Divided by Faith Author Michael O. Emerson Kicks Off Church Swap

Divided by Faith author Michael O. Emerson speaks at Baylor Leadership Series

Church Swap: A Grassroots Approach to Dismantling the Most Segregated Hour in America

Mia Moody, Faculty Researcher; Jo Welter, Community Race Relations Coalition; and
Ramona Curtis, “Church Swap” Project Director and director of Leader Development & Civic Engagement, Baylor University.

I am excited to work on a new, worthwhile project with long-time friend and colleague, Ramona Curtis, “Church Swap” Project Director. The project titled "Grassroots Approach to Dismantling the Most Segregated Hour in America," will document what happens when participants of various races switch churches for three months with a person of another race.

     

Curtis’ goal is to dismantle what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “America’s most segregated hour” -- the 11:00 hour on Sunday morning when people go to church.

“Our world is growing more and more diverse,” said Curtis, “I’ve never understood why we are so segregated during that 11:00 hour on Sunday morning.”


Participants will read Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America  by Michael Emerson, and United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race


After three months, they will return to their home church where they will spend another two months writing about what they have learned. Using this information, project managers will produce a research paper, Web site, a video documentary, and a research paper detailing their experiences.


Curtis says going to a church that is predominantly white has helped her to see things differently.


“I think they will gain a lot based on my experiences. I have grown tremendously because of my open-mindedness,” she said, “I am challenged to be able to be comfortable and see people as people and not the color of their skin.”


A $10,000 grant from the Kellogg Foundation’s Racial Healing Initiative allowed Curtis and the Community Race Relations Coalition to challenge the segregation stronghold.  Jo Welter, owner of Persnickety Tim's and member of the Community Race Relations Coalition, helped secure funding for the project.


The ultimate goal of the initiative is to encourage people to think more critically about racial divisions, and to look for ways to create partnerships and open a dialogue. If participating churches become multiracial as a result, that will be “icing on the cake."


Curtis also hopes the project will yield a tool kit for other organizations.  For example, historically black universities may exchange students with predominantly white ones.

“This will definitely provide an interesting, educational exchange,” she said. “We will document our experiences and provide guidelines for other organizations.”


Curtis enlisted my help to document their journeys via video interviews, a personal blog and Facebook posts. The results should be very interesting. Stay tuned.


For more information, visit: http://newamericamedia.org/2010/05/kellogg-foundation-awards-75m-anti-racism-grant.php

Lariat Article

Changing the face of the congregation

By Jade Mardirosian
Staff Writer

Baylor’s Academy for Leader Development and Civic Engagement is partnering with Waco’s Community Race Relations Coalition on a project that will work toward racial healing in the community through “swapping churches.”

The project is “A Grassroots Approach to Dismantling the Most Segregated Hour in America,” or “Church Swap” for short, and works by having its participants attend a church of their same religious denomination, but of a race other than their own.

Ramona Curtis, director for the Academy for Leader Development and Civic Engagement, is the driving force behind the project, which is being funded by a grant from the Kellogg Foundation.

To read the rest of the article, click this link http://baylorlariat.com/2011/02/02/1990/

Church Swap Orientation

The Church Swap is off to good start. We had an orientation on Feb. 13 to discuss the project with participants. Ramona Curtis led several ice breakers and discussed perceptions people have of other races. Participants range from a Baylor student to high school teachers and retirees. In a discussion about participating in the Church Swap, fears include: being rejected, not dressing properly and having to attend long services. On March 4, the group will go on a Civil Right's tour of various places in the South such as Memphis, Tenn. and Little Rock, Ark.

Ramona Curtis, Jo Welter and I are working on a tool kit to help other organizations and institutions create dialogue among people of all races using a church swap. The tool kit will describe the group's grassroots approach to dismantling the most segregated hour in America -- Sunday morning. Its contents may be modified and adapted to meet each group’s personal needs. Its contents include:

1. Suggested Timeline
2. Sample news releases
3. Facilitator instructions
4. Suggested Civil Rights Tour

We will chronicle this journey and their reactions and keep you posted. Ramona's Interview

Orientation Interviews

Ramona Curtis, Church Swap Director

Lilly Ettinger

Ashley Thornton

Eileen Smith

Kenneth and Rosalyn Anderson

Craig Thornton

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America

By Michael O. Emerson, Christian Smith

From Publishers Weekly

Evangelicals, argue sociologists Emerson and Smith, have gotten serious about racial reconciliation. This, they suggest, is a break from tradition in the 19th century, many white evangelicals supported slavery but then upheld Jim Crow laws through the postwar years. Over the last half century, however, evangelicals have increasingly found racism unpalatable, a transformation culminating, symbolically at least, in the Southern Baptist Convention's 1995 proclamation that it repented for its role in slavery.


Today, the Promise Keepers call for reconciliation, while evangelical theologians and publications explore what reconciliation means. But white evangelicals, though well-meaning, often unwittingly contribute to racism, say the authors. Smith and Emerson explain this seeming contradiction by drawing on Smith's earlier work, in which he argued that evangelicals have a piecemeal approach to social justice: they are inclined to fix immediate problems, such as feeding homeless people at a soup kitchen, rather than address systemic crises such as the unequal distribution of wealth. Smith and Emerson recycle the same argument, tweaked ever so slightly, here.


The tools evangelicals use to combat racism socializing more with members of another race, or integrating churches and racially segregated neighborhoods are well-intentioned but ultimately not adequate to the task of eradicating deeply entrenched racist patterns. This is a valuable critique of evangelical approaches to social change, although those familiar with Smith's previous work will learn little. (June)

Book Synopsis: United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation As an Answer to the Problem of Race

United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation As an Answer to the Problem of Race
By Curtiss DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson , George Yancey, Karen Chai Kim 

Review from Publishers' Weekly

As America grows ever more ethnically diverse, Christian churches remain racially homogeneous. This state of affairs must end, argues this earnest blend of religious moralizing and social science; indeed, church integration is so central both to the Christian mission and to racial equality at large that "the twenty-first century must be the century of multi-racial congregations."

The authors, professors either of sociology or "reconciliation studies," base their claims on theology, church history and sociology. They look back to the diversity and cosmopolitanism of the early Church as a model for contemporary Christians, and trace the legacy of racism and segregation in American churches and attempts to overcome them. Drawing on questionnaires, interviews with church members and leaders, and on-site studies of four racially mixed congregations, they probe both the promise and pitfalls of church integration.

The authors respond to minority critics who value uniracial churches as hothouses for distinctive worship styles, rallying points for activism and refuges from white social hegemony, and stress that integrated churches can and should guard against assimilationist pressures, preserve the unique cultures of all racial groups and cultivate a racially diverse church leadership. They never quite demonstrate the world-historical centrality of racially mixed congregations, and they concede the aura of awkward dutifulness that accompanies self-conscious attempts at church integration, observing that congregations are not truly integrated until all the racial groups feel somewhat uncomfortable in the resulting milieu. Still, the authors make a good case that this is a cross that Christian churches should take up.