Racial Diversity In Churches

Provide evidence of your willingness to relate yourself in ministry to all persons without regard to race, color, ethnicity, national origin, social status, gender, sexual orientation, age, economic condition, or disability.

Billingsley lists seven characteristics of churches that make a difference when it comes to outreach ministry. “These are denomination, church age, size, membership composition, ownership of church building, number of clergy, and other paid staff. (Billingsley95).” He believes that more characteristics a church possesses the more valuable the outreach they provide. A separate 15 year study of the black church is outlined in Lessons Learned: Conducting Culturally Competent Research and Providing Interventions with Black Churches. In terms of research to determine the true effectiveness of the black church several researchers conducted the study to determine how social workers can play a central role in church outreach. At the conclusion of their research they “experienced a number of challenges and barriers. These challenges and barriers that impacted the research process are communication, cultural insensitivity, theology and branding, gender, position of the pastor,

These surveys show that church leaders have a great challenge ahead of them in order to prevent people from leaving church. They have to be more effective and have to think of creative ways to retain people in the churches.

It is not uncommon to hear one ask, “How large is your congregation?” Dr. Robertson said “A large congregation size in Philadelphia may not be large in a city like Atlanta where more African Americans tend to fellowship. Church sizes fluctuate and this is not a new phenomenon. Gallop Studies have shown more people go to church in times of war than in times of peace and more than 40% of Americans claim to attend church or synagogue regularly.

Not even in generations that are more recent. Darin M. Mather, researcher from the Department of Sociology in the University of Minnesota for his article, "Divided by Age?: Generational Shifts in White Evangelical Christians' Attitudes toward Racial Diversity". conducted interviews to white Americans of different ages and even though he found out that younger white Americans generations seem to be a lot more accepting now, he also notes that “ ‘white evangelicals’ attitudes and perspectives have not changed at all across generational lines. This is particularly clear in their attitudes toward racial inequality. The two generations have similar opinions about the role that hard work and individual effort play in racial inequality” (19). In other words, white Americans have raised young adults with the same way of thinking and when it comes to racial inequality, they believe that we are all equal. This can be interpreted as avoiding the existence of privilege. The importance of avoiding racial issues translates into blame towards fellow black Christians who might work as hard as they work but do not receive the same payment or have access to the same conditions. In addition, according to the article, “Congregational Size and Attitudes towards Racial Inequality among Church Attendees in America” by researchers from the University of Southern California Ryon J. Cobb et al. “In comparison to non-evangelical

Second, Butler disagrees with Kidd on the extent of George Whitefield’s impact. Despite delivering charismatic performances when he preached the Gospel, there wasn’t sustained change in local religious patterns in the places he spoke. Furthermore, the leadership of the revivals was not exactly cohesive. Whitefield held symbolic stature but didn’t hold strategic oversight on the local ministers that he influenced. A lack of unity only hampered the growth potential of the revival spirit and mission

They give examples from C.S. Lewis when discussing this subject. They quote Lewis with the term “Chronological snobbery”. This term means that while older generations only find value in the traditions and heritage of our faith, the younger generations only find relevance in what is current. They also write this type of separation between the young and old has effectively begun dismembering the body of Christ limb by limb. The authors also put focus on the act of individual preferences through church shopping. This according to Page and Gray, result in the encouraging of churches to offer consumer-driven programming in order to keep members on their rolls.

Much of the decline of mainline Protestant denominations, such as the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian and Episcopal Churches, has been speculated to be largely due to widespread rejection of organized religion by young adults (Sides, 2016). While young adults are the most likely to claim religious non-affiliation, Americans of all ages have been trending downward since the late 90s and early 2000s (Wormald, 2015). As older more religious generations die, there are fewer younger generation members taking their places in Protestant congregations, leading to the declines being seen. Likewise, while Protestant denominations have been on the decline, nondenominational church memberships have risen since 2007. While Millennials coming

Americans are either more religiously involved or don’t see religion as an importance which can cause a drift between the two types of people, Putnam has stated, “Religious drop outs have come out at the expense of those whose religious involvement was modest but conventional” (Putnam 75). Influence of not participating in religious outings is spreading to those who are involved which can cause a dramatic decrease in the numbers of participants in religion. The involvement of Americans in religious participation also affect numbers of religions. Religious participation has increased in the catholic religion as Americans gravitate to the particular popular religion in America. It is seen that, “Protestant and Jewish congregations have lost market share in items of memberships, while Catholics and other religions have gained” (Putnam 75). This complication has arisen more due to the involvement of more immigrants migrating to the US and influencing the growing numbers of Catholics. Many of those immigrants are Latin American that makeup “one-quarter of American Catholics” (Putnam 76). However, numbers of participation in mass are still low even with all the popularity of the Catholic religion which demonstrates how religious participation isn’t important to some Americans. (add more

Although the U.S. religious landscape appears to have become more diverse, many still consider themselves

The pragmatism of America has lead to a larger acceptance of atheism and rejection of direct church attendance. Hence, while churches have been growing over the last two decades they come at the expense of smaller churches and overall church attendance is down. This trend was countered by christians to be more relevant, or at least what is thought of as

As we go about our daily life, remaining naïve to religious diversity will only set us back. Clearly, the diversity of religions of the world floods American history (Gross, n.d.). In addition, it has also brought about a strong tendency to display hostility toward different religious positions (Gross, n.d.).

Church growth is a topic that very few church members discuss unless the church falls into a steep decline numerically, leaving only a handful of members in a worship service still present. Most of the time, leaders within the church are the only few who focus their time and effort on maintaining a healthy environment, where the church can flourish and grow. This environment is often seen as something that happens inside the four walls of the church but this is a misunderstanding.

Hypothesis 1c: The greater the population, the smaller the percentage of the population in each county that are members of a religious congregation.

Today there are over 900 religious employee resource groups, according to the International Coalition of Workplace Ministries (Cañas & Sondak, 2010). These affinity groups can help encourage religious understanding by offering panel discussions that educate employees on their beliefs. By allowing open discussion, answering religious questions and creating an open, welcoming religious environment in the workplace employees can better relate to one another through shared religious principles (Cañas & Sondak, 2010). When looking at the business case for diversity, not asking employees to hide their faith at work allows for greater productivity, and time and energy focused on business results (Cañas