Kimberly Cash Tate is the author of the novel Heavenly Places (March 2008) and the memoir, More Christian than African-American (1999 and 2009). A former practicing attorney, she is also the founder of Colored in Christ Ministries. She resides in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband and two children. You can find her online at http://www.kimberlycashtate.com and at http://kimberlycashtate.blogspot.com.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that God has called me to this “new thing” I’m embarking upon—writing fiction using multicultural characters. He’s been building to it for quite some time.

Almost fifteen years ago, soon after I’d become a Christian, God let me know that I still saw the world through a black lens. I had grown up in the Washington, D.C., area and was immersed fully in my identity as a black woman, in that order—I was black first and foremost. All of my opinions, attitudes, and decisions were filtered through that lens. As I like to say, I lived, moved, and had my being in blackness.

But God got my attention and let me know that I was a new creature, that old things had passed away and behold, that new things had come (see 2 Cor. 5:17). One of those new things was my identity. He showed me the black identity was of the world and temporal. I was now a child of God, a bondservant of Jesus Christ. I had an identity that had been reserved for me before the foundation of the world, a higher identity, an everlasting identity. I needed to live, move, and have my being in Christ (see Acts 17:28).

As the Lord taught me and gave me the grace to walk in my new identity, He also moved me to write about it. My book More Christian than African-American (1999 and 2009) chronicled the before and after of my spiritual journey. It also launched me—I would soon discover—into a life’s passion of speaking and writing about identity and the biblical truth that we are neither Jew nor Greek, neither black nor white nor Hispanic nor Asian, but we are all one in Christ Jesus (see Gal. 3:28). To that end, I also founded Colored in Christ Ministries to equip and encourage fellow believers to “color” their perspective fully in Christ.

But an interesting thing happened when I entered the world of fiction. I was signed to Walk Worthy Press, a Christian publisher geared toward a primarily African American Christian audience. Indeed, my novel had been written with that audience in mind. Though the themes were universal and would appeal to every woman, all of my characters were black.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. Isn’t that the way it was done? Almost every Christian fiction book I’d read by a black author had almost all black characters in leading roles. And almost every Christian fiction book I’d read by a white author had almost all white characters in leading roles. Though I’d been called to a ministry of reconciliation and of promoting our identity in Christ, I’d found myself in—well, I’ll say it—the segregated world of Christian fiction.

But now God has moved in that area of my life as well. I’ve been recently signed to Thomas Nelson as a fiction author. What an opportunity! With that blessing, I knew the Lord was encouraging me to bridge another gap, to create novels with diverse characters that ultimately represent our oneness in Christ.

My dream is to reach as wide an audience as possible and to be seen not as a “black” author but as an author who loves the Lord and glorifies Him in fiction. Isn’t that the way it should be?