Customer Reviews

Crossing the Ethnic Divide: The Multiethnic Church on a Mission (American Academy of Religion Academy)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The fact that I happen to be the pastor of the church that Garces-Foley studied for 2.5 years may cause some to think that I am too biased to offer a review. So let's not consider this a review of the book per se but rather a reflection on her writing it.

I accepted her invitation to be the focus of her doctoral dissertation because I actually welcomed a learned look from a literal outsider. Not a Christian (she's a Unitarian), not a member or attender. But also a doctoral student in Sociology of Religion from UCSB. She performed a thorough-going analysis of our efforts to become a more redemptive, reconciled Christian community. I value her conclusions even though we are still a work in progress. Most of all, I find it gratifying that a secular academic could see the value in efforts like ours for the future, not just of churches, but for our nation and its increasingly diverse future.

Using the metaphor of crossing over, Kathleen Garces-Foley engages the reader in the most difficult topics of discourse with regard to becoming a multiethnic church, that of discomfort and the costs of diversity. Garces-Foley asks the question, "Why join a church where they never quite fit in, where people never completely understand them and are sometimes downright offensive?" Following in the footsteps of Emerson and Christerson, who found that the "joy of diversity" sustains and develops successful multiethnic churches, Garces-Foley finds that the boundary crossers see the multiethnic church as reflecting the real world instead of offering an alternative to it.

Garces-Foley's book is a ethnographic study of Evergreen Baptist Church, Los Angeles, under the leadership of Pastor Ken Fong. Evergreen is a church which is 80% Asian American and 20% other. There are two things that are unique about Garces-Foley's book which greatly add to the literature on developing multiethnic churches. One, as the United States slowly approaches a shift in population where whites will no longer be the majority, most of the literature on developing multiethnic churches still reflect black and white constructs of race - Evergreen's story is from the perspective of Asian Americans as the majority ethnic group in the church, and an Asian American Pastor whom after being exposed to racial reconciliation theology chose to take the church with him on the same path. And secondly, Garces-Foley presents an excellent case study for the multiethnic church by unpacking the influence that theologically grounded young people have made in sustaining healthy multiethnic churches. She calls this group of young people the "reconciliation generation" using a term that Brenda Salter McNeil coined in the 1990's. In essence para-church influences played the part of prophet in the shaping of Pastor Ken's theological reflections, the theological foundation of the most prominent adopters of the mission - young people, and towards the mission of Evergreen going forward. These are fresh insights that are absent in books on multiethnic church development that this author has read!

The theological frameworks she unfolds are a theology of discomfort and a theology of racial reconciliation. The reconciliation generation is grounded in movements such as the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. These young people matriculate from college with a high value placed upon diversity learned through a rigorous grounding in biblical justice as expressed in the Minor Prophets. Pastor Fong's emphasis upon diversity and tolerance naturally created a foundation where young people having grown up with diversity as a norm find that Evergreen's values intersect their own. Add to this foundation a theology of discomfort where minor inconveniences of crossing over are reframed in the light of the Gospel, and Garces-Foley concludes that, "multiethnic churches will grow most easily among cosmopolitan, boundary crossing churchgoers, because they experience greater benefits and fewer costs in this setting."

The price of this book might cause you to wonder if it is worth it. It is! Any pastor or church leader who is seriously praying about transitioning their church to one that is mult-ethnically orientated needs to review this reference.