Question: What do we lose with racially homogenous churches?
Keller: I actually do think the African-American Churches have more to lose then we white churches do. Now, if you go in the Redeemer, you’re going to find that Redeemer is about 45% Anglo, about 45% Asian and about 10% Black and Hispanic. A lot of the churches in the middle or in the middle or lower Manhattan that are more Evangelical Orthodox Charismatic will have that same kind of mixtures. There are very few white churches around. I’d say the ethnic churches which will be the African-American churches or Latino churches, the Asian churches, it is more difficult for them to become multi-aspect, because in some ways their community centers for their people and they could lose some of their power in a sense as representing their people to the broader culture. It could be that in post-Obama, there are big questions about the old models for how you do ethnic empowerment, but that’s not something for me to speak to, I don’t think. I mean, I actually counsel all churches, [this] I say, “You should be as multi-ethnic or more multi-ethnic than your neighborhood.” So, if you live in a neighborhood that is so many African-Americans, so many black, Latinos, so many white, you should try, your church should look like your neighborhood. And if you are, you actually do better than the neighborhood because usually out of the neighborhood those groups people don’t mix all that well. They usually alongside of each other maybe friendly but they don’t really work together. So if you could be a church that shows how the groups work together, you get, in a sense, be more multi-ethnic than your neighborhood. But, basically, we say be as multi-ethnic as your geography, so I push that pretty heavily. And so, yeah, I would love to see a multi-ethnic future church, but I realize the ethnic churches have a lot to lose, so I’m careful when I say that. I don’t want to make them feel that somehow they’re doing wrong to stay more mono-ethnic. I still see a role for that. I don’t see much of a role for a purely white church anymore, but I do see a role for the ethnic churches.
Question: How does an urban influx benefit Redeemer’s congregation?
Keller: When I got here in the ‘80s, in the late ‘80s, nobody thought that that was the case. Again, that’s one of the ways in which New York City has been a big, a very big help to me not so much my theological training. I got here and recognized that potential of cities, I think, and began to say churches have got to become more pro-urban, because the culture is getting more pro-urban and it really is. The negativity of Americans towards the city has really turned around. We don’t quite know why. Some people say it was “Friends” and “Seinfeld.” But in the early ‘90s, you had these great sitcoms that showed people in cities being very attractive and I don’t know what it is, but I sense the change in the early ‘90s and suddenly there was a change in the culture. So, I say to churches be pro-urban, don’t be anti-urban, because the trend at least for the next 50 years is going to be very pro-urban.
Discuss
Musycks on March 1, 2009, 4:34 PM
I thought the umbrella of Xtainity was supposed to be such that colour or race would be a redundant question?
It seems not.
Pastor Tim admits here the level of community that black churches represent for their followers… ie, if the experience was not largely social, if it was only ‘spiritual’ how would they hold up?
If political power was not entwined with black churches, would they get good attendance?
Interesting that he sees his slice of the religion market in terms of ethnic percentiles?
The ubiquity of religion in this society is apparent, but it’s a glue that is losing it’s hold I think. As America gets more involved with the rest of the world, as it should do post Obama, it might realise that seeing the world through a religious prism is not desirable at all.
The politics of race in the US has a long way to go, but it would be less complex if religion was absent.
shawn disney on March 8, 2009, 4:48 PM
Interesting that he sees ethnic churches as a source of community “glue”, but doesn’t think the whites need it (?) To me it seems that they certainly need something; white communities have been ground to dust, and it doesn’t seem to make them feel better at all..disigny
Brendon Desrochers on April 17, 2009, 1:35 PM
I think you’re making some mischaracterizations and assumptions here, Musycks.
1) “The ubiquity of religion in society is apparent, but it’s a glue that is losing its hold, I think.” Statistically speaking, Christianity is growing in leaps and bounds throughout most of the world, and while the self-identifying of Christians as a whole has declined in the United States, all of that is among “mainline,” liberal churches. Orthodox Christianity is actually growing. A place like the U.S. isn’t becoming less religious but rather more polarized in its religiosity. The glue to the people still in the Church is actually much stronger, while the lukewarm are more likely to be entirely secular than to go to church because they’re expected to.
2) “It might realise that seeing the world through a religious prism is not desirable at all.” What prism would you prefer? It’s certain that Christianity specifically and religion in general has been a reason for divisiveness and abuse often in the last two millennia, and so I see your point. When “religious” views compel people to shout at each other instead of listen, it’s certainly a problem. On the other hand, that implies that your ideas about how the world should be, about how political discourse should be handled is more valid than a “religious” person’s. The question then is, what’s the basis of your view? I can say that we should enter into political discourse with hearts of grace and charity and reconciliation because of Jesus’ model. You can say that we should keep politics away from religion because it works better that way. Mine is based on the faith-based perspective that Jesus’ model is a good one to enter into political discourse with, and yours is based on the faith-based perspective that things would be easier/better your way. You can’t empirically prove your claim is more right than mine, so why should you say that I should keep mine out? That’s at least what Keller would say.
3) “If it was only spiritual, how would they (black churches) hold up?” This implies that 1) community is unrelated to spirituality and 2) I didn’t hear Keller mention political power at all. He refers to power more — at least this is what I got — as relevance to the community rather than in political terms. If a Korean church wants to become multiethnic, would it no longer be relevant to the Korea community? Would it meet the needs of Koreans in their unique Koreanness? Those are the questions he’s posing.
4) “Interesting that he sees his slice of the religious market as ethnic percentiles.” I’m not sure that anything he says indicates that the complete view of how he sees his congregation is as any kind of “slice of the religious market.” The topic was churches and race, and so he conveys the racial makeup of his congregation. If the question was churches and age or churches and SES background, he would probably cite those statistical realities.
5) Paraphrasing…Color and race should be redundant under Christianity. That’s not how a lot of churches see it. To say that race shouldn’t be an unconquerable barrier to connecting and building relationships because of Jesus’ ability to break down barriers is true. But to go the next step and to say that Christianity makes color and race irrelevant is counter-productive and false. Christians believed that God enabled human uniqueness and that differences in race, culture, etc., help all Christians to see the fullness of God because it shows a wider spectrum of God’s creation. Therefore, race is not redundant. Moreover, in order to be relevant to different cultures and races, it’s important that Christians/the Church understands the needs of different people groups. That’s not to say that all people of a given race represent a monolith, but it would also be naïve to think that Christians of all races can connect on every level without understanding and attempting to reconcile cultural differences
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