Racial Preference, Affinity Groups, & Hypocrisy
Why rhetoric around race in the church almost always rings hollow
Jesus Hates Hypocrites. I Can’t Be a Hypocrite.
In my live stream last week, I did a segment on the formation of the new ethnically-based Korean-American Annual Conference within the Global Methodist Church. As a Global Methodist elder, I am predisposed to be in favor of whatever GMC leadership does. I know, like, and respect a number of the primary leaders, even some on the Transitional Leadership Committee (the head decision-making body for the denomination). Yet I feel my integrity is on the line when I choose how to speak about this. Even choosing not to speak about it would be bad.
Why? Because I am currently in the middle of hosting a series called Considering Charlotte, on which five United Methodists meet with me on Fridays to record conversations we are having regarding the upcoming General Conference of The United Methodist Church. The primary push of the UMC leadership for this session is going to be an agenda broadly referred to as ‘Regionalization.’ Essentially the hope is to isolate regions of the denomination from one another in some key ways in the name of promoting the distinctiveness of each region. Everyone recognizes that rich Americans have made themselves the belle of the ball every quadrennium; those supporting regionalization essentially want to ensconce what has been the norm of the denomination from the beginning, while ostensibly giving other regions their own autonomy to do as they like. I have been outspoken about the problems I see with regionalization. It would be pretty crummy of me to refuse to acknowledge indicators of a similar mentality within my own group.
A History of Segregation in Methodism
Prior to this point, separation within the church based on ethnicity has usually been decried as racist. The jurisdictional conference system that the UMC currently maintains is the outgrowth of the segregation policy of the predecessor denomination, The Methodist Church, which had a separate conference for Americans of African descent called the ‘Central Jurisdiction.” Acknowledging the sin of segregation, the UMC dismantled ethnic separation on the jurisdictional level. Even so, money talks, and little real effective effort was made at integration. While the General Conference made a huge ostentatious apology to Native Americans a few years ago, they continued to keep them isolated in the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference. They also had a Hispanic conference in Texas, which only ended for financial reasons. As I recently decried in a segment I did on the South Carolina Conference of the UMC, it is still the norm for black and white UM churches to insist on separation even when occupying the same neighborhoods. This is normal. I think it shouldn’t be.
Current Racial Realities in America
Today, it is not usually the case that white folks just don’t want those of other races around. Rather, people of other races don’t always like being with white folks. I think part of this is for legitimate reasons. White people culture is pretty sick in our nation right now. We don’t have roots. Few white folks know where we come from. We have a culture, but it is marked largely by socioeconomic concerns and status. Especially in urban areas, white folks are blandly cosmopolitan and consumer-oriented. They aren’t fun to be around. Especially those on the left are generally humorless, alienated from their own feelings while being simultaneously obsessed with them, navel-gazing about narcissistic understandings of identity, and infinitely filled with guilt about indwelling racism and many other sins other than Original Sin. These folks are infinitely tiresome, wanting to virtue signal about race while speaking for people of color without even knowing any of them closely. Even many conservatives have internalized a lot of these things because it is the water one swims in when watching network television. It is exhausting. People of color rightfully do not want to be avatars of their race, tasked with educating white folks or absolving them of guilt.
Even so, refusing to deal with white folks isn’t really an option. White folks keep talking and passing laws, spending money, and influencing the world in myriad ways. White people are made in God’s image, too. As a culture, we are lost and sick. We have passed a lot of that sickness on to people of other races. One might understandably conclude that the only way to protect one’s own people group is to separate themselves from the sick whites. Yet that separation will always cause resentment and fear. There is no way to occupy the same land, breathe the same air, participate in the same institutions, yet remain separate. That is called segregation. Whether that separation is insisted upon by those of the majority or the minority, it doesn’t really matter. Separation engenders suspicion and resentment:
Segregation Doesn’t Work
Separate but equal was the policy of segregation in America. The notion acknowledged that apportioning unequal proportions of goods to different groups would be wrong. The policy was to proportionately give to whites and blacks equal resources and equal treatment so that we could live side-by-side in material equality. Except that is never how things worked. There are millions of factors that come into play when considering the resources that any one group has, independent of state intervention. There will always be inequality in segregated systems.
