Well, what other institutions in which no government intervention is possible can we compare them to?

1: Blogs?

Like to the family, the neighborhood, and private social clubs. These are all very particularistic, face-to-face institutions. Even the Catholic church with its universalistic claims has trouble integrating specific parishes, which often or usually have specific ethnic, historical, and neighborhood roots.

I can't believe this is considered a difficult question, especially when the "integration" being pondered here is between blacks and whites.

Yeah, my church tried out a program where people would go to local Af-Am churches and they'd send groups of people to our church, but in the end, it ended up sounding like the worst kind of cultural tourism, along the level of Bill O'Reilly eating at Sylvia's in Harlem and being shocked that the other patrons used silverware and didn't throw food.

Should churches be integrated? If so, why?

Considering the ridiculously low barriers to entry of joining or even founding a church and near total lack of regulation, it only takes a tiny preference for segregation to generate completely segregated outcomes. So the real question is, "why isn't racism completely gone from society?" Which is kind of a silly question.

In some cultures throwing food is a way of showing respect. That's all I'm saying.

I don't think it's just "racism" in the obvious sense, although that's there, too. I would say most of the people in my home church were not actually racist in public behavior, beyond a few oldsters. The church has a number of Southeast Asian and Hispanic families, but only one black guy (the husband of a white woman). I think what's actually going on is that one wants to be able to practice one's own religious folkways, and black churches have a very different historical relationship with Christianity and Christian services from white churches. I used to think our church was pretty interactive because a couple of dudes would say "Amen" out loud during the sermons every few weeks or so. White churches, let's face it, have a long cultural history of being pretty quiet and pretty boring. White Baptists look pretty spiritually dead to black Baptists. And that exuberant, participatory relationship to Christianity that one often sees in black churches freaks white people out, as I think we saw in response to the Jeremiah Wright business.

I don't understand why people go to churches of any kind, so I'm kind of at sea here.

I'm not sure purely synchronic explanations are going to be satisfying here.

9 is to say it's not just racism in the sense that white people hate black people. It's that they like black people who act like white people and don't want to recognize that cultural differences (a) exist and (b) are not bad just because they're different from white behavior.

Lutheran churches are the most uptight of all, except that sometime the music is good. Classical, though.

My wife attends a black church in DC, when she attends church at all. I don't go because it's Catholic, and it's church.

The church I grew up in held dual memberships in the Southern Baptist Convention and American Baptist Convention before they left the former when it got taken over by hatewackos. The ABC down here is all black churches, with a tiny smattering of very liberal white congregations, so I attended a fair number of black services and the state conventions as a kid and teenager. As has been noted, the styles of worship are so totally different that it really isn't surprising Sunday morning has stayed segregated.

She brings visiting Germans along. Who, to a person, have found it profoundly moving.

OT: Do sports writers ever refer to striking out the side (KKK) as "joining the Klan" or something like that? Do they have a special little joke for when a black pitcher strikes out the side? And if not, why not?

Complicating the race issue is the fact that churches often unite a community culturally; there used to be plenty of Catholic churches in Pittsburgh that were dominated by a specific immigrant ethnic group, sometimes even having Mass said in a foreign vernacular.

Add to that the race issue, with a history of discrimination and lots of time to develop different congregational styles, and all of that, it's not all that surprising.

9: Also, people are often exposed to religious worship as small children, which seems to fix what worship is supposed to look like in their heads. The older generation at my parents' church was not at all happy with the youth choir having a drum set and an electric guitar, for no reason except "it didn't sound like church."
While people can get past that (there are converts, etc.), I can imagine that if one were searching out a new church, one would probably pick one that looked familiar.

The older generation at my parents' church was not at all happy with the youth choir having a drum set and an electric guitar, for no reason except "it didn't sound like church."

I've been struck by this before -- a lot of the "traditional hymns" in the church I grew up attending seem to date from, more or less, my grandmother's youth. People would fiercely defend them as if the same songs were sung two thousand years ago.

But notice how even young-people-focused white churches "update" church by imitating the folkways of segregated white youth culture. They make the hymns more like castrated white rock music. If anything, the traditional Baptist church is a lot more culturally African-American than the youthy Baptist church, because at least they sing some good gospel tunes.

There is, I admit with sadness and horror, a genre of Christian white rap, which, let me tell you, you really don't want to experience empirically.

The older and country people here sing classical four part harmony, sometimes by Bach or Buxtehude. The Lutheran hymnal is one of the foundations of classical music and I studied some of the hymns when I studied harmony in college. But people here, except for the old farmers, find it too gloomy and serious and now they have a pop service.

I actually attend an integrated church -- it's probably 50/50 Af-Am/white. I've noticed any number of places in the ministries where it can be quite awkward, cross-culturally speaking. Not an explanation for the original segregation, but an indication of the difficulty in the potential solutions.

I guess everyone else has been saying this, but, I think the basic issue is that a lot of churches are still often very closely tied to ethno-cultural groups. I'd also think that residential segregation would play a major role outside of very dense areas.

