Sep
19

is the emerging church racist? – can we talk?

can we talk? can we talk about issues of race and racism. or is that too taboo for the emerging church? whenever i have raised this in conversation with emerging church folks i invariably get at least one person usually more saying that is "too much for the emerging church to handle right now." "too big to tackle at this point." most of the books out on the emerging church never address this huge sin in our world. so can we talk? or is this subject off limits? if so what does that mean for the emerging church? dj chung raises some interesting thoughts about being able to speak freely (blog) on touchy issues like racism in the church. robert upton raises some questions worth exploring in his book racism @work among the lord’s people for those of us seeking to faithfully follow jesus in the emerging culture. the folks over a kingdom space also have some thoughtful comments on the subject so can we talk? even if the words are "loaded" because we can’t afford not to. if we don’t we run the risk of becoming irrelevant to the majority populations of the world.

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Posted by Andre Daley emerging church Subscribe to RSS feed

3 Responses to “is the emerging church racist? – can we talk?”

  1. caddywampus says:
    October 22, 2005 at 3:35 pm

    I think this is a very valid question and one that needs to be asked more often- we don’t need to wait to think about what we as American Christians can do to change the atmosphere about race – true community is one that embraces diversity and I think that the lack of dialoge about race in churches that claim to be “community focused” is a window into their view of community

  2. scott says:
    March 20, 2006 at 5:17 pm

    Greetings,
    I am a pastor who is really Emergent minded and I’m curious at the situation you mentioned.
    I think that “racism” is a topic that the emergent church, or any church for that matter should be able to discuss because it’s a part of life. It hits us where we live.
    I think that the reason many emergent books do not tackle the issue is that is not their focus. They are strictly dealing with the weighty issues of the Church’s ability to communicate the Gospel to a radically changing culture.

  3. Andre Daley says:
    March 28, 2006 at 9:02 am

    Scott,

    Thanks for the comment. I agree with you on the focus of the emerging church. But part of that radically changing culture is an massive increase in racial diversity. So we can’t avoid talking about it. McLaren says that it just ins’ acted on.

    http://www.andredaley.com/2006.....emergence/ 

    Trying to avoid it seems to express some kind of unintentional racism on the part of the movement

    andre