Growing the Beloved Community in Spite of Sinful Soil

by Efrem Smith 10-12-2009

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke often of something he called the beloved community. This was the title given to describe a reality in which freedom, love, justice, and reconciliation would reign. In many ways this was a mainstream way for Dr. King to speak of the kingdom of God being advanced within a sin-filled world. Today, there is still a need for the beloved community. The question becomes, though, “can there be a beloved community without a beloved church first?” Another question to consider would be, “can there be a beloved church without beloved children of God in intimate relationship with God through Christ Jesus?” These questions must be reflected on deeply if the church is to be a force of kingdom advancement in an increasingly multi-ethnic and multicultural world.

Though we live in a world that is becoming more and more diverse by the day, the church in the United States of America is still one of the most segregated institutions there is. It’s funny how the church in the United States, through its many denominations, sees itself as a leader in world missions but can’t consistently develop churches that look like that world or the kingdom of God where we will live eternally. Though collectively financially resourced, the church is socially bankrupt when it comes to living outside of the race matrix of this nation. Why is this?

This reality of the segregated church continues for two reasons. One reason is, many are in denial that the Christian church in this country was planted in a soil of race and racism. The treatment of Native Americans and Africans in the beginning of what became known as the United States of America went against the very gospel message being preached by some Europeans carrying a Bible in their hands and racism in their hearts. We must explore this history on a regular basis so that we might re-plant the Christian church in this nation.

The second issue is that the church in this nation is still evolving on race-based soil, which creates people’s feeling of comfort in attending racially segregated churches. Though many people would not see themselves as racist, they attend churches based on race values even though they don’t realize it in most cases. The not realizing factor is true for many European-Americans. Many African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians proudly attend racially or ethnic specific churches. For many of them this is about being in a community of empowerment in a society where they collectively hold little power even in light of a minority president. Yet this reality is a major obstacle to the beloved community. There will never truly be shining examples of the beloved community as long as we Christians have a taste for the segregated church. As a pastor of a multi-ethnic and evangelical church, I cry out in the wilderness like John the Baptist. I cry out to prepare the way for a movement of churches that think and look like the kingdom of God and not the race-based society of this earthly realm. I cry out for the beloved church. What is your heart’s cry?

Efrem Smith is the senior pastor of The Sanctuary Covenant Church, with the vision to be an urban, multi-ethnic, relevant, holistic, and Christ-centered community. He has held leadership positions in organizations such as the Boys and Girls Club of America and Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and is the author of numerous articles and books, including The Hip-Hop Church. He blogs at efremsmith.com.

Categories: Diversity, Race

MarKatJac

In Philadelphia, a wonderful Catholic school has been thriving in the middle of all the racial strife, and cultural discord. Cardinal Dougherty High School just celebrated their 50th graduating class, where students from about 30 nationalities and cultures paraded their flags during the Baccalariat Service. I was happy to see the Panamanian flag, representing my son's heritage, and the South Korean flag, representing his girlfriend. These students study together, pray together, play together. Sounds wonderful?
Yet, this racial/ethnic harmony is worth nothing to the Archdiocese School Board. They have announced the closure of this wonderful model of how we should all be, and are raising up teenagers to think multiculturally. The excuse is finances. And yet, they are spending $60 million to open up a new school, named after Pope John Paul II, in a remote corner of the suburbs. The models used to invite students to this new school are white. The farmland of upper Montgomery county will be plowed no more, food grown no more, so that wealthy, predominantly white catholics can turn the multicultural clock backward.
This is an affront to environmental justice, economic justice, ethnic justice. Why can't we see the message we are sending when we ignore the accomplishments made at christian schools to train the next generation that racial harmony is worth the price?

RadicalChristianLibrarian

I believe God is moving in this way as well, to bring His people together. It's very exciting!

letjusticerolldown

Sadly, I believe a couple ounces of hardship could drive US Christians into each other's arms. I believe the segregation is largely about stylistic preferences--styles of life, relationship and worship. Either these styles are just really, really important to us--or grander things of God are just really, really tiny.

WaveTossed

I found more segregation this Sunday, when I attended the National March for LGBT Equality. There were many Gay Christians in the march. But there were other Chrisitans who stood on the side, speaking out against those Christians and others who were marching for our rights.

Some of the marchers expressed hostile attitudes that showed that they had given up on Christianity or had rejected it entirely. They see Christians as all being like those who are judgmental and condemning of their relationships and the ways that they express their love. Such wholesaledly anti-Christian attitudes are regretfully as prejudicial as wholesaledly anti-Gay attitudes expressed by some Christians. However, there were Gay Christians in the march, such as myself. When I saw these people preaching against us, using the Bible and the name of Jesus Christ, I would quote Scripture from the Gospels, where the Word of the Savior, Himself, are written. I quoted the Two Great Commandments, which include the Golden Rule to love one's neighbors as oneself. But also I spoke from 1 John, where the Word tells us that Perfect Love will Cast Out Fear. Which I do believe that it will do. There were some marchers who carried a sign that said, "Fear Not."

