selected for the 2026 Black August Film Festival! Learn more and buy your tickets here:

Home - Black August Film Festival “Patience has its limits.Take it too far…And it’s cowardice” -George Jackson (1970) HOSTED BY PASADENA AFRICAN AMERICAN FILM FOUNDATION

Black + Evangelical bonus video: Lisa Fields, CEO and founder of Jude 3 Project - What does it mean to be a Black evangelical?

Watch the film Black + Evangelical at the Black + Evangelical Project, a hub for resources, stories, and life of the church. View video interviews and segments that were not included in the final version of the film along with new original videos on topics related to the Black evangelical experience in America at blackandevangelical.com

https://youtu.be/VvifvsXLMsM?si=Lap1m_bmPVvhDCQu

Lisa Fields - What is a Black evangelical? Black + Evangelical bonus video: Lisa Fields, CEO and founder of Jude 3 Project talks with Dr. Vincent Bacote discussing the question - What is a Black evang...

Black + Evangelical Launch Panel with Sho Baraka, Vincent Bacote, Jessica Janvier, Ed Gilbreath, and Daniel Long exploring questions like: What is evangelicalism? Was “evangelical” used by Black people pre 1900s and did they consider themselves evangelical? Why make a documentary about Black evangelicals? Why are these stories in history important for us to know today? In what ways did making this film impact you? What did you learn about yourself?

Black + Evangelical Panel with Sho Baraka, Vincent Bacote, Jessica Janvier, Ed Gilbreath, Dan Long Black + Evangelical Launch Panel with Sho Baraka, Vincent Bacote, Jessica Janvier, Ed Gilbreath, Daniel LongVincent Bacote, Jessica JanvierWhat is evangelica...

Dr. Bacote talks with Dr. Jerry E. White (Major General, USAF, Ret.) about what he sees as the greatest moral challenge of our time.

CACE - Wheaton, IL Greatest Moral Challenge with Dr. Jerry E. White (Major General, USAF, Ret)

The Center for Applied Christian Ethics’ 2025 Spring Faculty Seminar explored the intersection of performance arts and public discourse. Led by Theater professors Mark Lewis and Andy Mangin alongside Communication professor Theon E. Hill, this interactive seminar examined critical questions about representation, authenticity, and ethical storytelling within a Christian liberal arts framework. Read the reflection of Laura S. Meitzner Yoder, Ph.D., Director and John Stott Chair of Human Needs and Global Resources; Professor of Environmental Studies

Inhabiting and Telling Stories Not Our Own

The topics of representation, authenticity, and ethical storytelling are frequently discussed and encountered in very practical ways within the Human Needs and Global Resources (HNGR) program. Each year, we wrestle with quandaries that arise as students consider the varying experiences and opinions they have on this topic through their internships. In student writing, in the returned students’ Chapel, in how students wrestle with what to record, what to share, and what to only ponder in their hearts for now: whose counsel should guide these decisions? How should they communicate hard, ambiguous, or troubling things that they have seen and heard through involvement in distant communities that they have joined for a season. Students, along with faculty colleagues, regularly face the central questions of this year’s seminar:

-Who has the authority to represent others' experiences, to tell someone else’s story?
-What in our own backgrounds affects how we hear and interact with the stories of others?
-How do we hear others’ stories without becoming self-referential?
-What responsibilities do we have when relating stories outside of our own experience?

In the May 2025 CACE seminar “Performing Identity, Authority, and Community,” we explored dilemmas and practice of ethical storytelling. Performance arts can foster our curiosity and capacities in practicing empathy across difference, so we focused on how inhabiting and relating narratives not our own is done in theater.

We read together “The Thanksgiving Play,” the 2018 satire by Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse in which four white characters weave their way through the challenges of representation in developing an elementary school performance about the national holiday of Thanksgiving. As they propose various alternatives given their lack of Native involvement, they encounter the pressures applied to their task by public audiences including parents, grant funders, and their own backgrounds and identities. They name their own sensitivities and priorities related to this project, and wander through various attempts to grapple with contentious and changing aspects of racial and ethnic representation of others in the United States today.

