Transcending Racial Barriers: Toward a Mutual Obligations Approach

by Michael O. Emerson

In our earlier work on multiracial congregations (DeYoung et al. 2003), we noted that many majority-group Christians adhered to the idea of homogeneous church growth. Homogeneous church growth is a perspective which says that churches should focus on attracting just one racial or ethnic group, because doing so will lead to faster growth than trying to attract a broader variety of people. Pragmatically, advocates of this perspective argue that because the church leadership is able to concentrate on meeting the needs of only that particular racial or ethnic group, people will feel more valued and cared for. This provides a nonracist religious argument that it is best for people of different races to stay with their own group rather than make an extraordinary effort to bring those of various groups together.4

Yancy empirically shows that multi ethnic churches grow more