23: I'm not sure integrated churches are something that requires a solution, at least not a solution independent of other non-churchy integration and social mobility.

Since marriages and funerals are among the most important functions of churches, churches tend to amount to intermarrying groups of families. Whatever other problems people have about intermarriage will affect the church, and not only that, churches add to the problems by favoring marriage within the church. So the insularity is natural.

Our doorbell is rung most regularly by old, black Jehovah's witness ladies and young, white Mormon men. Make of this what you will.

Although one of the Mormon pairs did include a black guy. But that was pretty weird. Had they rung our bell, I would have asked. Or at least wanted to.

21: There's a very interesting book by Andrew Beaujon ("Body Piercing Saved My Life") that looks at all the many and varied manifestations of contemporary Christian music (with a moderately jaded eye, it must be said, though with some real affection for the drive that a lot of its practioners show), and his bit on Christian rappers trying to attract an audience at a Memphis bar was pretty damned funny.

25: I mean solving the segregation issue.

I'm going to guess that the modern megachurch, which is less reliant on neighborhood, ethnicity or denomination is more amenable to integration. However, it also makes it more like going to the mall or some other semi-public community space.

Some megachurches, yes, but a lot of them are class- and exurb-based.

I think I learned less about God in church than I did about my cultural heritage, and weirdly, I even think my parents regard my absence from church as being more about my rejection of white Southern/Midwestern lower-middle class culture than about a rejection of God. I despise having to visit that community because church is where they all go to bitch about intellectuals, brag about their guns, hoot about football, and make fun of their spouses. If all they talked about was the Bible, it wouldn't be so bad.

I learned some good things about "my" culture, too, like that it's good to bring food to people who are sick, and potluck dinners are sort of a hoot.

Megachurches might be less segregated, but that pretense of cultural homogeneity is a little freaky to me. Church is about cultural community, and sometimes even in good ways. Making it about Jesus seems to be missing the point.

This isn't a defense of racism in churches, of course, but I'm just saying if white people, who get to see their culture represented back to them as the dominant paradigm all the time, still hunger for a little "all of us here are the same" moment, it seems obvious why minority groups might feel somewhat protective of church as a place to be among their own.

it's good to bring food to people who are sick, and potluck dinners are sort of a hoot

This doesn't strike me as regional.

The fact that churches remain mostly segregated doesn't surprise me all that much just because of the different styles like AWB talks about in 9, but the thing that bugs/baffles me in the article is the part about interracial dating.

Some scholars and leaders who deal with interracial issues say it's not unusual for parents in racially-mixed churches to leave when their teenage kids begin dating.

Woo saw that exodus at Wilcrest. Some parents talked about the importance of a multiracial church, until their kid became attracted to someone from another race within the church.

Why?

This is an old story. I'm sure there are versions of it in the Old Testament. I'm thinking maybe Jason remarked on Medea's Asian heritage (although her magical powers may have been more important in dumping her -- that goes to the other thread). The Pilgrims had to leave Holland when their sons started dating Dutch girls. My grandmother remarked about how far we'd come as a society when I dated an Irish-American Catholic girl in high school, without scandal. Even when there's no antipathy, there's still tribal recognition. And a concern for tribal identity.

I'd think twice about the Irish Catholic girls, Charley.

I studied some of the hymns when I studied harmony in college

First semester of music theory for me was relentless Schenkerian analysis of Bach chorales. Interesting skill to have, but it would've been nice to move on to something else.

Ours is the most racially diverse Catholic church I've ever been to, but I haven't been going because the music sucks. When you've spent years singing plainchant and Renaissance polyphony, the post-Vatican II stuff is enough to challenge your faith in everything.

You're 30 years too late, my friend. Thirty years, five months and three days. But who's counting?

33: I haven't read the linked article, but I would assume that if it's an interracial church, yet people leave when their kids begin to date, it's not really an interracial church.

Damn, Charley. If I'd been there I could have explained things to you.

My son's circle of friends became more white when he entered HS (9th grade). There seems to be a resegregation at puberty time. It wasn't based on family pressure or any disagreements with his friends. The school tracking system did have something to do with it.

It wasn't even simply more white, but more middle class. In the end he still had about as many Asian friends, but they were different individuals. He'd still say hi to his black friends, but he didn't spend a lot of time with them.

I'm on the list as a very occasional back-up drummer for a local Methodist "alternative" service. They cut me a modest check, and we play what amounts to a light-rock or light-jazz "Yay Bible" or "Yay Jesus" set of tunes in a song-heavy service.

I tend to walk away with a sort of "oh, shucks, that was pleasant" feeling and then feel like a dick for minimizing whatever's really supposed to be going on.

I have no idea what to make of these feelings.

Although I did it a lot, I never liked singing solos in church. When I was really doing it for God, I was unnerved by how much the response from the congregation seemed to be about me and my abilities, not about what I was trying to communicate. And when I started taking singing seriously and God less so, I was disturbed by how the congregation would tell me that God was speaking through me to them or whatever. Either way, it was a weird and very uneasy position to be in. Unfortunately, now I can't visit my parents' church without people pulling me aside to scold me for not having become a professional singer, like Jesus obviously wanted. How does one respond to a comment like that?

