In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. famously declared that “11 o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week … And the Sunday school is still the most segregated school.”
Surveys from 2007 show that fewer than 8% of American congregations have a significant racial mix. But in some churches, the racial divide is beginning to erode, and it is fading fastest in one of American religion’s most conservative precincts: evangelical Christianity.
According to Michael Emerson, a specialist on race and faith at Rice University, the proportion of American churches with 20% or more minority participation has languished at about 7.5% for the past nine years. But among evangelical churches with attendance of 1,000 people or more, the slice has more than quadrupled, from 6% in 1998 to 25% in 2007. Some of the country’s largest churches are involved: the very biggest, Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Community Church in Houston (43,500 members), is split evenly among blacks, Hispanics and a category containing whites and Asians. Bill Hybels’ Willow Creek is at 20% minority. Such rapid change in such big institution “blows my mind,” says Emerson.
David Campbell, a political scientist at Notre Dame studying the trend, says that “if tens of millions of Americans start sharing faith across racial boundaries, it could be one of the final steps transcending race as our great divider”—and it could help smooth America’s transition into a truly rainbow nation.