Julian Bond spoke at the rally. He was one of the keynote speakers. He isn't Gay himself, but he is African-American, a veteran of the 1960s civil rights struggles. He basically affirmed to us that no one is free until we all are free and that the struggle against discrimination is continuing onward. He frequently referrred to the words of Coretta Scott King, who in her lifetime spoke out against discrimination and prejudice against Gays.

The church I attend has a diverse congregation, African-American, White, Gay, Straight, Asian. This is the beauty of our American culture that should be treasured. But we must continue the struggle against those who would segregate us and draw us apart.

MartaNVNNL

As a member and now pastor of a intercultural, multilingual church with the vision and calling to be a diverse body of believers, I must say that although it is quite difficult to a part of such a church, the blessings and reward is great. At the last count, we have at least 18 countries represented in our church and although Spanish and English are our main languages used in services, we also enjoy special music in languages like Swahili and Creole. Being part of a intercultural, multilingual church requires that members and attendees be willing to submit to each other and be flexible in worship styles and ways of celebrating. I believe that God is moving to bring racial reconciliation and healing through His people and His church. I see more and more churches that are multicultural and they provide a great witness to God's power.

NMRod

We westerners, too, have our own paradox with the post-Constantine Church's embrace of redemption through violence against "enemies" - the contradiction of Christendom vs. Christ.

It was a leader of our nation's largest Christian denomination who advocated "blow them all to Hell in the name of the Lord," invoking the violence and Manichean chimera of a Holy War without end against what he considered infidels.

BlueDeacon

A challenge to people like me, the white members of the church, is to be generous in our acceptance of worship styles that are not a part of the traditional worship we're used to.

My church, which is similar to yours, did just that around 15 years ago and as a result has not only diversified but also outgrown the facilities. What did we do? Blended our worship -- in every service we used to have two hymns, two choruses and two black gospel numbers.

Nathan Bedford

While some Christians might accuse us of being "revisionists", I think that it is a healthy thing for us to review the history of both our church and our nation to learn how and why we have arrived at this point with so much division and differences between white churches and black churches.

Visit a typical white church in the weeks immediately preceding an election and the underlying message is clear. And the more fundamentalist the church is the more explicit the message. And though I do not write from personal experience, I suspect the opposite is true for black churches. Though both preach the same gospel, it is clear that the political leanings are in opposite directions.

As long as these divisions remain, we leave a significant proportion of African Americans vulnerable to the message of Islam. Not saying that they will automatically embrace the violence associated with the extreme elements, but that appears to be the the strategy by those who wish us ill.

JeannetteEileen

As a member of a multi-ethnic church located in a predominantly black community, I find that social class is a more challenging barrier for us than race. We are reaching out to our neighborhood through Community Suppers held during the week. We attract a diverse group of people, some of them homeless, many of them living below the poverty level, and we sit and eat with them and listen to them. But we don't find many of them joining our church. Some of them attend no church at all, but others join their friends and family at all-black churches on Sunday.

Worship styles are so individual and most people like best the style they are most used to, often the style they grew up with. While it's true that segregated communities lead to segregated places of worship, perhaps it's not always racism that is the base cause; instead, sometimes it's just a matter of preference.

A challenge to people like me, the white members of the church, is to be generous in our acceptance of worship styles that are not a part of the traditional worship we're used to. It's a struggle for us sometimes; some members find worship is enhanced when the sermon is scholarly and the music is classical while many of those in our neighborhood are used to frequent "Amens" shouted and rousing spirituals sung while clapping hands. In the end, multi-culturalism comes down to this: are we willing to give up some of our fondly-held traditions and expectations so we serve others through our worship? It's a balance, I think: we come to worship to be fed and renewed, and that's important. We also come to worship as an act of sacrifice and service, and we must not forget that.

RadicalChristianLibrarian

Division, which is, of course the goal of the enemy. The true enemy that leads us to fight amongst ourselves, splits up families, and causes discord in general. Like you say, we demonize each other and bring out each others worst instincts.

It breaks my heart to hear about families who won't speak to each other because of political differences or religious differences. Every time we allow this to happen, instead of acting with grace, love, and humility, we give up ground to the enemy.

