By Cody J. Sanders, as published in Religion Dispatches*

The Christmas season, and especially the time of preparation with which it begins and which is called “advent,” tend to be times for nostalgia and sentiment. As good church folk, we focus on the baby born in a manger many years ago. We sing of silent, holy nights and Bethlehem and the wanderings of three sages … long ago. Too easily we get stuck in the rut of replicating our fond holiday memories only.

As a man of color, I always read the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 with an emphasis on Africa. My reading through Hispanic eyes unmasks insights about the text that most of my Eurocentric colleagues miss. Nevertheless, I can easily fall into a similar myopia if I solely read the text with heterosexual eyes.

While whites may gain insight from me when I read the text from my particular social location, I myself am in danger of missing all the gems to be mined from a passage if I refuse to learn how to read the text from other marginalized social locations.