Divided by Faith

Short Review: A sociological look at why the Evangelical church is racially divided. I would probably rate this as a five star book if it weren't so dated. At this point it is nearly 20 years old and the data it cites is even older.

Even dated, it is still helpful and I understand why it is so commonly recommended. Two parts I think are particularly dated. One, the chapter on history I think is too simple and too easy for White christians to assume they would be ‘on the right side of history'. The reality is that as Noll and many others have suggested, most of us would not have been on the right side of history with regard to racial segregation or slavery.

The second very dated part of the book is the exploration of the racial reconciliation efforts in the Evangelical church in the mid to late 1990s. Most of those efforts quietly faded, if not crashed and burned. Even from close look of 2000, Emerson and Smith suggest that a significant part of the decline of Promise Keepers should be attributed to their very public focus on racial reconciliation. And I wonder about that now as some new movements of evangelicals are starting to take a more public stand around racial issues and running up against similar problems of apathy and ignorance.

What I think helps to make this a good introduction to racial issues is the academic detachment. Emerson and Smith focus on ‘racialized practices' and not ‘racism'. Many whites want to separate themselves from racism because they view racism as an individualized activity and not a corporate reality. I think it is likely that churches are slightly more racially integrated today than the data suggests from 2000, but that starting point was so low that it would be difficult to become more racially isolated.

One of the insights that I hadn't really thought about was that Evangelicals are particularly racially isolated because of their commitment to the church. Evangelicals go to church more, have more friend and family groups rooted in the church and have less community involvement or volunteering outside of the church that non-Evangelicals. That does not require active racism to be racially isolated. But it will require active change to overcome.

My full review (nearly 1500 words) is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/divided-by-faith/