Show me a major city that has a significant African-American population, and I’ll show you a school called “Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary (or Middle or High) School.” Its students will be nearly, or 100 percent, African-American. Wasn’t MLK promoting racial integration?
Show me a denomination that has spoken prophetically against race hatred, against apartheid, against segregation, and against all kinds of social injustice, and I’ll show you any one of thousands of Presbyterian churches, where nearly 100 percent of each congregation’s members come from the same race. Aren’t we promoting racial integration?
In his recently released book, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, author and educator Jonathan Kozol says that America has gone from desegregation to re-segregation. Walls set up by the power of the law came down only to be replaced by walls set up by social and economic class distinctions. Result: Our schools are more segregated in 2005 than at any time since 1968.
The Presbyterian Church has taken some baby steps toward greater racial diversity, in pursuit of a goal to have 10 percent of our members come from non-western European races by 2010. But the operative term here remains “baby steps.” We have much further to go.
Why should we care?
Many church consultants will tell you that the best way to grow a church and the best hope for reaching multitudes with the gospel is to choose a narrow slice of the local population and strive to draw in that one group. “Don’t worry about the rest. Others will reach them,” they say. Donald McGavran, the father of the church growth movement, coined the term, “homogeneous unit theory,” to summarize this practical evangelistic model. Frankly, many folks are being won over to a genuine relationship with Christ through such efforts. Who can fault those who have reached so many? Someone should.
Such efforts fall short of the vision of the church painted in the New Testament. Jesus, a Palestinian Jew, was destined to fulfill God’s commission to Abram to be a blessing to all nations, in particular to be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” as well as “for glory to [God’s] people Israel.” Sure enough, he often broke out of the familiar circle of Jewish fellowship to love Samaritans and Gentiles, all the while testifying that the world would know we are his disciples by our love for one another. He knew that it would take a miracle for us to love folks so unlike ourselves!
That vision and mission bore fruit “when the day of Pentecost was fully come.” The ascended Savior sent the Holy Spirit upon the first believers, and folks from most known nations and people groups all heard the praises of God in their own tongues. The Pentecost vision triggered an international mission, with believers reaching beyond their own cultural forms and languages, in order to present the claims of Christ to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Can we possibly catch that vision today? Can a new Pentecost set our hearts aflame to proclaim the gospel, and to show the gospel’s power to folks from families unlike our own?
Most all of us resist the call to befriend strangers. Most of us resist programs that turn persons into projects. Something dehumanizing arises out of such noble causes. But something must be done. As we often hear, the eleventh hour on the first day of the week is the most segregated hour in America. That will change only when believers of goodwill determine to change their ways.
One thing we can say for sure. If we do nothing, then nothing will get done. In the name of Martin Luther King Jr., in the name of the recently departed Rosa Parks, in the name of Presbyterians with social-justice passions and of Presbyterians with evangelistic fervor, in the name of Jesus, let’s take more than just a few baby steps.
