Americans may be poised to nominate a black man to run for president, but it's segregation as usual in U.S. churches, according to the scholars. Only about 5 percent of the nation's churches are racially integrated, and half of them are in the process of becoming all-black or all-white, says Curtiss Paul DeYoung, co-author of "United by Faith," a book that examines interracial churches in the United States.''
So then 95 percent of churches are de facto segregated. That means that people of both or all races choose to worship amongst their own.
Does this fit with the repeated depiction of Christianity as a hotbed of multiculturalism and liberal ideas?
We can explain this by saying that the church leadership, with all their politically correct prattle, do not represent the majority of Christians in America, or alternatively -- and this is the CNN/liberal viewpoint, 'we still have a long way to go; Christians are racists like everybody else in a racist society.'
The writers deliver the standard PC liberal explanation that the church was always meant to be 'diverse and inclusive.'
They point to the New Testament description of the first Christian church as an ethnic stew -- it deliberately broke social divisions by uniting groups that were traditionally hostile to one another, they say.
DeYoung, the "United by Faith" co-author, says the first-century Christian church grew so rapidly precisely because it was so inclusive. He says the church inspired wonder because its leaders were able to form a community that cut across the rigid class and ethnic divisions that characterized the ancient Roman world.
"People said that if Jews, Greeks, Africans, slaves, men and women - the huge divides of that time period -- could come together successfully, there must be something to this religion," DeYoung says.''
This is a misrepresentation of church history. It's all in the book of Acts.
Now, I would ask: if the early church truly recognized no racial and sexual differences, why have the divisions and the categories not all blended away by now? Have Christians got it all wrong for 2000 years, and suddenly, just now, understood it aright? According to the multiculturalists, apparently so. I suppose Heaven will be standing empty until our enlightened generation shows up to populate it.
The criticisms that some on the right make against Christianity are certainly not true of past generations of Christians, who were certainly not against racial and national distinctions, or against maintaining boundaries which they took as God-given. We can be one 'in Christ' and still preserve boundaries, national and racial identities.
And though it's obvious that past generations of Christians did not practice today's politically correct policies, I've been inclined to concede that today's Christians are guilty as charged -- but according to the statistics, which trouble CNN so, the churches are not being as 'diverse and inclusive' as the apostate leadership would have us be. The CNN article is probably a sign that a new propaganda onslaught is on the way. Watch for the crypto-liberal 'emergent church' people to start crusading against 'racism and hate' in the church, and pushing for more integration of churches.
What next? Bussing of worshippers along racial lines?