The Korean-American Conference of the GMC was ostensibly pioneered in order to ameliorate the collective experiences of Koreans who felt their voices and priorities were overridden in the Anglo-dominant setting of the American UMC. Yet I doubt this arrangement will do much of anything at all to ameliorate these concerns in the long run. When there are limited resources, the question will always be asked why resources or attention are given to some groups and not others. If the Korean-American concerns continue to largely fall on deaf ears around other American GMC conferences, how will that not cause resentment? If the Korean-Americans suddenly come to get outsized influence in the direction of the GMC, how will that also not cause resentment? I think much of the leadership anticipates that these competitions will have much less heat in the GMC because there will be fewer resources to compete for. I am not optimistic about this possibility.
The Politics of Resentment
The truth is that resentment has a lot of political currency right now. For most of our lifetimes, the complainers have gotten what they wanted. This has not always been the case. But since the 1960s, by my understanding, those in power acquiesce to the felt needs of especially historically oppressed people groups, sometimes even fanning the flames of resentment in such groups, so as to win the affections of the aggrieved. Especially in the American context, this easily feeds into a white knight complex. This setup feels good to solve short-term crises, but in the long-term, in only prolongs racial strife. I’m not saying this is what GMC leadership has done. I’m saying GMC leadership is operating in a political context that cannot help but influence the expectations and assumptions involved in making these decisions.
Uncomfortable Realities of Race, Culture, and Ethnicity
Another reality in this mix is that certain cultural practices generally overlap with ethnic groups. Even if people of color do not find white people exhausting or reprehensible, many still don’t really want to worship with them. And, shamefully, the feeling is often mutual. People have learned to be quite selfish in their tastes for worship. Rather than an openness to other cultures, including the culture of the Kingdom of God, it seems to me that most congregations are rather self-obsessed with their own culture and norms. They like singing the same hymns, hearing the same nomenclature, going the same pace, following the same liturgy. It can become quite self-referential and, in its worst forms, idolatrous.
I was powerfully affected by a few worship experiences I had at an Antiochan Orthodox Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. There was a small Ethiopian immigrant population in that town. They did not speak English, which was the worship language of this particular church, but they faithfully attended the Divine Liturgy every week, as well as on special feast days. These wonderful people knelt on the floor, bowing their faces to the floor, as they worshiped in the language they did not know. They did not see it as important that they understood every single word, or that they like every single song or chant. They knew their identity was in Christ, so the question of whether or not they subjectively liked what was done did not seem to even enter their minds. For that reason, this fellowship was a truly multiethnic taste of the Kingdom of God.
I do not think this vision is something that many people within America really yearn for. When they think about trying to worship in a style they don’t already know, well, count most folks out. When they think about starting a new hybrid culture with a new group of people…just…no thanks. How about we give them their own space? Maybe we can give them some money, hire a pastor of their own race, start another worship service for them. Right?
Most Christians know that around the throne of God in the New Creation we will not be divided by tribes or nations. Yet, when it comes to matching the Kingdom here on earth, there is a great cynicism about how practical that might be, regardless of how many times and places have seen that happen, regardless of what was seen on the day of Pentecost. It has always seemed so strange to me that, when one is inducted into church membership in the UMC, they are compelled to explicitly acknowledge that the church of Christ Jesus is open to “people of all ages, nations, and races,” yet then so much time, energy, and money is then spent on blessing separation along ethnocultural lines. I feel like I have to be taking crazy pills: why am I the only person who seems so bothered by this?
A Global Historical Perspective on Culture
Historically speaking, cultures change. That is the nature of things. People groups move around, gradually integrating with others, eventually sharing cultural norms and practices, forming a new amalgam norm. Very few cultures stay the same over a prolonged period of time. For example, I have a friend of Mexican descent. He grew up in a household in which his mother was quite domineering, and even emotionally abusive (by my standards) to his father. He explained that this became quite normal in Mexican culture after the Mexican Civil War, during which many men were killed. Women filled the void left by the dead men, learning to be much more aggressive than previous generations had been. This began a new cultural norm, in which men who came of age then had to learn to operate around matriarchs in a different posture than men before.
