KIM LAWTON, anchor: A tense national debate about racial profiling has continued since Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was arrested in his Cambridge home for disorderly conduct. Gates, who is African-American, was arrested by Sergeant James Crowley, a white officer who had responded to a 9-11 call about a possible break-in. The controversy intensified when President Obama said the police “acted stupidly” when they arrested Gates. The president later said he regretted his choice of words and he hosted both Gates and Crowley at the White House Thursday for a conciliatory beer. The incident and the ensuing debate show how divisive racial issues can be in this country. Even though America has elected its first black president, efforts toward racial integration are often still fraught with difficulties, not least in churches where it’s been said that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week. Lucky Severson reports.
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.”
I love traditional anglican blogs, but I ‘ve noticed a disturbing pattern, whenever there is exploratory, non -controversial article about race, there are never any comments. I get the feeling that most traditional Anglicans assume that conservative religious doctrines and values are wedded to conservative political and social policies.
Interesting that you should raise that, Boniface. I’ve lately had a closely related reflection: One of my concerns over the past few years is how much the blog discourse on Anglican tensions resembles political speech in American political blogs. The quality of discussion, while occasionally elevated, is generally very raw. One often sees a great deal of very harsh language, rank overstatement, misleadingly charged characterization (or mischaracterization) of motives or intent, and a not infrequent tone of grotesque and ill-willed descriptors of fellow Christians. (a classic illustration, one of thousands from both sides, was a wire service story at Stand Firm about some disturbed human of no attributed religious affiliation who was arrested for having sexual relations with animals. It was posted up under a headline suggesting that such perversion was a future focus of Episcopal outreach).
A lot of this is the same kind of nastiness that one sees in some of the political blogs from one end or other of the American political spectrum. (It also very closely tracks the dynamics of the public discourse between the North and South in the United States running up to the secession decisions of 1860 – 1861). I wonder whether it is the medium that leads to this or whether it is more a comment on an essential meanness of the universal human condition. The simultaneous distance and intimacy of this form of communication, being able to communicate in near real time with virtually anyone, anywhere on any subject, even perfect strangers, but not being close enough physically for them to bash your brains out with a club if they don’t like the cut of your jib, perhaps brings out the worst in many of us, even within the Christian community. If there was a group within humanity that had slipped these surly bonds, one would think it was the group that has received the Good News, even imperfectly.