Emerging church and race
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I had an interesting conversation a couple of months ago. One of my friends had just gone to an emergent worship service with different prayer stations, candles, music, etc. She expressed to me how alienating she found this experience as a black woman and she asked me, what is the emergent church? My instinct was to describe it in church historical terms rather than theological terms… that is, I described it as a movement growing out of church historical developments in particularly white, north american church praxis. Part of the problem was that the organizers of this service weren’t paying attention to racial implications of certain prayer stations, and it certainly would have been possible to make adjustments which would have cleared up the problem for her. Yet, we found it interesting that we don’t see similar movements within the back, latino/latina, asian, ect. churches. Or do we? Neither my friend nor I were aware of any. With all the work being done to develop a theological framework, has anyone heard of an attempt to understand the movement along racial, socio-economic determinants? Might this be a better mode of analysis than the theological? Or at least as important? |
Re: Emerging church and race
I think that the way in which you reacted is how I would have done it as well; telling it as an ecclesial story. It seems to me that the racial gap in American religion must be addressed with some vigor, and perhaps we are the ones to do it.
Yet I do not have any particular sympathy for your friend. To attempt to do things specifically for the purpose of attracting a certain type of person seems to me to fall into the trap of the seeker-service. The worship should flow out of the current identity of the local congregation connected to the biblical story. It seems likely that there were few black women there and so the worship was reflected in that. One cannot think, “perhaps a black woman may come to the church and so we must shape our worship to make her less put-off” I know that is hyperbole but I feel that, unless I am misreading your friend’s reaction, which I may very well be, a more appropriate response may have been “I do not enjoy and/or connect with this mode of worship.”
I do not know specifics about Emerging churches among various ethnicities but I know that Brian McClaren travels extensively attempting to grow and locate ‘Emerging Churches’ in other countries; which implies to me that there are some.
All this is not to say that if your friend had integrated herself into that community there would not be a response to her new input, that would most definitely be appropriate.