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In Divided by Faith: Evangelicals and the Problem of Race in America (2000), sociologists Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith argued that much of the racial dysfunction in the American church today is the result of an individualized theological worldview that blinds white evangelicals to certain societal injustices. The book's shocking assertion stirred debate and became a paradigm-shifting read for many evangelical leaders.

Three years later, Emerson teamed with fellow sociologists Karen Chai Kim and George Yancey and with theologian Curtiss Paul DeYoung to write a sequel, United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race (Oxford, 2003). The team—who define a multiracial church as "a congregation in which no one racial group accounts for 80 percent or more of the membership"—did an intensive, three-year study that included 2,500 phone interviews, written surveys taken by 500 congregations, and firsthand observations of churches in four diverse metropolitan areas.

Again, the authors provide a compelling challenge, and intensify their call, which they argue is a biblical one, for more churches to become multiracial.

In this issue, we condense and excerpt their biblical argument, listen to four pastors respond to their thesis, and tell how one Arkansas congregation lives out its multicultural calling.

The nation's racial landscape is vividly changing. According to the 2000 Census, people of color as a percentage of the United States population have more than doubled to 31 percent since 1960, and the growth of non-Europeans is expected to continue at an accelerated rate. In just the last 20 years (1980 to 2000), the African American population grew by nearly 30 percent, the Native American population by 75 percent, the Latino population by 142 percent, and the Asian American population by 185 percent. In absolute numbers, the United States had well over 35 million more people of color in 2000 than it did in 1980. This is more people than lived in the entire United States during the Civil War period of the early 1860s.

Race, as it always has, plays a significant part in the lives of people living in the United States. It shapes where people live and whom they live with, where people send their children to school, with whom they can most easily become friends, their likelihood of having access to wealth and health, whom they marry, how they think about themselves, and their cultural tastes. Race also shapes how people value others, how much they trust others, provides quick stereotypes by which to classify people, and shapes fears of crime. As Cornel West succinctly puts it, "Race matters."

For many of these reasons, race matters in where one worships. The nation's religious congregations have long been highly racially segregated. If we define a racially mixed congregation as one in which no one racial group is 80 percent or more of the congregation, just 7.5 percent of the more than 300,000 religious congregations in the United States are racially mixed. For Christian congregations, which form more than 90 percent of congregations in the United States, the share that is racially mixed drops to 5.5 percent. Of this small percentage, approximately half of the congregations are mixed only temporarily, during the time they are in transition from one group to another.

The explosion of racial and ethnic diversity in the United States has introduced dramatic tensions within faith communities. How should they respond to a pluralistic society? What should congregations look like racially? Does considering the racial composition of congregations sidetrack faith communities from more important religious matters? Given the current and historical racial context of the United States, are certain racial and ethnic communities best served by having their own congregations?

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April 2005, Vol. 49, No. 4