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.<\/p>\nDuring the last few years in the United States Evangelicals have wrestled with the question of racial reconciliation in the Body of Christ. Not long ago the huge Southern Baptist Convention, next to Roman Catholicism America\u2019s largest denomination, publicly apologized for past racism against African-Americans. The issue was a major focus in the Promise Keepers men\u2019s movement and has resurfaced repeatedly in the Christian media in America.<\/p>\n
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One question often asked is why churches do not tend to be more racially diverse within individual congregations. Why are their relatively few truly multi-racial churches, even in the so-called “melting pot” cities like New York and Los Angeles? Perhaps it is because the nation is less a melting pot than a mosaic. The United States is the most racially diverse country in human history. Diversity implies differences. It also implies that those differences are not, in and of themselves, necessarily a bad thing. In the term\u2019s most positive sense cultural distinctives are something to be celebrated, not criticized as somehow a threat to unity in either the spiritual or secular sense of the word.<\/p>\n
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The truth in America is that Hispanic churches tend to stay predominately Hispanic, African-American churches predominately African-American, Korean churches predominately Korean and so on. Some say that this creates an atmosphere of division among Christians. They maintain that it is God\u2019s will that “all the colors” should, as the singer Bono sings in a song by the band U2, “bleed into one”. Surely, He does not intend for His people to be divided in any way? In one sense this is certainly an accurate statement as Scripture very clearly affirms that we are to be one in Christ. The apostle Paul tell us in Galatians that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”(Gal. 3:2.<\/p>\n
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The question, though, is whether there can be no unity in diversity. Does recognition of differences automatically lead to the evils of discrimination? Should the Church never reflect the cultural, even racial, distinctions among people that the Creator apparently intended when he created humankind? The Bible prophetically tells us that, one day, all the nations of the Earth will go up to Jerusalem to worship the Lord. It does not say “nation” but “nations”. This implies differences will still exist among peoples but that they will be united in worship of the one true God. Maybe the reluctance some congregations have in actively recruiting people from other ethnicities comes from the fact that they do not desire to completely lose there God-given distinctiveness as a particular fold in the larger “sheep-pen” of Christ\u2019s flock. If this desire truly is the reason why efforts to promote integration are often resisted (rather than blatant, and yes, sinful bias against “inferior” people) then perhaps we should rethink at least the intensity of the recent handwringing about racism dividing the Church.<\/p>\n
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If you have the opportunity to go snorkeling or scuba diving in the Caribbean you will see fish swim by in a stunning variety of colors. If all the fish were black or white, red or yellow the experience would be so greatly diminished in pleasure. But the Divine Artist sees fit to use all the colors of the palette when He creates and that is true for His greatest creation as well as fish. A recent mayor of New York described the city as “a gorgeous mosaic” speaking of both the cultural and racial diversity within its five boroughs. Appreciating this mosaic is what can make life there so rich. It is precisely because everyone is not like everyone else that this is so. So before we arbitrarily try to force everyone and everything to blend together in the name of eliminating the evil of racism the American Church would do well to recognize that different races and cultures can work together in unity without sacrificing the kind of beauty which diversity creates.<\/p>\n
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During the last few years in the United States Evangelicals have wrestled with the question of racial reconciliation in the Body of Christ. Not long ago the huge Southern Baptist Convention, next to Roman Catholicism America\u2019s largest denomination, publicly apologized for past racism against African-Americans. The issue was a major focus in the Promise Keepers… <\/p>\n