Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America

Book: Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America
Basic Information : Synopsis : Expectations : Thoughts : Evaluation : Book Group : New Words : Book References : Good Quotes : Table of Contents : References

Basic Information:

Author: Michael O. Emerson, Christian Smith

Edition: ePub on Libby from the Los Angeles Public Library

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

ISBN: 0195147073 (ISBN13: 9780195147070)

Start Date: June 12, 2021

Read Date: June 29, 2021

224 pages

Genre: Sociology, Christianity, Interracial Understanding

Language Warning: None

Rated Overall: 4 out of 5

Religion: Christianity

Religious Quality: 3 out of 5

Christianity-Teaching Quality: N/A out of 5

Synopsis (Caution: Spoiler Alert-Jump to Thoughts):

The reason for the book: This book is a story of how well-intentioned people, their values, and their institutions actually recreate racial divisions and inequalities they ostensibly oppose. They want to answer questions like:

• What is religion’s role in America?
• How does it view its role?
• Why is religion not being effective today concerning race relations?

Emerson and Smith review the Christian role with Blacks throughout American history. It is a patchwork of shining light and self interest. Then they examine the white evangelical mindset, particularly what they term their cultural tool kit. They come back to the tool kit over and over again, both in their interviews and in the interpretations:

• accountable freewill individualism
• relationalism
• anti-structuralism

Finally in their conclusion they talk about deficiency of approach and some steps to correct things.

Expectations:

• Recommendation: Donna Howard-a similar list of books to read
• When: May 30, 2020
• Date Became Aware of Book: May 30, 2020
• Why do I want to read this book: Because of the current times where there is heightened racial tensions. Paul Swearingen noted we need to understand how to communicate with each other,
• What do I think I will get out of it? Better understanding of a different view of our common world.

Thoughts:

Introduction: This book is a story of how well-intentioned people, their values, and their institutions actually recreate racial divisions and inequalities they ostensibly oppose.

Preface

To learn more about American life, this book examines the role of white evangelicalism in black-white relations. Goal of the book.

Introduction: Religion and the Racialized Society

This book is a story of how well-intentioned people, their values, and their institutions actually recreate racial divisions and inequalities they ostensibly oppose. This opening statement gives the reader the idea of the direction which the authors are going. Now to see, do they have the facts to support it. The questions they want to answer are:

• Why does religion have so little impact?
• Why does it sometimes buck this trend, being a powerful agent of racial change, for example, with the Civil Rights movement?
• What is religion’s role now?
• And, more broadly, what can we learn about the American experiment itself from religion and race relations?

But since they want to talk about Evangelical Christians, they ask, who are they? They note that at first, these folks were insiders only, but now they are mainstream Protestants. They use the term conservative and evangelical Protestant interchangeably. So I will just refer to them as Evangelicals. They comprise about a quarter of all Americans. 90% are white. Some attributes include:

• ultimate authority of the Bible
• Christ died for our salvation
• You must be “born again”
• There is a sense that Christians must engage beyond their own kind

1 Confronting the Black-White Racial Divide

Starts the chapter by talking about his drive home to his well-to-do place which was in a minority neighborhood. He gets a fake shot by some blacks. While a black colleague driving to his home in a well-to-do neighborhood gets followed by police and stopped in his own driveway. The police never answer why he was stopped. He also talks about phoning someone for an interview and a male voice answered. Emerson was identified by the male voice as some white guy.

Remember this book was published in 2001. He starts by saying that To say that racial categories are socially constructed is, for many, a new way to think about race. He says that it is not because people cannot tell the color of people’s skin, but

• First, only certain physical characteristics are used to classify people
• Second, race is socially constructed insofar as selected physical characteristics have social meaning

They go over the history of how race got to be treated as an identifier, particularly an identifier to separate into types of people rather than other characteristics. Why do we assume a white is at least middle income? Or a black is at poverty level? They state: A major problem in understanding race relations in the United States is that we tend to understand race, racism, and the form of racialization as constants rather than as variables. This has lead to the thinking that blacks are inferior. Or interpreting Scripture to say Blacks are under a curse.

I wonder what other nations do? Does France assume certain things about their minority populations? Or do they just not have their history dealing with other races as much? Of course, now they have many people from the Middle East. It will be interesting to see how that develops.

One of the ways this book will tackle racism. Also they are proposing a different framework. Rather than incorrectly examine race in the United States using an old standard, we must adapt our understanding and analysis to the new, post-Civil Rights era. … It [their framework] understands that racial practices that reproduce racial division in the contemporary United States “

• (1) are increasingly covert
• (2) are embedded in normal operations of institutions
• (3) avoid direct racial terminology
• (4) are invisible to most Whites

Interesting. The last one has gotten more and more evident in the last ten years. The second is what the current round of protests since Micheal Brown in Ferguson occurred.

They talk about how racism gets institutionalized without being discriminatory. As one example, although many Americans believe residential segregation by force of law is wrong (the Jim Crow method), they accept residential segregation by choice (the post-Civil Rights method. They go on and talk about two American values: Choice and Freedom. Even without discriminatory intentions, they contribute to the racialization of American society. As the authors go through the book, it becomes evident that how this plays out, particularly among Evangelicals leads to unintentional effects.

Segregation is not merely separation but, in the contemporary United States, is hierarchical. Such as the choice of separate neighborhoods and/or schools. Later on the authors will talk about the effects of networking and income. This gets reflected also in our churches.

we argue that religion, as structured in America, is unable to make a great impact on the racialized society.

Emerson and Smith are sociologists. They rely on three methods for gathering their information on the state of racial thinking by Evangelicals:

• General Social Survey
• Their own survey of 2,500 Americans
• Interviews with Evangelicals in their own homes.

Book outline:

• Chapter Two: how Christians, particularly evangelicals, have thought of race in the past, and what sorts of actions they have taken to address racial issues.
• Chapter Three: the activities of post-Civil Rights-era evangelicals. We then look in detail at contemporary evangelical
• Chapter Seven: how the organization of American religion leads to racially segregated congregations.
• Chapter Eight: we argue that the very processes that make religion strong in the United States simultaneously contribute to racialization.

