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The Color of American Evangelicalsim

American religion is by far the most fascinating topic I have come across. Sure politics is interesting (but pointless), technology never ceases to amaze me (how much technology do we really need? LOTS! This very post is built on the backs of thousands of technology slaves!), sporting events consistently have my attention even though I could care less (go Sabres! wait, I have yet to watch a game), but nothing grabs my attention more than the good, bad, and the ugly of American religion, especially Christianity, and more specifically Evangelical Christianity.

Broad and sweeping statements never get anybody anywhere. As a matter of fact, life is so complicated and so chaotic that anybody who dares generalize anything at all has forgotten that the color wheel produces thousands of shades and hues. That's why Baptists and Republicans have it all wrong in their logical theories of life's non-complexity! FREE MARKET REIGNS! (Not an over-generalization, in case you were wondering).

So, against my own view and understanding of life I will overstate, generalize, and create a picture of American religion with only 1 of the 1000 crayons in my crayola box. And its the most pointless color, I assure you!

The phenomenon of Evangelicalism is enough for one person to devote an entire lifetime and never fully grasp the evolving amorphous mass of shape-shifters and trans-mutants. That's the great thing about American religion! It's always changing, yet it seems to stay the same in one particular category.

You see, diversity seemingly reigns in the American Evangelical church. You have Emergents, Emergings, Seeker-Sentive, Traditional, Contemporary, Cowboy, etc, etc, etc. The culture of American religion has learned that in whatever state it is, therewith to never be content. In this, I commend the Evangelical Church. In order to grow you can't live in the past, you must continually rethink, relive, and recreate in your time. The past is just that, the past. It's gone and can't always be relied upon. The future is all there is, and the future is bright, because the possibilities are endless.

Nonetheless it is a diversity in its function and form, but rarely in the followers.

At this juncture I am more interested in the color of American Evangelicalism, which just so happens to be the color of my skin and the most worthless color in the crayola box! Seriously, when do you ever need a white crayon?

We pretend our sentiments are toward diversity. Yet, one only has to go visit the average Bible, Community, Non-denominational, American church on Sunday morning. On Sunday morning, segregation is reborn. Sure the same is also true for "black" churches or the "Asian" churches, but when was the last time you heard of a predominately suburban (white) evangelical church attempting to coordinate its efforts with predominantly urban (black or Hispanic) evangelical churches? Like I said, broad and sweeping statements are unhelpful. Surely these efforts exist, but let's be real with ourselves. Racial diversity is still a thing of the future in the American Evangelical Church.

In our Evangelical churches everything from the music, the politics, the "talks", the dress, the social attitudes and atmosphere, the programs, the coffee, all the way down to the gospel can be described as typical white-American cultural sentiment. The USA is known as the "melting-pot" of the world, but the American Evangelical Church did not follow suite. Just about the only thing in which we are diversified is our factions and fractures and fissures. We can't agree on the color of the drum set, but we can agree that the general hue of the congregations glare should reflect light fairly well.

Maybe this commentary is only testimony to the fact that I have well-versed my American church experience only in Victorian English-ness. That's probably more true than I realize, but I have been around the home of the free and brave long enough to know that I typically run into Jack and Jill or John and Jane in the Evangelical church, but rarely do I ever shake hands with Hector and Maria or Tyrone and Nyesha. How can this whiteness be attributed to the movement of the Spirit in our land?

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