How does one respond to a comment like that?

I'm glad you know what God's plan is for the universe and all that inhabit it.

OK, that would be a snarky response. But their lack of humility, and their sheer busy-bodiness, would grate on me.

42: What about "Jesus wanted me to stab you in the head too. I guess you're pretty glad I didn't listen to him on that one."

42: I'm thinking that I'm A-OK with community gatherings; they're great! It's the God part that squicks me, and it's not A-OK to say that sort of thing in contemporary political discourse.

My standard response was something like, "Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it, but I don't really have professional-level ability or the inclination to pursue that lifestyle." Accusing your audience of having bad enough taste to be moved by your mediocrity isn't the nicest thing to say, but I don't like being told what Jesus thinks of me.

Hmmm. Use their own terms.

I haven't felt called to pursue that life.

What called means to each person here is different. No need to explain that to them.

AWB. Back in 31 you said two things that seemed at odds. I probably misread but here they are. What am I missing?

If all they talked about was the Bible, it wouldn't be so bad.

Church is about cultural community, and sometimes even in good ways. Making it about Jesus seems to be missing the point.

You seem to be chastising them for not being Bible-oriented (christian version) and then saying that church shouldn't be that.

I have genuinely conflicted feelings about the church. I didn't intend to contradict myself, but I go back and forth between thinking church should be about Bible study and thinking it should be about community. The first is an idealistic fantasy held over from my days as an actual believer, and the latter a practical fantasy from my life as a secular liberal. With religion in general, I wrestle with these conflicting ideas, and, since I teach at a religious college now, they come up a lot.

My church is about 35% old white people and half white liberals. They are starting up an antiracism task force. Make of that what you will.

Actually there's a decent number of black people, but they're mostly recent African immigrants and not African Americans.

There too one runs into problems. There's a big enough group of Nigerians that they have their own fellowship along with other Nigerian Christians in the greater Boston area.

I have a friend whose mother was from Louisiana, but whose Dad is Nigerian. When his grandmother was in town, he was saying how nice it was to be able to speak his own language. I asked him why he didn't ever go to the Nigerian fellowship. He said, "Totally different tribes. I don't speak the language that they speak."

First semester of music theory for me was relentless Schenkerian analysis of Bach chorales.

You took my honey's class?

I mean solving the segregation issue.

Me, too. I guess the way I'd put it is that the fact that churches are segregated says something about the state of American society, but due to the fact that it's not all that hard to switch churches, and that they incorporate many generations at once, and people join them sometimes just because their parents did, that it would not surprise me at all if churches lagged behind the rest of the country in integration.

I have genuinely conflicted feelings about the church.

Thank you. I don't think you were contradicting yourself as much as showing different facets. I don't have a problem with church (for the most part) but I often feel strongly at odds with myself about family.

Was Schenker a crank or what?:

Schenker's primary theoretic aims were to prove the superiority of German music of the common practice period (especially the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Franz Josef Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Johannes Brahms) over more modern music such as that of Richard Wagner, Igor Stravinsky, and Arnold Schoenberg, and to show that most of the established music theory teaching of the time, with an emphasis on the theories of his contemporary Hugo Riemann, was misleading and useless for an understanding of the "masterworks.

"Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it, but I don't really have professional-level ability or the inclination to pursue that lifestyle."

Maybe "Look what happened to poor Janis Joplin" would work.

Maybe "Look what happened to poor Janis Joplin" would work.

"Look what happened to Amy Grant" would be more effective with this crowd.

White church.

What happened to Amy Grant? I'm imagining crack addiction, multiple failed rehabs, doomed relationships with crazy people--oh, wait, that's that other Amy.

57: She went (shudder) secular.

She went (shudder) secular.

Hasn't she basically gone back now? And brought Vince Gill with her.

Like Aretha!

I just remember that, back when I was in 6th-7th grade and getting into Ice-T and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, my church friends were all shitting themselves because Amy Grant had a secular hit in "Baby Baby," having deep, soul-searching, tearful discussions about how far she'd fallen, whether she was still going to Heaven, and if this was going to be the thing that lead many young Christians into atheism. My family was, AFAIK, the only one at our church that listened to secular music at all.

This shows the power of grad school. When I was an undergraduate, I was interested in Schenkerian analysis. I talked to one of my fellow who was a major classical music fan about it. She thought Schenkerian analysis sounded stupid. Years later, after I had decided that while it was intellectually appealing that it lacked any kind of real explanatory power, I ran into her after she had started music grad school -- she had been completely converted to the cause.

my church friends were all shitting themselves because Amy Grant had a secular hit in "Baby Baby," having deep, soul-searching, tearful discussions about how far she'd fallen, whether she was still going to Heaven, and if this was going to be the thing that lead many young Christians into atheism.

Man, I grew up in an Evangelical church in the churchiest State in the Union (per capita) and this sounds screwed up even to me.

There's also this to consider.