2 From Separate Pews to Separate Churches

The authors give a survey of Evangelicals in America starting with 1700. Because evangelicals view their primary task as evangelism and discipleship, they tend to avoid issues that hinder these activities. This is an important statement as anything which causes social comment might take away from the Gospel. Leads towards more mainline concerns than counter-cultural. Of course, then why do Evangelicals put so much energy into defeating gays and abortion? A theme is: The abolitionist movement worked to end slavery and free slaves, not to unite Americans in a common community.

By 1750 20% of American population was African-Americans. Talks about how the laws concerning Africans were more restricted in America than in Britain.

George Whitefield [1740’s] is an important figure for our purposes. He embodies some of the contradictions we will see in present-day evangelicals—well-intentioned, but adapting the message to fit the sociocultural, racialized context—and he embodies early white evangelicals’ views on race. Whitefield had a tract stating that Blacks had souls and could be saved the same as whites. Also they were equal to whites. But then when he opened an orphanage in Georgia, he wanted slavery legalized there.

As America became a nation, there was a growing thought that race-based slavery was wrong. What did the words of the Constitution mean? But there were also economic concerns. Changes in the mode of economic production and demand for slave labor allowed for a change in the view of slavery. The authors note that Most early antislavery activists were typically religious. Interesting the author’s take, vs how Tisby tried to minimize the religious contributions to the antislavery movement. And this might be why Tisby minimized it: The early white abolitionists opposed slavery but not racialization. They were uncomfortable with these strange Africans, and, to put it bluntly, wished them to go away.

By 1808 when the importation of slaves was banned, most of the Evangelical antislavery energy had faded. As the economic benefits were known, there was less opposition to slavery. But in the 1830’s a new movement grew with Evangelical underpinnings.

Charles Finney is talked about. Finney not only preached the evil of slaveholding, but was one of the first to use his pulpit to prohibit slaveholders from taking communion. Sounds like a similar rational as banning those who perform abortions from taking communion today. But like the Evangelicals of today, Finney emphasis was on evangelism, not social concerns. As the abolitionists got more strident, Finney backed away from the movement. He made a distinction of slavery-he was against and prejudice-which he did not see as immoral. He held Blacks could not hold church office also they were segregated

The issue of slavery was dividing church denominations. Could a slave holder be a missionary? Minister? Those in the South generally felt the answer was Yes. North-No.

The Civil War was fought. . As the war was drawing to a close, the question of what to do with the Blacks? Lincoln investigated sending them back to Africa, but the logistics would not work. The aftermath of the Civil War? the old slavery was, after a period of unsettledness, simply replaced with a new, in many ways similar, institution. In school, it seemed like we were only taught that Reconstruction was a period of darkness. But the South when emerged from it started to rebuilt. But to the Blacks, Thousands died in the transition. In some areas, one out of every four African Americans died from disease, starvation, and killings

But during Reconstruction, Blacks were starting to gain office.All this was too threatening for most white southerners, and for many white northerners as well. They feared for their way of life, their sense of group position, and their vision of a Christian America. Then the Jim Crow laws came into effect.

One key thing was what happened to the churches. Almost immediately after the war, before the formal institution of Jim Crow segregation, African Americans in frustration left the white churches en masse to form their own churches. Denied equal participation in the existing churches, “the move toward racially separate churches was not a matter of doctrinal disagreement, but a protest against unequal and restrictive treatment. This has repercussions to this day. This was not just a Southern experience, but also happened in the North. Even after World War I, there was limited opposition by Evangelicals. Only to lynchings and the more ugly repression. advocacy of the desegregation of American society was rare among religious activists due to the segregation within their churches and denominational structures It was thought that Blacks were a Southern problem by those in the North.

World War I brought fresh issues. Blacks had served and tasted what life could be like. But America, particularly in the South was not read for it. Blacks still in uniform were lynched.

Commission on Interracial Cooperation

World War II brought a new demand for equality by the Blacks, particularly by Black Evangelicals. The connection between religious faith and the social movement is a remarkable moment in American religious history, attesting to the power of religion to call for and realize change. Here the authors talk about the potential which a socially conscious Evangelical church can have. But this is once again viewed as a Southern problem. When the movement moved north and attempted to address northern race issues, namely ghettos, it was largely unsuccessful.

Billy Graham is talked about. He was trying to figure out what his path was. On one hand when in a non-South rally, he would not allow segregated seating, but in the South he did. He was part of a church which supported separate but equal in Texas. He did not accept Martin Luther King jr’s methodology of protest.

By 1964, as the formally segregated public sphere receded, an informally segregated private sphere began to rise in its place

3 Becoming Active: Contemporary Involvement in the American Dilemma

Now for more modern times. They go through the goals of Promise Keepers. This includes racial reconciliation. Over this period, they developed a formal theology of racial reconciliation.

And then they talk about John Perkins. See Dream With Me. Perkins, Skinner, Hines. Hardly candidates to be major “founding fathers” of an evangelical religious movement called reconciliation. Very similar-all black, all experienced racism, evangelical. Yet worked for racial reconciliation. What is this “reconciliation” to which these men devoted their lives? Eph 2:14-15 To them, racial reconciliation was an imperative. Isolation was sin.

According to George Yancey’s summary of these three leader’s thoughts, there are four steps needed for reconciliation:

•  First, individuals of different races must develop primary relationships with each other.
• Second major step demands recognizing social structures of inequality, and that all Christians must resist them together
• Third step is that whites, as the main creators and benefactors of the racialized society, must repent of their personal, historical, and social sins. If
• Fourth step states that they must be willing, when whites ask, to forgive them individually and corporately

There seemed to be a movement for Christians to embrace reconciliation. Such as, Billy Graham’s rallies were non-segregated.Promise Keepers got the message out. There were dialogues in the magazine, Christianity Today. Such as when an anonymous black person wrote an open letter. One line contained: If I tell you that I have hostility and anger within me, how do you interpret those emotions? Do they make me a savage who will riot and burn your property. A white woman responded with asking forgiveness. This seems promising. But it is pointed out that it is an individual to an individual. She also asks to be seen as an individual, not a member of a race, and says her goal is to treat individuals as individuals, regardless of color. This seems perfectly reasonable, but it has an important effect. The need to work for social justice and social equality between races is minimized, even dropped. This is viewed by Blacks as a step, but an incomplete answer to the issues surrounding reconciliation.