Participants’ discussion of this situation highlighted the persistent national difficulty we face in acknowledging wrongs in our history. Even as Christians who should be under no delusion that we are perfect people, it is hard to allow ourselves to be implicated or identified as bound up in contextual wrongs in which we are embedded and that we may not even notice. From our seminar leader: “I’m not convinced that all of us believe in our own inherent flaws.” Rather than choosing to repent, to turn, and to be changed, we evade facing our failures and imperfections. “Do we acknowledge the winding road behind us, and that we are on?”

My - Our - Their Story. One exercise made us consider the ethics of telling stories that are our own individually, our own shared/collective stories, and the stories of others – of groups to which we do not feel we belong at all. We each put a word into three circles labelled My - Our - Their, symbolizing stories that we considered part of each category. We had to consider our comfort level in sharing each of these stories, and with whom, and under what circumstances. This activity brought to mind the times that HNGR students returned from their internships tasked by individuals in their host communities to share a particular perspective with “the people there” when they returned home. In my own work in remote rural areas, people have often asked me to tell others about their circumstances, needs, or wishes – as a person who knows something of their reality which may be unknown or invisible to those in power, and as a person whose mobility and access can afford opportunities to communicate outward and upward. Being asked to tell someone else’s story for specific purposes – “to remind people in power of our existence” – can be a solemn charge to receive and to enact going forward.

When we advocate, and speak alongside or on behalf of others, may we consider: For what purpose are we telling this story? For whose benefit or other effect? Beyond good intentions, may we seek divine wisdom to grow in humility as we come to recognize the limits of what we can know or say about others’ stories. How can we invest more deeply in pathways for people to relate their own stories?

https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/center-for-applied-christian-ethics/faculty-seminar-reflections/2025-cace-faculty-article-series/laura-yoder/

Black + Evangelical bonus video: Dr. Quainoo talks with Dr. Bacote about the Wheaton College Historical Review on Race.

Watch the film Black + Evangelical at the Black + Evangelical Project, a hub for resources, stories, and life of the church. View video interviews and segments that were not included in the final version of the film along with new original videos on topics related to the Black evangelical experience in America.

https://www.blackandevangelical.com

Connect with the Center for Applied Christian Ethics (CACE) at Wheaton College: https://www.wheaton.edu/CACE



https://youtu.be/tqgQbUVC_tE?si=USn7sM232DhS8ni-

Black+Evangelical: Historical Review on Race with Dr. Quainoo Black + Evangelical bonus video: Dr. Quainoo talks with Dr. Bacote about the Wheaton College Historical Review on Race.Watch the film Black + Evangelical at ...

Black + Evangelical bonus video: Rev. Dr. Nicole Martin, president and CEO of Christianity Today discusses quilted faith.

Watch the film Black + Evangelical at the Black + Evangelical Project, a hub for resources, stories, and life of the church. View video interviews and segments that were not included in the final version of the film along with new original videos on topics related to the Black evangelical experience in America at blackandevangelical.com

https://youtu.be/PsstK0zlujk

Dr. Nicole Martin - Quilted Faith Black + Evangelical bonus video: Rev. Dr. Nicole Martin, president and CEO of Christianity Today discusses quilted faith.Watch the film Black + Evangelical a...

Black + Evangelical bonus video: Lisa Fields, CEO and founder of Jude 3 Project - Good News Church

Watch the film Black + Evangelical at the Black + Evangelical Project, a hub for resources, stories, and life of the church. View video interviews and segments that were not included in the final version of the film along with new original videos on topics related to the Black evangelical experience in America at blackandevangelical.com

https://youtu.be/shvxVHdLvQI?si=D6iv6mYLVmlZlNhD

Lisa Fields - Good News Church Black + Evangelical bonus video: Lisa Fields, CEO and founder of Jude 3 Project - Good News ChurchWatch the film Black + Evangelical at the Black + Evangelic...

The Center for Applied Christian Ethics’ 2025 Spring Faculty Seminar explored the intersection of performance arts and public discourse. Led by Theater professors Mark Lewis and Andy Mangin alongside Communication professor Theon E. Hill, this interactive seminar examined critical questions about representation, authenticity, and ethical storytelling within a Christian liberal arts framework. Read the reflection of Cathy Troupos, Assistant Professor of Library Science.

