LUCKY SEVERSON: If something seems odd or unusual about these worshippers, maybe it’s the diversity, all the different colors and nationalities of their faces. This is the Wilcrest Baptist Church in Houston, and Pastor Rodney Woo couldn’t be more proud of the cultural and racial mix of his congregation.
Pastor RODNEY WOO (Wilcrest Baptist Church, Houston, TX): I think my main passion is to get people ready for heaven. I think a lot of our people are going to go into culture shock when they get to heaven, and they get to sit next to somebody that they didn’t maybe sit with while they were here on earth. So we’re trying to get them acclimated a little bit.
SEVERSON: Assuming Pastor Woo is right, there are a lot of congregations that need to get acclimated. A recent study found that only 7 percent of churches in the US are integrated. This comes as no surprise to Ohio State sociology professor Korie Edwards, author of the book “The Elusive Dream”.
Professor KORIE EDWARDS (Sociology Department, Ohio State University and Author, “The Elusive Dream”): We’re segregated in housing. Even the job market is segregated, and we end up going to churches with people who look like us.
A commendable goal, especially as racial positions in many ways have hardened – not softened, as expected – since the 70s.
I must admit, I chuckled when I read this from Pastor Woo: “I think my main passion is to get people ready for heaven. I think a lot of our people are going to go into culture shock when they get to heaven, and they get to sit next to somebody that they didn’t maybe sit with while they were here on earth. So we’re trying to get them acclimated a little bit.”
I had just gotten done reading Philippians 3:20, where Paul writes: “For our citizenship is in heaven…”
It seems that Pastor Woo has taken this spiritual reality and, by faith, firmly rooted it in his heart. Apparently, he wants nothing less for his flock. Gods blessings on these men as they attempt to break down the wall of separation between us, and make from the two one new man, as we are so in Christ.
This above is largely politically correct nonsense. That there are people in one congregation whose skins are of different colors has nothing to do with diversity any more. If you go to a college campus and watch the Common, you will see all sorts of colors and dress, but if you listen to them, you will hear more and more homogeneity. And all white congregation can now be more heterogeneous and the more rainbowhue-ed TEC congregation. The issue isn’t, Where do we come from?, but “How and what do we think?” I was in a Boston church not long ago – many a black face therein – but their manner of speech, and the things they thought were all of a piece with the white faces there. At least, from what I heard as they talked together casually after church.
Television, email, cell phones, Youtube, – you name it – have normativeated (just made it up) whole blocks of America. And coming from abroad is no testimonial to diversity. At my son’s graduation from Colby two years ago, the parents came from all over the world and, I kid you not, the all talked about the same things and worshipped at the very same alter of money and status.
Larry