This Pastor Was Already Telling Us What We Needed to Hear (Rewind)
In 2020, this pastor and scholar gave us a framework for ethnic conciliation that the church still hasn’t fully caught up to.
Six years ago, before the murder of George Floyd reshaped the national conversation on race, before the DEI backlash hardened into federal policy, before the term “evangelical” became even more politically radioactive than it already was — D.A. Horton sat down with Faithfully Magazine and walked us through a framework for how the church should think about ethnicity, identity, and unity.
Reading it now, in 2026, the conversation lands differently. Not because Horton was prophetic in a dramatic, headline-grabbing way. But because he was precise — and precision has a long shelf life.
A few things from that conversation that still deserve your attention:
On why “ethnic conciliation” still beats “racial reconciliation.” Horton’s argument wasn’t just semantic. He pointed out that reconciliation implies returning to something that once existed. But the United States — the church included — has never had a point of true conciliation to return to. The pursuit, then, isn’t restoration. It’s construction. That distinction hasn’t gotten less important. If anything, with the rollback of DEI initiatives across institutions, Christian and secular alike, the question of what we’re actually building becomes more urgent.
On the sin of “partiality” as a more effective lens than “racism.” Whether you agree with Horton’s framing or not, his core observation still stings: the word “racism” gives too many people an exit ramp. Partiality, as a biblical category, does not. It confronts everyone — including, as Horton admitted about himself, the person who thought they were beyond it.
On identity and belonging. Horton’s account of growing up as a fair-skinned, Spanish-deficient Mexican-Choctaw man raised in a Black neighborhood — belonging fully to no group, scrutinized by all of them — reads today less like a personal story and more like a map of where a growing number of Christians of color actually live. Mixed-race communities are larger. Cultural crossings are more common. The church still doesn’t have great language or space for people in the in-between.
On staying in White evangelical spaces. The debate Horton engaged in 2020 — whether Christians of color should stay in or leave predominately White churches and institutions — hasn’t been resolved. It’s just gotten louder and more complicated. Horton’s decision to stay wasn’t naivety. It was a prophetic posture rooted in a theology of Kingdom ethnicity. His argument that Christians of color are not deficient but wealthy — full of navigational capital, resistance capital, familial capital — is a reframe that the church still hasn’t adequately absorbed.
This exclusive interview was originally published in February 2020. We’ve moved the full conversation here to Substack (along with the audio), where it now lives as part of our permanent archive of essential voices and conversations. If you’ve never read it — or haven’t read it since it first ran — now is the time.
Editor’s note: This article was drafted with the assistance of AI and edited by a human for accuracy, clarity, and context.