Humility and Ethical Storytelling

The CACE seminar posed three central questions: Who has the authority to represent others’ experiences? How do we navigate the ethical complexities of inhabiting narratives not our own? What responsibilities do we bear when engaging with diverse perspectives and identities? Through a mix of essays, discussion, and plays, faculty grappled with these questions from their own disciplinary and personal perspectives. While no tidy answers emerged—and likely none exist—the conversation revealed just how necessary it is to keep wrestling with these tensions. While librarians often engage these questions through collection development and teaching, the seminar invited a fuller reflection.

Libraries have a responsibility to cultivate collections that include a wide range of narratives and perspectives. This ideal is foundational and enshrined in the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, which calls for the inclusion of materials representing all points of view.1 While most librarians are committed to this value, the work can be uneven and challenging. Libraries have caused harm not only through omission of material from collections but also through the very systems we use to collect and organize materials. Consider subject headings. Subject terms are a literal way narratives are framed, but they are not neutral. A Black author is far more likely to have their racial identity marked than a white author, positioning one identity as interpretive and the other as the norm. These terms may help a professor diversify a syllabus but can also reduce an author to a single identity category or shape how his or her work is read. Classification, even when thoughtful, carries weight.

This intersects with long-standing debates in librarianship about neutrality—a contested and often politicized concept.2 Neutrality is sometimes described as a professional commitment to providing space for all ideas. But that framing too easily ignores the politics of power. Decisions about what to acquire, how to describe it, and what to highlight are not, and cannot be, apolitical. In institutions like the academy, where some voices have long been elevated and others marginalized, the language of neutrality can serve to preserve the status quo. For librarians committed to intellectual freedom, this raises a tension: how do we defend a plurality of views while also answering the ethical call to expand representation? How do academic librarians build and promote collections that both recognize traditional markers of scholarly authority and intentionally broaden the scope to include diverse narratives and alternative ways of knowing?

Instruction and reference work make these questions more personal. As a librarian, I teach students to find and identify credible sources based on disciplinary markers of authority. But those same markers have often excluded certain narratives. I can name those gaps, suggest alternative sources, and help students seek out richer, more inclusive perspectives, but I cannot control what “counts” in a given assignment or within a disciplinary canon. At times, librarians may feel ill-equipped to advocate for voices and experiences we ourselves do not share. Yet, as we discussed, taking no action is not a satisfactory solution. Librarians should model the kind of ethical engagement we hope students will practice: one marked by intellectual humility and honesty about limitations and openness to critique.

In the seminar, no one claimed to have resolved the tensions we explored; even the texts we read offered conflicting comment. Yet, the theme of humility emerged as part of the solution, however imperfect those attempts at solutions may be. Colleagues expressed a desire to be ethical storytellers by trying to honor storytellers, preserve narrative integrity, and equip students for engagement that is both intellectually honest and socially aware. Our discussions and readings made clear that ethical storytelling is not merely about good intentions; it is about labor. It takes work to understand context. It takes work to curate collections thoughtfully. It takes work and humility to stay open to correction, even when your efforts are sincere.

I left the seminar not with certainty, but with a better understanding as to how the library can support our community’s efforts to tell stories: to continue cultivating a diverse collection; to equip students to seek perspectives ethically while honoring academic freedom; and to remain honest about the political and professional limits of my role. Fear of doing the wrong thing can easily become an excuse for doing nothing. The questions we asked may never have definitive answers, but in the spirit of loving our neighbor, they are worth returning to again and again.

1 “Library Bill of Rights | ALA,” accessed May 28, 2025, https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill.
2 Dani Scott and Laura Saunders, “Neutrality in Public Libraries: How Are We Defining One of Our Core Values?,” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 53, no. 1 (2021): 153–66, https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000620935501.

https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/center-for-applied-christian-ethics/faculty-seminar-reflections/2025-cace-faculty-article-series/cathy-troupos/