Divided by Faith

As a nation, Americans have devoted extensive time and energy discussing religion and race. Questions like, “What is the proper place of religion?” “What is the role of race?” “In what direction is each heading and what does this mean for us as a nation?”

It is a narrative of how some of America’s core values and assumptions and its reliance on market principles contradict and work against other esteemed values.

as long as the American democracy remains at the head of affairs no one will undertake so difficult a task; and it may be foreseen that the freer the white population of the United States becomes, the more isolated will it remain.

we explore the ways in which culture, values, norms, and organizational features that are quintessentially evangelical and quintessentially American, despite having many positive qualities, paradoxically have negative effects on race relations.

we were led to move beyond the old idea that racial problems result from ignorant, prejudiced, mean people (and that evangelicals are such people).

Our argument is that evangelicals desire to end racial division and inequality, and attempt to think and act accordingly. But, in the process, they likely do more to perpetuate the racial divide than they do to tear it down.

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.

But, as the church grew, something happened to its mixed-race nature—it disappeared, and the congregation became nearly all-African American. Perhaps because the pastor was black and thus practiced a nonwhite style of preaching and leadership, perhaps because white Americans are accustomed to being the majority, a pattern developed in who visited a

“Because of our cultural backgrounds,” said Nancy, a white Presbyterian woman, blacks and whites “might not enjoy the same kinds of worship.