What does the Bible say about race? Is race even a biblical category? More broadly, how should

Christians think about ethnicity, culture, and the differences that so often separate us from

each other, both outside and sadly inside the church? In our interview today, I'm talking with Stephen Bryan about how Christians should approach

the various collective identities that bind and divide us in our world today.

We discuss what we can learn from the story of the Tower of Babel and Scripture, the cultural

blind spots that we all wrestle with, and what it looks like to pursue

unity as God's people, even in the midst of our differences. Stephen currently serves as

Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, but worked for decades on the

mission field in Ethiopia. His new book is cultural identity and the

purposes of God, a biblical theology of ethnicity, nationality, and race from Crossway.

Let's get started. Well Steve, thank you so much for joining me today on the Crossway

podcast. Well, it's a pleasure to be here. Just appreciate the chance to have this conversation.

Yeah, it's such an important conversation discussing the nature of our collective identities,

the things about our cultures, our ethnicities, race, all these things help to define who we are relative to other people.

And these are obviously big topics that are really at the forefront a lot of our broader

cultural conversations today in the U.S. and around the world.

And so this book is, I think, such a helpful starting place for good conversation as Christians.

But before we kind of get into some of the ideas that you are helping us to see from the Bible,

I wonder if you could share a little bit about your own background,

because I think it connects to what you're trying to do in this book in a kind of a unique way.

Yeah, we spent about 24 years in East Africa, in Ethiopia, actually, a very multi-ethnic society.

And when I first arrived, it was pretty much invisible to me.

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