Dominant ideology in America believes that these cultural differences are neither good nor bad; every culture has its own distinct practices that are either by default morally virtuous or at least without moral value. This is another uncomfortable conversation that can be avoided when we promote segregation. Because what inevitably happens when different cultures intermix is not just that some cultural practices are adopted by newly exposed groups, but also that people of each culture begin to assess the value or morality of foreign practices. Any moral concerns are often taken as the sin of xenophobia. Rather than reflect on why some practices might be better than others, rather than question our own biases and predispositions, we become defensive and angry. Conversely, if one identifies as a victim and then sees a majority culture start to adopt some practices from their own, one can also feel wronged, claiming “cultural appropriation.”
The only way to avoid all of these discomforts and accusations is to simply not mix. Don’t let anyone move around. Arrest the development of any new cultures emerging. Keep everyone in their ‘safe spaces’ so that they are not threatened by change. Segregation was a state-sanctioned way of attempting this, with gatekeepers like the KKK ensuring there would be no ‘miscegenation.’ Today, the state has ended any overt pressure like this, but it is culturally reinforced from many angles. Folks within the black community like Coleman Hughes are pushing back in a big way against woke antiracism. White people in America should similarly push for integration and colorblindness.
Affinity Group Marketing Poison
Yet Anglo leadership is not going to be up to this task if we continue to see affinity group ministry as a legitimate means of leading the church. The whole “mainline denominational” project was an attempt to focus only on upper-middle class white sensibilities. It isn’t going well. In the age of biker churches, cowboy churches, recovery churches, and all kinds of ethnic churches, we keep going down this road of cultural echo chamber isolationism. It is a dead end. I believe this goes against the Holy Spirit and will not bear fruit in the long term.
The culture of Christ is demarcated only by an acknowledgment of universal human guilt and the concomitant need of Christ’s atoning blood to be applied to us. This movement knows no worldly culture. It is a people called out of the world, out of every single nation and people group, into common identity in Christ. The moment we allow this notion of a unifying otherworldly culture to become a fanciful fairy tale in our minds is the moment that I believe we leave Christ behind. In his name, we marry the culture of Christ to worldly cultures, defanging and domesticating what is made to be a transformative and hostile leavening agent in the world. Jesus said we would beat back the gates of hell, simultaneously pillaging Satan’s house while Christ has him bound. Does the comfortable church in America resemble such a depiction, generally? I don’t see it.
Worry I Carry for the GMC
I do not know if there is anything I can say or do at this point to stop this train we are on. In my most recent segment of Considering Charlotte, a native Zimbabwean named Lloyd Nyarota participated, representing a position in favor of Regionalization. He said that he sees things in the GMC’s Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline that indicate we will also be headed in this direction of leaving different people groups to themselves. I don’t know what he is seeing, but I am afraid of the possibility that he might be right. Are we really going to promote a system in which different regions are just given over to their sins by other regions?
I realize the Global Methodist Church did not start off saying that it would have a different racial framework than the UMC. Perhaps it was unfair of me to hope that it would be committed to a colorblind image of the Kingdom. I cannot help but see what I see and want what I want. I want for my children’s generation to no longer have this racial tension and resentment. I want for my denomination to be the crucible and model for racial healing, marked not by grandiose displays of sorrow like in the UMC, but by earnest seeking of fellowship and worship with people of other cultures who have the same Lord. I do not think this is a naive hope to have. A fundamentalist like me just reads my bible, understands the portrait it paints, then believes that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can see those promises realized here and now.
Flaccid Faith Inevitabilities
While thinking about this topic on a walk yesterday, I connected the seeming inability to cross these ethnic lines with the relative death of the practice of fasting. I know of almost nobody who practices fasting in a biblically recognizable way. Traditionally, and most meaningfully, fasting has been from food. Not only clergy have been expected to fast, but laity, as well. Yet this practice has largely fallen out practice in recent decades. It would seem believers of this generation simply cannot practice self-denial in any remotely stringent sense. While most will subscribe to the idea that faith requires sacrifice, and that we should take our comfort from the Lord rather than creature comforts, we are awash in a way of life that belies such convictions.
When one is dealing with a monoculture crossing ethnic lines in which individuals are simply unwilling to forego regular comforts in order to seek the Lord, then the project of integration becomes unfeasible. Populations are simply not willing to engage other populations if it means that they will have to compromise, go without their cup getting filled up, be challenged to consider doing things differently. I think this is sad. It results in the current setup in which everyone will give lip service to the equality of all humans while simultaneously doing very little to mix with people of other ethnicities.
