What was, to me, an unexpected result of the Black Lives Matter and People of Color movements is that I can no longer think of myself as a generic American. Just like those whose ancestors crossed the Bering Straits onto this continent during the last Ice Age, and just like those whose ancestors were an intermingling of Spanish Conquistadors and descendants of the earlier immigrants (those who crossed the Bering Straits) and who settled places like Florida and the American Southwest, and just like those who were sold into slavery by their neighbors and brought to this land as chattel, I have ancestors.

Having ancestral roots is important. Matthew’s gospel opens with the genealogy of Jesus stretching back 1800 years (more or less) to Abraham. And Luke’s gospel takes in back even further to God’s shaping of the dust and imparting his Spirit to Adam. Jesus had roots! (Just as an aside, but an important one, my ancestry joins with that of Jesus at Noah – and so does yours! Yes, the human race fragmented at Babel but we are still but one human race regardless our tribal affiliations now.)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. The most devout BLM advocates have renounced their “slave” names and taken names from the various peoples of Africa. They fill their spaces with African art and artifacts and celebrate their “otherness” as Africans and not just generic Americans. And as well they should! When their neighbors sold their ancestors into slavery they were stripped of their identity and cut off from their roots. Like a plant cut off from its roots, a person deprived of his shrivels. They may not be able to connect with the actual tribe from which they were stolen even though modern genetics increases the possibility of doing so, but they can connect with the broad expanse of that continent.

So too with the descendants of the first settlers. While most American Indians are by genetics more European than Indian, in their identity, their sense of self, they are Puyallup or Cherokee or Iroquois or Apache or any of the other myriad tribal groups that make up the “native” landscape. And who’s to blame them? From the landing of the first European migrants at Jamestown in 1607 until 1924 when Congress “bestowed” birthright American citizenship on the native population, the original occupants of this land were enemy aliens to the European migrants. Essentially a state of war existed between the two peoples for 300 years! Three hundred years of hostility is reason enough to remember the past. They have roots and it is only right to celebrate that foundation.

But back to me. For most of my life I’ve just been an American. If you asked where I was from, I could tell you about Oklahoma and Indian Territory, about Arkansas and the western migration out of the Carolinas, but that was about it. I was immersed in the thought and culture of Western Europe but I never thought of it as the definer of who I am. But then came the ancestral reawakening in the People of Color movement and I awakened to mine.

I am a child of the British Isles. My ancestry is Scots, Irish, and English, with some Scandinavian and German thrown in for good measure. The religion of the Puritans and Knox, the theology of Augustine and Aquinas and Huss and Wycliffe and Luther and Calvin and Zwingli, the science, the philosophy, the art and architecture of the Middle Ages and the renaissance, the music now called classical, the literature of Shakespeare and Milton and the King James Bible – all that encompasses Western Civilization (the good and the bad) stretching back to Athens and Rome and into the Enlightenment and modernity is my heritage and has shaped my understanding of self.

And this identity continues onto this continent. To the best of my knowledge my earliest ancestors in the Americas landed at Jamestown in 1619 and Plymouth in 1621. I can trace my philosophical ancestry to our nation’s founders from Jefferson to Madison and all who signed the Declaration and forged the Constitution. There were a few slaveholders in my lineage but very few. We were the people who kept pressing west in the search of liberty and a piece of land to raise a family. My forefathers fought the French, the British, the Indians, the Yankees and the Rebs. I’m not just a generic American. I’m not even a generic White American. I am a rooted American.

I am more than happy to share this place with men and women from every other tribe and people on earth. We can all trace our family line back to Adam. Not one people is superior to any other even though the culture that is informed and shaped by 2000 years of Christianity brings the best to the world. And we can all share in that even as we celebrate the individual cultures that have shaped us.