We could include racial divisions in this category as well. Fear, specifically fear of "the other," is a huge opening for the devil, which is why I think we've seen so much strife in the last decade or so. Or maybe it's always been so and each new generation faces this challenge and must answer the call. Perhaps we are judged by how we respond.

NMRod

Allegiance to the Democratic Party would be relegating Christianity to even more of a rump than nationalism; the belief that wielding state power is a Christian mission leads to more and more division as one contends for control.

It is not surprising, then, that battles between political parties for control end up taking on the dimensions of colossal good vs. evil struggles. This is just as George Washington predicted, further dividing over political faction power struggles what we call good men from one another and bringing out our worst instincts for alienation and demonizing of the other.

Jesus told us to love not only our neighbors, but our enemies. We end up hating our neighbors as enemies.

It is no wonder that the result really is a black eye for Christianity by those of us who have succumbed to the temptation of wielding "power over" instead of "service under." We then act even worse than pagans, especially blinded to our faults while exaggerating those of others by thinking "God is on our side" while we seek to dominate them.

ando

I still have serious problems with your judgment of others. You apparently don't think much of people who disagree with you, or perhaps who don't vote Democrat.
It's the same kind of intolerance that many have accused the Religious Right of.

NMRod

Those folks don't identify their missions with Americanism.

Mennonites, in fact, have been persecuted, jailed, beaten, tortured, deported and even killed right here in America, within the last century - by those who also call themselves Christians - for their historic anabaptist commitment to following Jesus' radical nonviolence of love for one's enemies instead of embracing patriotism as a motivation for hate and killing. especially in God's name. It is safe to say that it is this same "enemy love" that God himself extended to all who were His enemies - us - that motivates those missions.

Do we worship the Lord - none can do so without taking up just the same cross and in His way - or, are some of us engaged in the idolatry of what Mark Twain termed "rag worship?"

ando

Wow. What a one-sided view. I guess we should just forget about all the great work organizations like Mennonite Central Committee, World Relief, World Vision, ECHO, InterVarsity, CAMA, ESA and many others are doing here and around the world to bring God's word, peace and justice to hurting and disenfranchised peoples. Some of them are even white folk. Imagine that. But they don't fit your narrow and one-sided view paradigm of American Christians in the marketplace and the world. And they don't have political axes to grind.

Seems like the Religious Right are the only angry people.

NMRod

A church can't grow to encompass an entire nation - the myth of the Christian nation - without changing its message. For, in truth, no nation - the sum of all its peoples - could possibly be Christian, given the gamut of human character present.

But this error didn't start with us - every tribe had its own War God. Israel itself misunderstood God's purpose. When Jesus came, and refused Satan's temptation to be the kind of military Messiah they wanted, no one stood with Him on Calvary. As he told Pilate, His Kingdom was not of this world nor of the world's defining principles of dominance and control. Note that his religious opponents were willing to say, "We have no king but Caesar."

After Constantine slew thousands with the sign of the cross, Christianity became absorbed into the Christendom of Rome, where supposedly all were Christian by virtue of baptism into the state and its church at birth. The Reformation split Christendom into competing fiefdoms - all of them supported by the emergence of competing nation-state redemptive violence.

Romans 13 was distorted to mean that each of these nations could order its Christians to kill the others' Christians, by Jesus' own will.

American Protestants, by their identification of America as a Christian nation, remake this myth anew, but there is really nothing new about the same old error. Having mythologized that America is a Great Church, it becomes necessary for them to be the nation's pastors, disciplining and excommunicating according to their own judgment - which cannot be that of Christ, for there is no such church. Since it cannot be a church, its precepts, so that there can be some sort of accommodation with and support of state aims, are transmogrified into state idolatry.

Their end is worse than their beginning, corrupted as they are, giving us the spectacle of scandal,, incompetence and gross hypocrisy we have so lately seen.

RadicalChristianLibrarian

Churches on Sunday mornings are some the most segregated places in the U.S. and I don't believe that to be God's will. It's a troublesome thing that has been placed on my heart as well.

2 Corinthians 5:18 says, "Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation," (NKJV) and goes on to speak more of reconciliation of ourselves with God, through Christ. I think the "ministry of reconciliation" includes reconciliation of ourselves with other people and reconciliation among the races as well. Of course any reconciliation with others must begin with reconciliation with God.

I go to two different churches right now- one is mulit-ethnic, the other is almost all white. I like both. But really, we are one church, one body. If only we would remember that and behave as such.

BlueDeacon

The number one issue is that the American church allowed itself to be co-opted by a culture it has said it wanted to influence. Many evangelicals love to tout our nation's "Christian" heritage; however, at the beginning churches did not easily accept members. Only when membership rules were relaxed did church attendance begin to grow -- and with that all sorts of "worldly" thinking crept in.