Should church intergration be priority?

Why should this be an issue?

Great question. I'm not answering this question...exactly. Or maybe only very indirectly. (ok, I did at the end now)

Here's an anecdote. I think the lutheran church was imported with immigrants from Northern Europe, such as German and Scandinavian immigrants. So of course, the American Lutheran church members were those immigrants and their familiies, descendents.

I did not grow up in a Lutheran church, but we did attend a variety of other churches (none of them Lutheran) as I grew up and we moved a few times. Older now, and married and having a family, we moved about 7 years ago, and looked to find a church, and since neither of us are at all thinking we should be in any certain denomination, we tried out a local church, which happened to be Lutheran (just one of many chance possibilities we could have tried out). We liked the first chruch we tried, a Lutheran one.

While it's still just reflecting the local community, largely Northern Europe descent, our church does have other groups! We have Asian, African. Maybe even we may have additional. I don't think my partial native American counts, I'm too mixed American. But the deal is that we have a mix, and I'm glad we do, because if we did not it would seem to me as if it were merely a mere ethnic tradition, and not open enough. I'd feel as if we might have rejected (before I arrived) other ethnicities, or I'd wonder if we had. Now, I know for sure we do not. Because they are members. I consider that simply fortunate, though the church does deserve it in that we are friendly, open, and very scriptural, very aiming to be the basic Christian chruch in my view (my particular view). I know of a couple of things I'd change, but it's as good as any other church type I've seen. I still don't think of myself as "Lutheran", and I don't expect to. I'm Christian, and these fellow members I think of as Christians. And I know, as a total 100% certainty, from direct first hand experie3nce face to face and extensive conversations face to face that Christians in are many chrurches of all sorts of labels, as a full certainty, not only a theory.

Not just an idea. A real thing I've seen, like seeing a car or a tree.

When I say we are all Christians, it's not me saying or hoping for an ideal (or not only), but it's an observation about an undeniable fact. Like that the sun shines light onto the Earth. Like that.

So....therefore I think it does not really matter whether a church has a lot of variety of races at all.

But it matters crucially if they welcome the stranger. That matters.

cafefan374 said:

It is said that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour and many church goers do go to churches that are more or less racially homogeneous, especially in the south. Even in larger cities, you'll find churches that are more or less racially/ethnically homogeneous among certain denominations. What are your theories as to why so many churches are racially divided? Do you think that church integration needs to be priority when it comes to reaching?

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Churches should be open and welcoming to outsiders and that should be a priority.
All race categories should be ignored. Counting numbers for integrating race groups
should be frowned upon.

I believe there was another thread recently with this topic, and it produced a number of reasons for the de facto segregation in the churches (if that's a correct description). A hostility towards people of other races did not rate very high among the reasons.

cafefan374 said:

It is said that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour and many church goers do go to churches that are more or less racially homogeneous, especially in the south. Even in larger cities, you'll find churches that are more or less racially/ethnically homogeneous among certain denominations. What are your theories as to why so many churches are racially divided? Do you think that church integration needs to be priority when it comes to reaching?

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What do you mean by "divided"? Are you suggesting people of different races dislike each other? I suspect people go to the churches they are most comfortable with. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Is there much evidence to suggest churches are any more segregated than the streets their members live on? Churches tend to reflect their nearby communities. If 90% of the people within 2 square miles of the church are black, then 90+% of the members will probably be black too.

The only area where I'd expect this to perhaps deviate to some extent would be Hispanics and Asians because some Hispanics would prioritize Spanish speaking churches, and Asians are mostly not Christian, so you'd expect an under representation.

cafefan374 said:

I don’t either actually. I started the thread to see where other people stood. Hence the reason I posed the thread as a question and not a statement.

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Racism has become a big issue all of a sudden, and I know racism exists, but I think it's mostly a political thing at this moment in time.

cafefan374 said:

It is political in the sense that closet racists are no longer in the closet.

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I haven't noticed that.

cafefan374 said:

I wouldn't call it an issue. I'm trying to have a dialogue. Being a sociologist, that's how my mind works.

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Where I grew up the racial makeup of congregations reflected the neighborhoods in which the churches resided. A church in a predominantly white neighborhood would have a predominantly white congregation. In a Hispanic neighborhood the congregation would be mostly Hispanic. Black neighborhoods would see churches with mostly black congregants. Some of the families had stayed in the same neighborhoods for multiple generations. Personally, my family had been where I grew up for well over a hundred years.

That being said, I love seeing how other churches in other areas worship. Some are calm and reserved. Others are very animated and interactive. Personally, I would love to see a diversity of guest pastors in my church. Not only would they bring a different style of preaching, but would come at the word of God from a cultural perspective unfamiliar to most of us in attendance.

cafefan374 said:

It is said that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour and many church goers do go to churches that are more or less racially homogeneous, especially in the south. Even in larger cities, you'll find churches that are more or less racially/ethnically homogeneous among certain denominations. What are your theories as to why so many churches are racially divided? Do you think that church integration needs to be priority when it comes to reaching?

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No, I prefer white-majority churches.

cafefan374 said:

Most people go to racially homogeneous. I was posing this question solely to have a conversation about something that sporadically comes up among church goers.

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It's sort of a touchy subject for some of us, because there are those of us who believe liberals, in general, are trying to convince everybody that conservatives are racists.

@Paidiske Since the mods here are such cowards and hypocrites, deleted my responses, and called me a racist, ill let the reverend Jesse Lee Peterson do the talking for me.


Quote starting at 3:05:

There is injustice in the world, and all people have to endure it in one form or another, that it has nothing to do with color, it has nothing to do with being male or female. When I was growing up in Alabama on a plantation under the Jim Crow laws, I remember colored only signs and whites only signs, but we were told that those laws were wrong. It was the government that was doing it to the people, and that it was wrong, and that there were good people in the white community and there were bad folks in the white community, like most communities.

We were told to judge people based on character and not color and today, because most blacks are failing, instead of taking responsibility for that, they're angry and so they blame others for their failures and they feel like victims. It has nothing to do with color.

If black Americans want a better they're going to have to take control of their lives and not turn it over to the government, do not turn it over to the so-call "black leadership", which includes the black preachers because most black preachers are not called by God, but by their momma. They're gonna have to take it away from the liberal democrats and social justice warriors.

Take responsibility instead of having 70% of black children being born out of wedlock they need to get married, and fathers and mothers need to stay together and by example raise their children as they did prior to the civil rights movement and blacks were better off.

It has nothing to do with color, its a spiritual thing. Even Martin Luther King Jr said we should judge people based on character and not color, but when he was assassinated Jesse Jackson and the others took over and they took a message of forgiveness and love and turned it into hate, and now you have black folks who are the most hateful, evil, radical people on this side of heaven all in the "name of Jesus".

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