Something that has been bothering me lately is realizing how divided the American church is—and not just denominational or doctrinal divisions, but actual, deep-rooted divisions of fellowship as well. Sunday is the most segregated day of the week in the United States. Because of the marketplace of ideas, I think people tend to flock to congregations full of people who think, act, and behave more or less exactly the same. On top of that, there seems to be a lot of social pressure on people who don't "fit the mold" to either conform to the group culture or be subject to judgment (usually in the form of weird looks or discomfort projected from other churchgoers). One church will be full of mid-to-high class white people who mainly vote Republican. The next church will be all poor people. The next church will be some segregated ethnic minority. And none of these churches will have any meaningful interaction with one another, even if there are general areas of theological overlap. I've noticed this especially in Anglicanism, sadly. Most of the Anglican congregations I've visited—ACNA and Continuing—are physically located in neighborhoods that are ethnically diverse and less wealthy, and yet 95% of the church members are white homeowners. What do we do to heal the division in the American church? I know for a fact that it does not need to be like this, because I've been abroad to other cultures where there is not as much division from parish to parish. Should clergy reach out to neighboring Christian ministries and establish some lines of interaction and inter-fellowship? Should congregants mindfully visit other churches and build relationships with people who are culturally very different than themselves? How can we possibly expect to seek "unity" in the institutional Church from the top down when we don't practice basic fellowship with our fellow Christians?
Excellent question! I wish I had an excellent answer. I've moved around a lot and visited any number of Episcopal/ Anglican parishes. And I agree, they tended to be highly homogenous along racial and socio-economic lines. (I will say that was not the case at the Cathedral in Denver I attended once. It was very diverse and inclusive of all types of people) I remember attending my first RC service and being aghast at the amazing diversity in the congregation. Young and old, rich and poor, and all races and ethnicities. It was truly beautiful. I assume the answer is evangelism and outreach but I don't know what secret sauce will make the congregations more diverse.
It takes nothing less than The Holy Spirit to turn an exclusive religious members club into a proper church. Without the freedom the Spirit brings, from uniformity, convention and pious religiosity, all there is, is a rather unholy huddle. A clubhouse faithfully purveying their favourite flavour of religion to its regular, loyal customers. .
My experience has been similar to this. All the Episcopal parishes I have attended have been reasonably diverse (and all have been very welcoming and friendly), but that diversity usually paled in comparison to what I often saw in Catholic parishes in the same areas. At the same time, I have typically found it far more difficult to “get to know the parish” in the Catholic settings as opposed to the Anglican ones. The Catholic parishes often felt more like a collection of disparate sub-groups that just happened to be in one place while the Episcopal parishes felt more like united congregations with overlapping social, vocational, and family networks. In other words, the Episcopal parishes felt more like a genuine community. So perhaps that greater diversity I often observed in the Catholic parishes comes with certain costs. But I want to stress that these are just anecdotal observations on my part. I mean no criticism of either Catholic or Anglican churchgoers and would be interested to hear from those who have engaged in a more empirical study of the issue.
Unfortunately this matches my own experience, and there are reasons for it. Catholic parishes are diverse largely because they are made up of multiple somewhat insular groups that gather in the same place but don't really culturally overlap. The Spanish-speaking congregants, the Vietnamese, Filipino, etc. all come primarily from immigrant sub-cultures from formerly colonial Catholic nations, and the wealthier (and whiter) congregants are often quite intentionally self-segregated and even judgmental of the poorer (and less white) congregants. I've experienced these issues first hand. But, getting people to at least gather together is not a bad thing. I'd say it is a step in the right direction toward unifying otherwise segregated cultures.
People are people. They are a bit like birds. Sparrows don't hang around with crows, and eagles won't flock with geese. People will feel most comfortable around others who are like themselves. It's human nature. But so what? Birds are all birds, and Christians are all Christians. A wide variety of congregations and even of denominations is not necessarily a bad thing, so long as one group sees the next group as fellow followers of Jesus Christ. High church Anglicans are still in fellowship with low church Anglicans (we are united in Christ). Presbyterians are still united in Christ with Baptists, Methodists, etc. (The exceptions of course are the cults, the so-called "churches" who do not teach the true Gospel of salvation by grace alone and only through faith in Jesus' propitiation for our sins.)