I have been somewhat discouraged at the lack of interest in this conversation. Of the content I post, the stuff concerned with race/culture/ethnicity is routinely among the least-engaged material. I realize that we are all bombarded on these topics by a 24/7 news cycle, and that many are probably tired of it. But if we do not find a way to do this thing differently, it is going to continue to manipulate and divide our culture indefinitely into the future. I’m tired of the infantilization that is happening as we continue to atrophy from avoiding these conversations. It is my opinion, and I hope it is shared by many others, that we need to pick a coherent theology around ethnicity and culture that we then stand by, even if it costs us some churches in the short term. If we make clear that we hope for a colorblind future together, then I have to believe those fellowships who really love the same Lord as me will be drawn to such a fellowship, and we will be a beacon of the truth of Christ Jesus in a way that puts the world to shame. That is the church that Jesus deserves to have on earth until his coming.
In thought on the history of the human race, I would suggest that segregation is deeply rooted in our sinful selves, as you have observed. People from thousands of years ago lived according to the law of the clan, then the tribe, then the community. In the bitter fight for survival, aspects which come out as "racism" still exist across all humans today. Even the early church struggled with these open doors in Christ when the reality of a Jew/Gentile Body of Christ came to surface and worshiping together became an inescapable aspect to life.
In this regard, I would simply suggest that the solution to the problem needs to be more vertical than horizontal. If we are to look each other eye-to-eye and hammer out the differences in each others' cultures as humans, we will fail and fail spectacularly to come together as a single body. But when we pursue the solution by surrendering first our own culture to God and come together as brothers and sisters in Christ, then we will be far more successful in these sorts of discussions, because they will be seeking to honor God first and the other in the wake. But, that would take total surrender, and not just comfortable surrender or conciliatory surrender - and we "definitely" can't have that in the church.
But, I also admit that I'm relatively behind the times on this issue. Though I myself am identified as white, I have an immediate relation with every major ethnicity in the world. I'm talking first cousins related, not some distant eighth cousin twelve times removed or even second cousins. My family reunion had the appearance of a world conference and has only gotten more diverse as my cousins got married. My father-in-law is Japanese, which adds further diversity to the ethnic circles I'm directly related to and even a level of cultural integration. Outside of my relatives, my parents would invite every visiting missionary to our house and we would spend the day listening to the various aspects of other cultures. My experiences with other cultures and my working among those of other cultures did not cease through any choice of my own and I honestly hope to get back to multicultural work in the future. But the point being, I was so inundated with diversity of culture and ethnicity, that I felt a form of culture shock when terms such as "white privilege" and "innate racism" started getting thrown around.
So, yes, I guess you could say I'm tired of the racist discussions. I am weary of the accusations and as a result I have withdrawn from the topic altogether. Is that shame on me? I'd like to think not, but perhaps it's a shame on me that I've withdrawn from even attempting to share this with others.
Thank you for the post.
Jeffrey, I too share your concerns about the veiled forms of racism that still remain in Christ’s Church. If this nation is to ever recover from the damage done by its former practice of slavery, the Church must lead the way. The Federal Government has proven totally ineffective at its attempt to eliminate racism. That’s because this is a spiritual problem that requires a Spiritual solution. It’s been said that the Sunday morning worship services are the most segregated places in America. I believe it’s true. I’ve heard a number of reasons offered in attempts to justify this due to personal preferences ,but no Scriptural basis given. Christ’s Church is called to display a preview of the consummated Kingdom of God, where His will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Segregated congregations undercut this vision. Paul made it clear in his letter to the Church at Galatia where he wrote, “For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus.” It’s bad enough that we’ve managed to divide into literally thousands of denominations when you include all the “independent “ non-affiliated churches, but now we’re addressing the further division of those of different ethnicities within the same denomination. I can’t believe that this pleases Christ Jesus who prayed, “May they be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me.” (John 17:21) I am personally blessed to be able to facilitate a multi racial, multi denominational background, gathering of Christian residents for a Bible study at a local nursing home twice a week. The presence of the Lord is truly felt at these gatherings. I hope I’m wrong, but I believe that it’s going to require overt persecution against the faithful remnant to bring about the reconciliation between the various factions within the Church, here in America. May God help us if it’s true.