Billy Graham wrote a short article: “Racism and the Evangelical Church” in a 1993 issue of Christianity Today. Here he repents and calls for reconciliation. Racism is threatening the very foundations of America.

Clearly for evangelicals the 1990s witnessed a whirlwind of activity addressing issues surrounding race in the United States. This activity was rooted in the work of African-American religious leaders who developed a theology of reconciliation, creating a frame for others to understand racial issues and their faith.

But why has this not taken off? Missing from this formula are the system-changing components of the original formulations. … Despite a near tidal wave of thought and activity focusing on racial issues by evangelicals along with a substantial broadening of the audience hearing about the importance of addressing race issues, apparently, not all is well. What agitates some within the black and other nonwhite evangelical communities

4 Color Blind Evangelicals Speak on the “Race Problem”

Talking with rank and file evangelicals. What do they believe about race-relations?

Some think it is more like a squabble between two people. Others think protests are more about trying to separate races than bringing them together. There is thinking of seeing individuals, not groups. On the other hand Black evangelicals see their communities divided by racials lines. Whites having the power with Blacks left to fend for themselves and not recognized. All think there is a spiritual element to this. For Otis[a Black Evangelical], because of its spiritual roots, racism is a poison passed on generation to generation, an evil spirit of racism, oppression, and injustice.

Interesting take on things from a minority perspective: Christians must combat the monster by uniting in prayer and action. I agree with this. It is the action which I think is lacking. The question is what kind of action?

The authors state that research points to the race problem as rooted in intergroup conflict over resources and ways of life, the institutionalization of race-based practices, inequality and stratification, and the defense of group position. This may be getting to some of the concerning-do I need to share my resources? How will my life change? WIll I need to associate with people who do not think or act like me?

There is a section where people interviewed talk about meeting people and accepting them as individuals. Not looking at groups of people. But usually Christians will mirror a group of people-the churches they are associated with.

This is summed up by a statement made by Willliam Martin: Most evangelicals, even in the North, did not think it their duty to oppose segregation; it was enough to treat blacks they knew personally with courtesy and fairness.” The racialized system itself is not directly challenged. What is challenged is the treatment of individuals within the system

The authors now introduce the idea of an Evangelical tool kit. What is a tool kit: tool kit” of ideas, habits, skills, and styles. This concept is how a culture deals with their environment, the lense they see events. Sociologist William Sewell argues that a key feature of these guiding assumptions and beliefs is their transposability.Transposability is the ability to change the sequencing, in this case how issues are worked through.

The racially important cultural tools in the white evangelical tool kit are “accountable freewill individualism,” “relationalism” (attaching central importance to interpersonal relationships), and anti-structuralism (inability to perceive or unwillingness to accept social structural influences). This is another important part of the book. Emerson and Smith talk about this a lot as we go further on. This gives a lot of explanation why those who hold a Christian view of things tend to discount any idea that society is stacked against another group. There is a sense that everything can be reduced to individual responsibility as long as the playing field is perceived to be level. Contracting progressives, Evangelicals, for them individuals exist independent of structures and institutions, have freewill, and are individually accountable for their own actions. The authors talk about Evangelicals seeing healthy relationships being the key to reconciliation. white evangelicals, as we see, often view social problems as rooted in poor relationships or the negative influence of significant others. Or as one lady said: Part of the problem, she said, is that people are starting to see each other as groups, rather than individuals.

Seems like the difference between White and Black Evangelical views on any race problems is the added emphasis on social structure as being a factor in how Blacks do badly.Absent from their[white Evangelicals] accounts is the idea that poor relationships might be shaped by social structures, such as laws, the ways institutions operate, or forms of segregation.

Understanding the cultural tools people use illuminates how people construct reality, including their racial reality. The authors state that just understanding the tool kit is not enough. We must examine the structural context within which these tools are applied. They go on and say: the tool kit powerfully shapes the interpretation of the race problem such that it is still viewed primarily as individuals and poor relationships.

This next part may explain why just getting to know people of a different race may not be enough. According to “contact theory,”contact that does not meet certain conditions (such as equal status) typically leads to greater conflict and prejudice. There needs to be a perception of equality in a relationship. What kind of equality?

A section in the chapter talks about concrete examples of racism. only 4 percent of white Protestants named racism as an issue. In contrast, a third of African-American Protestants cited racism, with one-quarter naming it as the single most important issue for Christians to address. Whites have a problem producing examples of racism. On the other hand, nonwhites can give personal examples. not having to know the details or extent of racialization is an advantage afforded to most white Americans

This causes the author to make this statement: Whites and blacks are widely divergent both in their interpretation of the actual state of race relations and of what causes the problems

Unlike many other authors, Emerson and Smith view that most white Americans honestly desire a color-blind society, and often oppose the color-conscious for that reason. The reason is that white Christians have a tendency to not see race as that big of a factor in how they operate. But This perspective misses the racialized patterns that transcend and encompass individuals, and are therefore often institutional and systemic.

5 Controlling One’s Own Destiny: Explaining Economic Inequality Between Blacks and Whites

The chapter titles talks about what this chapter is about. The question raised is How do evangelicals explain racial inequality[especially from an economics viewpoint? In the author’s interviews, they give four possibilities:

• Less inborn ability to learn
• lack of motivation or willpower
• Lack of educational opportunities
• Discrimination

Only 10% of Americans as well as Christians accept the first option.Evangelicals, due to their tool kit tend to accept the second and reject the third and fourth.Much of conservative Protestant theological thought views humans as free actors who are personally responsible for and in control of their own destinies. To go with that, the authors say: evangelicals are aggregationists (they see social groups and society not as something unique, but as the sum of individuals), their use of “cultural” accounts often meant projecting an individual problem (bad choices) across many individuals

If we are created equal, then we get something like this to solve the :“Why do we have a racial socioeconomic gap” question:

Equally Created + Equal Opportunity + X = Unequal Outcome

In the face of this equation, the possible range of explanations is curtailed. 75% of white evangelical respondents solve X with that black Americans lack hope and vision. They present a 1996 Pew Survey:

A second dimension of the black culture category, intertwined with the first, draws on evangelicals’ cultural tool of relationalism. (See the tool kit in chp 4) There is a tendency to say lack of family bonds or lack of people to steer them right. I have a tendency to say this as somewhat a reason-more that I had my parents as an example to see what worked. I wonder about the examples many people in poverty have. I do not think this is a race thing as I know of whites who cannot figure out how to make ends meet, or even figuring out why they lack funds.

