Segregation in Church?

Segregation in Church?

I worry that if Obama loses in November that we will have to endure an ongoing and sickening litany of "America wasn't ready for a black president" nonsense. We'll get it also from leftist elites in Europe, where ironically, there is no foreseeable African heads of state that I know of. Personally I don't buy it. Whoever loses will lose for a host of reasons, but skin color I believe is FAR down the list.

Anyway, CNN is running a host of "Race in America" articles and commentaries that I largely ignore. But one was entitled: "Why many Americans prefer their Sundays segregated" and so it caught my attention.

Look, I really don't think there is a huge race problem in America. I can answer the articles question in ONE simple and short sentence: Because people of different races have different preferences.

Need more explanation? Look to the whole reasoning behind the existence of "billions and billions" of denominations, are not many of them due to things like worship style preferences? Preaching style preferences? The lack of Black Liberation theology? (sorry...couldn't resist). But my point remains: different races tend to have different preferences and in the spirit of rainbow diversity let's let them have it.

I don't like Rap music at all (maybe because I'm a slavic-hillbilly?) And let's face it, rap and hip-hop music is massively segregated, is it not? Is the Rap music industry made up of segregationists? Racists? I have a Chinese coworker who attends an all-chinese evangelical church where I would feel terribly out of place as the lone slavic-hillbilly who doesn't understand but about 3 Chinese words. Are they segregationists? Racists? No, not at all.

Just like men and woman, races are different too. And JUST like our culture today would largely wish to believe that there ISN'T any difference between men and women, I think strive to see racism and segregationism where really we are just seeing people making preferential decisions of where they want to be in their free time and surprise, surprise, surprise...shazam: they choose to be where they are comfortable and in a place that...you guessed it..."works for them."

So, in a world where we often choose our churches like we would choose our restaurants, why should we be surprised not to find many white folks who'd prefer a high church Anglican liturgy at Obama's until recently attended fiery black liberation church? Or vice versa?

This seems far more plausible than what the media would like us to imagine: a white evangelical couple watching a black family arriving into their mega-church and saying to one another: "Oh dear, there are Negroes here...time to find a new church."

Puhlease. The article says this: "church should transcend race."

Well...hahahah...it's not going to do that until it first transcends personal preferences and whims. Good luck. I dunno, you could look around, maybe you'd find a Church or two that has a rich history of multi-cultural expression without losing any of its core values, practices, or traditions. And that might perhaps not suffer at the whims and preferences of the grasses being blown in the pop cultural tempests. Maybe. Na, probably not.