Even in an era of mass immigration that has produced suburban tamale shops alongside halal meat markets and created a market for television programming in Hindi and Arabic, places of worship remain bastions of racial and ethnic uniformity. And that makes the case of one brick church in Springfield particularly remarkable.
On a recent Sunday morning at the Word of Life Assembly of God Church, pink-cheeked Virginia native David Gorman skipped in a conga line in Swahili Sunday school while a Kenyan preacher played an accordion and a Singaporean woman led jubilant hymns. Filipinos analyzed Bible passages in a classroom.
Later, as the Sierra Leonean choir prepared to perform in the sanctuary, D. Wendel Cover, the folksy white pastor, listed the nations of the world and asked worshipers to stand when they heard their homelands.
He seemed a bit dismayed to find just 80 represented.
“Our country’s becoming more international,” Cover, 73, said in an interview. He has led the formerly majority-white Pentecostal church for three decades. “The next generation is going to be American. If the church doesn’t realize that, they’re going to lose a whole generation.”
Frankly, it sounds ghastly. But I’ve yet to succumb to the shame of being a straight white male of European descent. Maybe if the media keeps working on me the guilt will overwhelm to the point I will embrace somebody else’s culture and style of worship, even though it has virtually nothing to do with my own heritage or interests.
People from all nations, worshipping the Lord together in diverse languages, joined in solid Christian faith —
if that sounds ghastly to you, are you sure you want to go to Heaven? 😉
Well, if heaven is a happy-clappy Pentecostal tent revival then maybe not.