Interesting-sort of shoots the idea that Blacks just need Jesus: After all, the respondents talked much about love for their neighbors, particularly those in the Christian family. African Americans are by and large Christian—a larger percent self-identify as Christian than in white America—so they should be particularly exempt from such responses. What then is so offensive?

Things like Welfare gets the Evangelical’s gall. They think it is trying to foolishly solve a human problem with a governmental program. It is looked upon as doing away with personal responsibility. The authors cite some pretty impressive statistics about how strongly Evangelicals think that structural issues are not a contributor to racial issues.

Evangelicals tool kit applied within a structural context—namely, the degree of intergroup isolation. Will they work to lessen inequality? That is will more relationship change the situation? The authors looked at do white evangelicals have contacts with Blacks? Such as do Blacks live in your neighboorhood now? Have you had dinner with one? What they found out is that the more contact a person had with a Black, the less they believed the individual responsibility was the cause of inequality and leaned to more structural reasons. But there is more than just knowing a Black, other Factors that affect it include the depth of the relationship, what the African American believes and shares, and in what social context the person is known (with the job context having the least impact).

The conclusion: Regardless of how one interprets the change, we have shown that a significant reduction in intergroup isolation alters how cultural tools are extended to explain the racial gap.

Summarizing the chapter:

• In this chapter we described and explained white evangelicals’ explanations for the black-white economic gap.
• Given that white evangelicals—and Americans in general it appears—are both comfortable with the black-white gap and inclined to do nothing about it, we do not think it too risky to conclude that evangelicals will make little contribution toward reducing the black-white gap. This really sounds like the preCivil War days and then the Jim Crow mentality of the Northern Christians.
• By not seeing the structures that impact on individual initiative—such as unequal access to quality education, segregated neighborhoods that concentrate the already higher black poverty rate and lead to further social problems, and other forms of discrimination—the structures are allowed to continue unimpeded.

The authors tell a parable of a husband and a wife who go to a fat-farm. In reality, it is an experiment. The woman is given all the advantages to lose weight; the man is left on his own and is fed high calorie foods with little opportunity to exercise. He gains weight, she loses weight.

6 Let’s Be Friends: Exploring Solutions to the Race Problem

How do white Evangelicals think racial problems will be solved? The answer generally is love and relationship. For white evangelicals, the “race problem” is not racial inequality, and it is not systematic, institutional injustice. Rather, white evangelicals view the race problem as (1) prejudiced individuals, resulting in poor relationships and sin, (2) others trying to make it a group or systemic issue when it is not, or (3) a fabrication of the self-interested.

The miracle motif is the theologically rooted idea that as more individuals become Christians, social and personal problems will be solved automatically . Is this their term? I think it is. In essence, it seems to say that if you become a Christian, you will change and everything will be OK. But is this true? Also will we have enough of a critical mass to make this a viable solution?

Is this how Promise Keepers was thinking of doing racial reconciliation? Another Promise Keeper evangelical man told us that the “only ultimate solution” to the race problem is people turning to Christianity, maturing in their faith, and loving their brothers and sisters …. Apparently they only got a partial message from PK. That is not the message of Promise Keepers which talked about systemic changes as well as individual change. Something got lost in the translation.

The question then arises, if relationships are important to Evangelicals, how would they react to interratioal congregations? The responses to integrating congregations helped us understand why about 60 percent of strong evangelicals in our survey thought it is a very important method to address racism, and why another 40 percent did not. The 60% thought that it would make the church look more like how the church should look (in God’s eyes). There is a caveat to this understanding. They felt their church should be open to all, not that there should be an attempt to mix various races. The author’s conclusion on this was: In this light, although they may support congregational integration, it is difficult to conceive of it actually happening on any large scale as a result of that support. The objection is usually against forced will.

I was suspecting this next statement: On race issues, white evangelicals are, in kind, similar to other white Americans. That there is very little different between the average white American and white evangelicals. This is probably in part due to congregations being more important to evangelicals, who thus are more likely to feel that activities within congregations are worthy ways for them to address racism; and congregational. What does this say about the difference religion makes? Evangelicals believe their faith ought to be a powerful impetus for bringing people together across race. Ironically, their faiths seem to drive them further apart

Is there a difference between white and Black evangelicals? No on the first two items, but Blacks understand there to be more issues based upon institutions and systems than whites do. Blacks think that integration is a strong way to bring races together-about two-thirds of Black evangelicals support this.

Non-isolated white evangelicals, it appears, employ their tools in a different way, modifying them to make sense of their social structural context .

Above it was noted that the Promise Keeper message was implemented along the lines of the white evangelical tool kit rather than its whole message which included structural societal changes. The message of racial reconciliation started with Black evangelicals and spread to white. This theology and sociology—to establish primary relationships across race, challenge social systems of injustice and inequality, confess historical, social, and personal sin, and accept apologies and move past bitterness—is offered as the solution to racialization. … the message was popularized and individualized, coming to mean only that one should express forgiveness and make a friend across racial lines. Part of the problem is that the message of racial reconciliation had not reach 60% of evangelicals. But strong ones-I take this as being those who are involved, the message of racial reconciliation brought by evangelical organizations is doing a better job at reaching strong evangelicals.

A common comment by evangelicals is that it takes one person at a time…. You have two different kinds of people from two different kinds of neighborhoods. A black from inner-city Chicago is uncomfortable in this neighborhood. And a white from here is uncomfortable in inner-city Chicago. My comment is that this exhibits limited vision by the church. Also a very limited understanding of what they believe, at least what the New Testament has to say. racial reconciliation here is radically individualized. This is a thought to ponder.

Apparently, racial reconciliation—the evangelical solution to racism and race problems—is quite limited in scope and content for ordinary evangelicals due to their worldview and the personal cost of alternatives.

Two things are noticeable about evangelicals:

• The individual cross-race relationships
• They talk about sacrifice, but there is neither financial or cultural sacrifice.

In short, they maintain what is for them the noncostly status quo

The authors note that if a building is on the verge of collapse due to an inadequate design, improving the quality of the bricks without improving the design is not a solution. Evangelicals want to improve the bricks, not the design. Also they want racial reconciliation without cost.