I think this misses the mark. We can not ever expect to see full unity in the institutional church. We simply must accept the fact that the institutional church is a worldly shadow of the true spiritual Church of all spiritually-regenerated followers of Jesus Christ. All such Christians are united in Christ, even if we have disagreements about various tangential things. The only way we'd ever see institutional unity is if we were all turned into automatons and programmed to think alike.
One thing that we should necessarily think alike upon is this: If a human being, male or female, black or white, free or slave, deaf, blind or otherwise disabled, rich or poor, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox or Southern States Baptist - comes to our church to fellowship with other Christians, they should be made welcome and accepted in Christ as a fellow servant of The Lord. No matter how strange they and their ways may seem to the rest of us, at least until we have valid reason to doubt their sincerity in the faith. .
I do understand and appreciate your point, and at the same time it's something I think we need to be cautious about. The Jews self-segregated from the Gentiles in the early church, and Paul publicly rebuked Peter for going along with it. I think Tiffy has the right idea here. There is some good in having separate congregations for people who need a space to feel culturally safe. It is not good when we haven't learned or practiced how to genuinely invite, welcome, and fellowship with people of different backgrounds in our own churches, and it is outright bad when judgment or discomfort is added to the mix!
I agree, and please don't get me wrong. We do want to welcome everyone who shows up at the door, and we want to invite people regardless of their socioeconomic or ethnic background. But what I'm saying is, people make their own choices and we can't force them to do what they don't want to do. People simply prefer and choose to associate with the denoms or congregations they associate with. And that is why a variety of different congregations is good: it gives people choices, so they can find something they're comfortable with.
I know next to nothing about American "churchyness" but could Catholic churches appear more diverse because there are less of them and their catchment areas are more larger.
Actually, Catholicism is the largest religious organization in America by membership, by far. (The next largest is the Southern Baptist Convention, which the Catholic Church dwarfs by about a factor of 4.) Even in parts of the country where Catholicism is definitely not the plurality of churchgoers, they punch several notches above their weight, in that they have churches (and schools!) everywhere. This is in stark contrast to the Eastern Orthodox (of which there are about the same number in the U.S. as there are Episcopalians, who, like the Catholics, have no shortage of schools).
The Catholics are rapidly attempting to undermine their own organization logistically. I'm not going to say anything about the culture changes and the bloviations of the leadership, only about the way the dioceses are being administered. For example, I live in the diocese of Columbus. The bishop recently announced a large slate of parish closures. All of them were either immigrant churches that don't pay their bills or small country churches where the priests don't want to live or really even go. Nowhere was this more stark than Perry County, which went from 6 to 2 according to the plan. The majority of the Catholics in the county are now expected to drive 12-20 miles to attend Mass. I have found that driving 12-20 miles to shop or go to the county offices or a nicer restaurant or bowling is tolerated as a necessity to the rural life. But suddenly it becomes arduous and burdensome when it's time to go to church.
Your statement rings true for the places that I have lived in my 70-plus years of existence. The town in which my parents lived, while I roamed the world, had but one Roman Catholic Church and five Lutheran churches of various branches. The RCC had a parish membership about equal to that of the five Lutheran churches. Some of the Lutheran churches were ecumenical in their presentation in the community and some were very strict in NOT being able to worship with others.
That's interesting news. Of course, the Catholics who actually go to Mass regularly will (despite grumbling) undoubtedly drive the extra miles, because they have been taught it's a mortal sin (that can send them to hell) to miss Sunday Mass. So it's a financial win to close those other parishes; they won't lose much attendance or tithes.
My point was that it might not be the case any longer that they will suck it up and make the drive. Perhaps 30% of Catholics actually believe the teachings of the church. The Mass obligation is perhaps stronger than any impetus for attendance in a Protestant context but it is not a monolith anymore. No doubt, the 5 year statistics will reveal much. I have a colleague who worked for the RC Archdiocese of Detroit for several years and he says parish consolidations never worked. The spike in attendance at the proposed new parish was statistically negligible most of the time. He speculated that most of the uprooted people simply stopped going to church, at least a Catholic church.
I suppose you're right. Many of them are 'Catholic in Name Only.' I've read that more than half of US Catholics take a memorialist view of their Communion nowadays, which I find amazing.