Drawing on nearly two years of ethnographic data and 55 qualitative interviews, this book examines the ways in which race, class, gender, and consumption intersect with an urban context to shape the goals, identity, and experiences of a new religious congregation in Chicago. Downtown Church wants to be a church “of” and “for” the city, and wants to accomplish that goal by developing a membership that is young, trendy, sophisticated, and racially diverse. Consequently, the urban environment fosters a particular set of expectations about both cultural consumption and racial diversity—a “racialized urban imaginary”—that shapes the congregation and its self-identity. This imaginary also situates the relationship between race and place as a motivating factor for the types of interracial interaction experienced within this urban-based congregation. Church leaders and congregants negotiate between their imagined ideas of what a church in the city should look like and the structures of inclusion and exclusion these imaginaries help create and recreate. In particular, two notable organizational practices flow from the imaginary. The first, “managed diversity,” is the leadership’s attempt to attract a diverse membership, but keep it within a balance among the groups represented. The second, “racial utility,” involves the conscious and often strategic use of racial identity, by both the leadership and the membership, to accomplish their goals. This work contributes to the growing constellation of studies on urban religious organizations and multiracial congregations, as well as the emerging scholarship on intersectionality and congregational characteristics in American religious life.
Barron, Jessica M. and Rhys H. Williams. 2017. 'The Urban Church Imagined: Religion, Race, and Authenticity in the City'