The authors raise the question: does the white evangelical solutions work towards getting racial reconciliation? Things like the miracle motif while holding truth, has not shown it to work on society as a whole. Interracial friends, unless there is a significant number does not improve the situation. They do not solve such structural issues as inequality in health care, economic inequality, police mistreatment, unequal access to educational opportunities, racially imbalanced environmental degradation, unequal political power, residential segregation, job discrimination, or even congregational segregation.

Summarizing the last three chapters:

• (1) The cultural tools of white evangelicals led them to minimize the race problem and racial inequality, and thus propose limited solutions. All these help reproduce racialization.
• (2) But in each chapter we found exceptions. Under the condition of extensive cross-race networks, white evangelicals modified the use of their cultural tools and their racial understandings, so much so that their understandings began to resemble those of African Americans.

This suggests some possible solution: to become less racially isolated.

7 The Organization of Religion and Internally Similar Congregation

Interesting statement: For many, although it is perhaps not the ideal case, there is certainly nothing wrong with attending racially distinct congregations, as long as the motivation is not prejudice. This is the hypothesis the authors will be testing in this chapter.

The thought and I can appreciate this, we each choose our particular style of worship. Some gravitate to praise songs, others to hymns. Some want the comfort of a set order of service, while others want to be”led by God” in their worship. In this way we each whom we will worship with. Is this self selection OK? Is it desirable? What do I miss by concentrating on a style of worship? Am I excluding others? As the authors state: to the extent that people can choose, they chose to be with people like themselves. Does this mean we should not choose, but be assigned?

This raises the question, why do people join religious groups? How do religious groups most effectively provide, and individuals find, meaning and belonging?

The modern day church thinks in terms of marketplace and customers rather than worshippers. Choice is both the cause of these diverse groups as well as the sense of siloing worshippers. Americans have a bewildering variety of religious forms from which to choose. Necessary conditions for any marketplace are suppliers, consumers, and some degree of freedom to choose (even though that choice occurs within a social context). American religion provides all these. Also, In the process of competing, of developing niches and assuring internal strength, congregations come to be made up of highly similar people.

This was aided by how the US Government is set up. But also the Great Awakening revivals in the early 1700’s. when religion becomes disestablished, it opens the doors for creative religious entrepreneurs to market their alternative faiths to religious consumers. Churchs have a dilemma: do they meet people’s niche needs or try to be a broader church? By not creating a distinctive identity and giving distinctive meaning, the department store approach—in the religious sphere, often indicated by dominant values such as tolerance, diversity, openness—fails. Later the authors say: The processes that generate church growth, internal strength, and vitality in a religious marketplace also internally homogenize and externally divide people. Conversely, the processes intended to promote the inclusion of different peoples also tend to weaken the internal identity, strength, and vitality of volunteer organizations

To go back to why join a religious group: It is within the context of groups, especially religious groups, that one answers questions such as, “Who am I?,” “Why do I exist?,” “How should I relate to others?,” and “How do I understand tragedy?”

Groups provide meaning and belonging by:

• establishing group boundaries-In many respects, we know who we are by knowing who we are not
• social solidarity-A group typically is said to have solidarity if its members are cohesive, working for a common purpose, and closely knit.
  

In exploring the factors that aid meaning and belonging, we see that they all favor similarity within.. This leads into if you emphasize openness and tolerance, then that group will tend to lack strong companionship. Some considerations:

• Similar congregational attractions have less of a toll on a person
• People generally prefer to be with people like themselves, says a basic social psychological principle, and so say the people we interviewed. Studies find that status similarity among friends is high, especially for characteristics like race, sex, and age
• These create stability and stability enables the creation of meaning and belonging, the very reasons people seek and need social associations and groups
• While there is no biological differentiation between races, there is a societal agreement about differences. If ear size came to be an important social dividing line, we would begin to find big-eared congregations and little-eared congregations. Prejudice is not needed for this to occur. Rather, real cultural differences would develop by ear size and interactions with like-eared people would become easier, smoother, and ultimately more satisfying.
• Tendency for people to work within their own social groups. religious groups recruit adherents through the networks of its members, the homophily principle suggests that homogenous groups remain homogenous.

An example of a church-I do not think it was hypothetical. A group decided to have an interracial church. They got a 50/50 split of black and white families. Things were wonderful. But then one group felt their needs were not being met and left. This was followed by another family. Eventually the church became almost all one race. The ones who left still were admanent about supporting an interracial church, it just did not work out for them. Why did this fail?

niche edge effect-from Popielarz, Pamela A., and J. Miller McPherson. “On the Edge or In Between: Niche Position, Niche Overlap, and the Duration of Voluntary Association Memberships.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 101, no. 3, 1995, The idea is that those who feel like they are a core part of the group will continue on with a group while those who feel they are not as central will find an easier time to leave. This will cause more people on the fringes to leave. All in all, around the edges. The question then becomes, does the erosion happen faster than replacement? If so, then the group will shrink. This is called the consolidation characteristic. Race happens to be the strongest of this consolidation reasons in the United States.

The authors then review C.Peter Wagner’s thinking: First, ethnic and racial groups, in and of themselves, are amoral. Second, people prefer to worship in their own cultural groups. Third, denominations and congregations that use the “homogenous units principle,” which means that volunteer organizations function best when composed of just one cultural group, grow and are more vital. They talk about the Southern Baptist Convention. They start a church a day of all kinds of different races: white, black, Chinese, Korean, … All are homogenous. Is this a bad thing? For optimum conditions of growth, the composition of a congregation should be compatible with the needs for social companionship felt by the unchurched people in the community.

One conclusion the authors draw is that merely reducing or even eliminating racial prejudice will not eliminate the current separation of races on Sunday morning. There are other strong factors working as well.

8 Structurally Speaking: Religion and Racialization

Religion has tremendous potential for mitigating racial division and inequality. That is a powerful way to start this chapter. The authors want to make sure we know that this is a book meant to build on a tradition of reducing racial inequality rather than condemning its past. While we could continue our list, we wish only to illustrate that religion—its people and its institutions—has and does, in a myriad of ways, attempt to reduce racialization.

