Mainline Protestants

One out of 7 American twentysomethings affiliate with a Mainline denomination, and 33% of Mainline Protestant twentysomethings attend worship a couple of times monthly or more. Drawing from ethnographies of an arts-focused multiracial church, a small emerging church, and a Midwestern family church, this chapter describes why and how religiously active “Mainliners” seek out these church communities. Through analysis of in-depth interviews, it identifies what draws them to church when so many of their peers are wary of churches and what kinds of churches appeal to religiously active Mainliners. This chapter also describes the distinctive strategies deployed by Mainline congregations to attract young adults and how these differ in urban and Midwestern contexts. Then the chapter turns to results from our national survey of twentysomethings and applies the Active, Nominal, and Estranged typology to examine the religious, spiritual, and secular lives of Mainliner twentysomethings.

Racial Reconciliation as a Suppressive Frame in Evangelical Multiracial Churches

ABSTRACT This article analyzes interviews with evangelical multiracial church pastors from the Religious Leadership and Diversity Project (RLDP), drawing on the framing literature from social movements. While a small number of evangelical pastors in the sample utilize a racial justice frame to understand and address racial issues, consistent with prior research, the data indicates that most evangelical multiracial church pastors use a racial reconciliation frame. This frame holds that racial conflict can be eliminated through shared faith, which allows churches to avoid politics and prioritize internal unity. However, findings reveal that the racial reconciliation can function as a suppressive frame that precludes discussions about racial inequality and discourages collective action to promote racial justice. The article discusses the implications of this for social change and cross-racial solidarity.

Doing Identity: Power and the Reproduction of Collective Identity in Racially Diverse Congregations

Congregational identity formation is a challenge for any head clergy. It is particularly challenging for head clergy of racially and ethnically diverse congregations as these leaders occupy positions uniquely situated for destabilizing or instantiating racial hierarchies. Drawing upon the Religious Leadership and Diversity Project (RLDP), this article examines multiracial church pastors’ stories of how they achieve ethnic and racial inclusion in their congregations. We pay particular attention to how these leaders reference and draw upon four contestable cultural worship elements—language, ritual, dance, and music—that operate as primary terrain for collective identity construction. Integrating theories on identity, race, ethnicity, and culture, we take a realistic context-sensitive approach to the nature of how worship works as a bridge, recognizing that cultural markers are not neutral but can simultaneously activate ethno-specific identities in racially and ethnically diverse spaces, instantiating hierarchies of value and thus making worship a potential barrier to the formation of a unified diverse community.

Estranged Pioneers: The Case of African American and Asian American Multiracial Church Pastors

This article draws upon 121 in-depth interviews from the Religious Leadership and Diversity Project (RLDP)—a nationwide study of leadership of multiracial religious organizations in the United States—to examine what it means for African American and Asian American pastors to head multiracial churches. We argue that African American and Asian American pastors of multiracial churches are estranged pioneers. They have to leave the familiar to explore a new way of doing church, but their endeavors are not valued by their home religious communities. African American pastors face challenges to their authenticity as black religious leaders for leading multiracial congregations. Asian American pastors experience a sense of ambiguity that stems from a lack of clarity about what it means for them to lead multiracial congregations as Asian Americans. Yet, despite differences in how they experience this alienation, both are left to navigate a racialized society where they are perceived and treated as inferior to their white peers, which has profound personal and social implications for them.

Bridging Racial Change: Political Orientations in the United States Evangelical Multiracial Church Movement

Recent years have witnessed the rise of a multiracial church (MRC) movement in American evangelicalism. Leaders of this movement articulate a “biblical mandate”-based mission for breaking patterns of racial homogeneity in pursuit of more diverse, egalitarian, and vibrant churches. While participants are passionate about what they see as a powerful racial change effort in their religious communities, they express a variety of orientations about the potential political implications of faith-based MRC-building. Drawing from interview-based research inside MRC settings, I find that most participants are nervously interested in applying their framework to political contexts, while a minority articulates a more politicized justice orientation, and others are confused or actively resistant. The movement's political reluctance is instructive of the understudied dynamics between race and religion, especially in theologically conservative churches. In social capital terms, the “bonding” incentives of MRC settings by definition require difficult kinds of “bridging,” or reaching across deep historical and identity-based differences, in order to create trust-based networks where they have not existed. When successful, however, such networks can open new paths to race-related political engagement.