Church DNA. US DNA.

Rice hits U.S. 'birth defect: The Washington Times, America's Newspaper. There are lots of discussions regarding the "DNA of a church". That DNA is the culture and milieu during the foundation and creation of the church and it is believed that DNA affects the life and culture of the church forever. For example, a church born through a church split might likely have a rough road ahead of it as opposed to a church born for missional purposes. (Though some church splits are for missional purposes, i.e. the current Anglican schism resulting in AMiA or CANA). All that made me think about the US as I read Condi Rice's comments about the founding of the US. She says the way the country was founded by both Europeans and Africans but with the Africans in chains was a birth defect. Will that haunt us? Is it part of our DNA making it forever inescapable? "Black Americans were a founding population," she said. "Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That's not a very pretty reality of our founding." As a result, Miss Rice told editors and reporters at The Washington Times, "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that." "That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today," she said.