In this chapter, there are two goals:

• examine racially homogeneous groups
• segmented religious market

We claim that these patterns not only generate congregational segregation by race, but contribute to the racial fragmentation of American society, generate and sustain group biases, direct altruistic religious impulses to express themselves primarily within racially separate groups, segregate social networks and identities, contribute to the maintenance of socioeconomic inequality, and generally fragment and drown out religious prophetic voices calling for an end to racialization. I had thought of Sunday morning as being separate from secular life and its problems. But Emerson and Smith tie it together. In American religion, within the racial divide, are hundreds upon hundreds of denominations and sects, hundreds of thousands of congregations, and likely millions of ideas about what a “religious” person is, what is right and what is wrong.

We defined a racialized society as a society wherein race matters profoundly for life experiences, life chances, and social relationships.

macro and micro effects-I think what the authors are getting at here is something like the butterfly effect. We tend to look for the big club in dealing with problems. What the authors are saying is that my individual choice on where I live, where I socialize, and where I go to church influences the relationships I have. That in turn influences their relationships. As long as I keep within that circle

Interesting thing to ponder: The processes that create meaning and belonging within groups, according to Blau and Schwartz, fragment the larger community. In a way, CS Lewis in the Four Loves makes this point when he says Every real Friendship is a sort of secession, even a rebellion.Friendship/relations while is saying yes to a person. While not saying no to another, it does help to draw the bounds of relationships.

By having racially separated churches reduces the interracial interactions I can have. Because social networks are highly segregated along racial lines, we can easily see that referrals and personal ties will be segregated as well

Humans have a tendency to categorize people. They put people into groups, usually those who are like me and those who are not. people do not evaluate ingroup and outgroup members in the same way. The tendency is the bad action of one person outside of your group tends to be made part of all of the group which you are not part of. On the other hand, if there are common bonds between you and a group then there is more understanding. in a society with multiple cross-cutting group memberships, ingroup/outgroup biases are reduced. This is where after the Civil War, the movement of blacks and whites from separate pews to separate churches led to the development of many other separate black and white institutions, more divergent social identities, and even further divergent ways of worshipping, musical styles, preaching styles, and church organization.

That leads to the paradox: The paradox is that even if made up of loving, unselfish individuals, the group transmutes individual unselfishness into group selfishness. Loving caring individual people trying to do good, when done in mass may lead to issues of separation. On a micro level. A person is loving and caring towards their family. But those actions will probably exclude others or at the minimum others will not be part of family times. This extends out to other groups which do not have as close of bonds as family.

Because I am not part of another group, whatever that group is, I will not have that intimate level of understanding-the emotional ties, the history, the perception of needs. They[relations between groups] will always be determined by the proportion of power which each group possesses at least as much as by any rational and moral appraisal of the comparative needs and claims of each group

In a lot of ways this helps to explain why us non-Blacks do not understand the issues involved. We see that we are trying to be loving and yet do not understand the butterfly actions we take affect them. This is also not something which I can stand up and explain and give people an Ahh Haaa moment.

The mere existence of racially homogenous religious groups contributes to racially separate networks. The following statement really makes it seem like there is no way out of the paradox:

The “stronger” the religion, the more it segregates networks by increasing the density of one’s ingroup ties.

• (1)In the United States there is racial inequality in access to valued resources (see Chapter One).
• (2) Access to valued resources—such as jobs, prestige, wealth, and power—is gained in significant part through social ties.
• (3) As we have previously discussed, for reasons such as social categorization and comparison, people have positive bias for their ingroups and negative bias for outgroups

It [the Church] is mainly a social organization, pathetically timid and human; it is going to stand on the side of wealth and power; it is going to espouse any cause which is sufficiently popular, with eagerness. Said by W.E.B. DuBois. How right was he? Also was he thinking of the whites in church or did he take into account black churches? The authors point out that the organization of American religion fragments this prophetic voice, even within the same religion, into thousands of different voices. It is highly fragmented with varying degrees of doing well. This includes various economic strata.

A key function in most religions is to proclaim what ought to be, what is universally true, what is right and just. The prophetic voice. But do we live up to that? He[Stephen Hart, a sociologist] found that people use religion to come to every conceivable position on economic inequality—from extremely conservative to extremely liberal. All we seem to do is scream at each other and our voices are not heard. How can we be prophetic, speaking from God when we do not have a common understanding of what He wants? And then the disturbing observation by the authors: dominant white religious voices, amid the vast variety, are nearly always those that are least prophetic, most supportive of the status quo.

The congregation often looks to religion not as an external force that places radical demands on their lives, but rather as a way to fulfill their needs. The result of marketplace religion. Fulfilling my needs rather than being a place to turn to God. This seems derivative of what has been said previously: researchers find that the most popular religious groups in a local area—as measured by membership numbers—are the least likely to take social activism stands on racial issues, as they have more to lose in the community by challenging the status quo. The big question is why do I not speak up?

Interesting that it is the individual, not the leaders which the authors are talking about. What place does leadership have to do with this? Max Weber noted nearly a century ago, religious authority is rooted in charisma, within the confines of a group’s concerns.

Where does the moral voice come from? When a more radical message is pushed, as the leader of Promise Keepers, Bill McCartney, observed, the walls go up, and those in his conservative Christian subculture tune him out.

9 Conclusion

Our aim has been to assess the influence of white evangelicalism on black-white relations in the United States. The question is have the achieved this goal? I think they have done a pretty good job of it.

The author’s conclusions:

• Despite devoting considerable time and energy to solving the problem of racial division, white evangelicalism likely does more to perpetuate the racialized society than to reduce it. While this looks like a condemnation. I think it is more of an assessment. The authors are saying white Evangelicals are going down the wrong path.
• many race issues that white evangelicals want to see solved are generated in part by the way they themselves do religion, interpret their world, and live their own lives. They are not making a condemnation of Christianity, but more questioning the interpretation of Christianity.
• Where the interpretation goes wrong:
• minimize and individualize the race problem,
• assign blame to blacks themselves for racial inequality
• obscure inequality as part of racial division
• suggest uni-dimensional solutions to racial division
• Evangelicals have some important contributions to offer for the solution to racial division in the United States—such as their stress on the importance of primary relationships, and the need for confession and forgiveness
• before there is healing, different racial groups of Americans will also have to stop injuring one another
• Economic inequities
• Segregation (Inadvertent results)
• Different social networks

They quote Mark Noll: The evangelical ethos is activistic, populist, pragmatic, and utilitarian. It allows little space for broader or deeper intellectual effort because it is dominated by the urgencies of the moment.

