From Deseret News archives:
Breaking down racial barriers
U.S. churches rarely have this kind of ethnic mix. But that's changing. Researchers who study race and religion say Grace Chapel is among a vanguard of megachurches that are breaking down racial barriers in American Christianity, altering the long-segregated landscape of Sunday worship.
"Megachurches as a whole are significantly better than other congregations at holding together multiracial, multiethnic congregations," said Scott Thumma, an expert on megachurches and a professor at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. "It's absolutely clear."
A study by Thumma and the Leadership Network, a Dallas group that works with pioneering churches, found that minorities make up 20 percent or more of worshippers in nearly one-third of the nation's 1,200 megachurches. More than half of the megachurches say they are intentionally working to attract different ethnic groups, according to the 2005 study, part of a book that Thumma and network executive Dave Travis will publish in July.
The question now is whether the new diversity is just a fad or a permanent shift.
Still, megachurches are trendsetters, and the change they've made is startling considering nearly all other American churches serve one ethnic group. Even churches with a large number of immigrants generally have separate English and non-English services. For black and white Christians, pre-Civil War church support for slavery and the general absence of white evangelicals from the civil-rights movement continue to drive the two groups apart.
Most megachurches don't carry that historical burden; nearly all have been built since the 1970s and play down any ties to a denomination.
But that's not the main attraction.
Researchers have found that whites and nonwhites join megachurches for the same reasons: great guitar-and-drum worship bands, strong programs for kids and a message of Bible-based self-betterment. For anyone who feels isolated in a sea of white faces, the small communal groups that megachurches form for their members provide support.
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