Steps to addressing racial issues from an evangelical perspective, first new step: evangelicals might consider, … is engaging in more serious reflection on race-relations issues, in dialogue with educated others:

• What are the problems?
• In what directions are the United States and its people heading?
• What influences will class, growing racial-ethnic diversity, changing occupational and political structures, and complex systems of stratification play in altering the landscape of American race relations?
• How is the problem understood from different racial and ethnic group perspectives?
• How do individual-level versus group-level phenomena operate differently and simultaneously in the problems of race relations?
• What solutions have already been tried?
• What else helpful is currently known about these questions and solutions

Emerson and Smith advocate that Christians use their knowledge and love of freedom, love, understanding justice, unity and community to address these questions.

Evaluation:

Sociologists Ermerson and Smith want to learn how religion, particularly Evangelical Christianity, affects outlook on race relations. They approach this task through the lens of sociology. It is evident that they have definite personal leanings towards how race relations should be approached. This is from the examples they bring out from their interviews and questions. The other concern is that this is a study done twenty years ago. So it does not address any of the current issues. But from my perspective, this is not a drawback as it gives us readers some idea of where we got to today.

The authors explore the state of race relations in 2000. Then take us through a brief history of race and American Christianity. This includes both the white and black compents of evangelical Christianity in America. They work us through aspects of their survey. This includes: how do evangelicals see the solutions for today? Is there a major problem? What framework do white evangelicals work from? Do evangelicals' contribution to the race relations problem? The last chapter contains the author’s conclusions along with some steps to white evangelicals to become more engaged in today’s issues. But they do not offer any complete solutions for Evangelicals.

Having said they have their own leanings, this is not to be taken that they are against religion or Christianity, rather that they measure the state of evangelical Christianity against its own words and find that it falls short. Let the believer read and ponder.

Gary’s note: After reading this book and thinking about it, I think the author’s make the case that white evangelicals need to be a bit less “American” and more Christian-my words, not theirs.

 
Notes from my book group:

What would a society look like where race is not a way of demarking difference?

What would racial reconciliation look like?

After reading this book, do you think the authors had strong previous opinions about how Christians and race relations were related? Or do you think they developed as they researched the book? Should these sociologists be investigating these questions?

To start the book, the authors ask a series of questions:

• Why does religion have so little impact?
• Why does it sometimes buck this trend, being a powerful agent of racial change, for example, with the Civil Rights movement?
• What is religion’s role now?
• And, more broadly, what can we learn about the American experiment itself from religion and race relations?

Are these the questions you would ask? Are they the right questions?

Who do Emerson and Smith say are evangelicals? Does this fit your idea of who an evangelical is?

The authors talk about race as a social construct. What do they mean by that? What arguments do they give for stating this? Do you agree or disagree? What difference does it make? Do other cultures have problems with “race”? If so, what does it say about the author’s thoughts on this?

The exercise of Choice and Freedom when accumulated through multiple decisions by multiple people presents certain issues. What are they? Should our ability to make unilateral choices be restricted? Why or why not? What alternatives do you see to restricting these abilities? If you are a Christian, how does the author’s analysis affect your decision making?

The authors make the statement, religion, as structured in America, is unable to make a great impact on the racialized society. Why? What is the weakness they point out?

When Emerson and Smith walked through a brief history of Evangelicals in American history, what was meaningful to you? What stood out? What would you have done different if you loved in a particular time? How would you have done it?

What is the difference between opposing slavery vs opposing racism? Do we have any similar situations today?

What were Billy Graham’s views on racism and segregation? Why did he not support Martin Luther King Jr’s Civil Rights protests? Or speak out about Brown vs the School Board of Topeka? How did Graham’s thinking evolve? Is there room for evolving thinking today? Or do we need to be correct, right from the start?

Ephesians 2:14-15 is talked about briefly. What do these words mean to you?

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace,

What modern Evangelical groups or movements have you witnessed which have been meaningfully promoting racial reconciliation? What did they do? What were their solutions? How successful do you think they have been?

George Yancey was referenced as having four steps for reconciliation:

• First, individuals of different races must develop primary relationships with each other.
• Second major step demands recognizing social structures of inequality, and that all Christians must resist them together
• Third step is that whites, as the main creators and benefactors of the racialized society, must repent of their personal, historical, and social sins. If
• Fourth step states that they must be willing, when whites ask, to forgive them individually and corporately

How far do you think this would take us towards the goal of racial reconcilation? Is there something lacking in his steps?

Is it enough to treat blacks [we] know personally with courtesy and fairness? Why or why not?

What is a “tool kit”? (Within the context of this study) Were you familiar with this term before reading the book? How do these tool kits shape a culture?

How do the authors describe the Evangelical tool kit? What outlook on the world does this tool kit give its people? What strengths does this tool kit bring to its group? What weaknesses does it exhibit?

What differences in how white evangelicals view its society vs black evangelicals? Why the difference if they work from the same basis?

Why do the authors talk about contact theory? What is it?

Do you think that the authors are right that most white Evangelicals honestly want a color-blind society? How do they come to this conclusion? Do you think the authors are right? Why do white Evangelicals want this?

The authors list four reasons for Blacks not achieving as much as whites

• Less inborn ability to learn
• lack of motivation or willpower
• Lack of educational opportunities
• Discrimination

What factors do you think restrain Blacks from achieving? Why?

White Evangelicals do not see that there are structural factors restraining Blacks. Why do they think this? What do you think? Why? How is this reasoning carried over to Welfare?

At the end of chapter 5, the authors tell a parable about weight loss programs. What are the authors illustrating? Is it effective? Is it true?

Does the United States have a race problem? If so, describe it; if not explain the differences on how people of color are treated from whites. If you think blacks and whites are treated differently, explain how you would change this gap. Also, what are the reasons for this gap?

Does becoming a Christian change how a person is treated? Your ability to succeed in the United States?

Promise Keepers presented a strong message of what was needed for racial reconciliation, which included individual responsibility and systemic issues. Why was only part of the message being heard? It was also pointed out that this had a pretty limited reach among white evangelicals. Why?

Is white Evangelicalism succeeding in removing barriers for blacks?

It is said that Sunday morning is the most racially divided time in the United States.How come this situation came into being? Why does it persist? What do we gain by it? Lose? How does the church as a marketplace; people in the pews contribute to this separation? Is having separate churches for each nationality bad? Scriptural? Is this a sinful thing? What would make it sin?

If congregations become interracial what issues do you see in the mixing of peoples? What benefits?

When choosing a church what attributes do you look for? Will how comfortable races mix be part of the consideration?

How do you get meaning to your person from a group?

Explain what the niche edge effect is. How does this affect our relationship with a church or group?

At the start of chapter 8, the authors state that Religion has tremendous potential for mitigating racial division and inequality. Why? How has the church succeeded? Where does it need to work on doing better?

The authors state that racially segregated congregations contribute to the racial fragmentation of American society, Why is this not only a Sunday morning phenomena? In what ways does this racial separation affect a larger community? How does where you go to church affect society at large?

Talk about how loving and caring individuals in a group will trigger group selfishness.

In the Conclusions, the authors list several conclusions they have come to. Which ones do you think are valid? Which ones have been shown to be wrong? What do you base your opinion on?

Do the authors suggest aunty solutions? What are they? Do you think they are steps in the right (or wrong) direction or complete solutions?

Is the lack of reconciliation among the races affecting the Church’s outreach? How can the Church speak with a prophetic voice to today’s racial concerns?

Many of these questions are either from or adapted from LitLovers.

• Why the title of Divided By Faith?
• Does this book work to present why our society does not agree on questions?
• Did the conclusion seem satisfying?
• Every book has a world view. Were you able to identify this book’s world view? What was it? How did it affect the story?
• In what context was religion talked about in this book?
• Why do you think the authors wrote this book?
• What would you ask the authors if you had a chance?
• What “takeaways” did you have from this book?
• What central ideas does the author present?
• Are they personal, sociological, global, political, economic, spiritual, medical, or scientific
• What evidence does the author use to support the book's ideas?
• Is the evidence convincing...definitive or...speculative?
• Does the author depend on personal opinion, observation, and assessment? Or is the evidence factual—based on science, statistics, historical documents, or quotations from (credible) experts?
• What implications for you, our nation or the world do these ideas have?
• Are these idea’s controversial?
• To whom and why?
• Are there solutions which the author presents?
• Do they seem workable? Practicable?
• How would you implement them?
• Describe the culture talked about in the book.
• How is the culture described in this book different than where we live?
• What economic or political situations are described?
• Does the author examine economics and politics, family traditions, the arts, religious beliefs, language or food?
• How did this book affect your view of the world?
• Of how God is viewed?
• What questions did you ask yourself after reading this book?
• Talk about specific passages that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, sad...?
• What was memorable?

New Words:

• Transposability (4): ability to change sequence
• Supraindividual (6): Supra-individual thinking makes use of intellectual differences as well as commonalities. It is also different from hierarchical team thinking, where one mind understands the problem completely and then enlists the help of others to manage and execute. Supra-individual thinking means more than one person is required to participate if an idea is to be fully understood, so no one person has the “vision” in its entirety. Supra-individual thinking is also different from the kind of thinking that comes from (relatively) homogeneous groups, where once an idea is conceived by one member of the group, all are instantly and effortlessly able to grasp the idea, because arriving at the idea was simply a matter of quickness or luck.

Book References:

• Black Wealth/White Wealth by Melvin L. Oliver
• David Walker’s Appeal by David Walk’s Appeal
• Coming Together: The Bible’s Message in an Age of Diversity by Curtiss DeYoung
• Reconciliation: Our Greatest Challenge, Our Only Hope by Curtiss DeYoung
• More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel,by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice
• Breaking Down the Walls: A Model for Reconciliation in an Age of Racial Strife by Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein
• Black Man’s Religion by Glen Usry and Craig Keener
• He’s My Brother: Former Racial Foes Offer Strategies for Reconciliation by John Perkins and Thomas Tarrants
• The Coming Race Wars? A Cry for Reconciliation by William Pannell
• Experiencing the Power by Samuel Hines
• Beyond Black and White: Reflections on Reconciliation by George Yancey
• Let’s Get to Know Each Other by Tony Evans
• Racial Conflict and Healing by Andrew Sung Park
• Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf
• I Ain’t Coming Back by Dolphus Weary
• Sold Out by McCartney
• Race Matters by Cornel West
• Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1785)
• Our Kind of People by C. Peter Wagner
• Moral Man and Immoral Society by Reinhold Niebuhr
• The Gathering Storm in the Churches by Jeffrey Hadden
• The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll

 

Good Quotes:

• First Line: To learn more about American life, this book examines the role of white evangelicalism in black-white relations
• Last Line: And that is a purpose well worth striving for.
• Religion has tremendous potential for mitigating racial division and inequality. Chp 8 Structurally Speaking: Religion and Racialization
• A key function in most religions is to proclaim what ought to be, what is universally true, what is right and just. Chp 8 Structurally Speaking: Religion and Racialization

Table of Contents:

• Preface
• Introduction: Religion and the Racialized Society
• 1 Confronting the Black-White Racial Divide
• 2 From Separate Pews to Separate Churches
• 3 Becoming Active: Contemporary Involvement in the American Dilemma
• 4 Color Blind Evangelicals Speak on the “Race Problem”
• 5 Controlling One’s Own Destiny: Explaining Economic Inequality Between Blacks and Whites
• 6 Let’s Be Friends: Exploring Solutions to the Race Problem
• 7 The Organization of Religion and Internally Similar Congregation
• 8 Structurally Speaking: Religion and Racialization
• 9 Conclusion

References:

• Publisher's Web Site for Book
• Author's Web Site
• Amazon-Book
• Amazon-Author
• Barnes and Noble
• GoodReads-Book
• GoodReads-Author
• Isiphambano Centre for Biblical Justice
• A Sista’s Journey blog
• Meadowcroft Church (PCA) short review
• Neil Shenvi (Apologetics) short review
• Publishers Weekly
• Christianity Today review
• Josiah Davis book summary
• AM Seaman Blog