Multiethnic mix: a model of congregational diversity?

Christian Century, July 26, 2005 by R. Stephen Warner

ETHNIC PARTICULARISM, in the official form of admissions procedures and ethnic studies programs and the unofficial form of students' seating choices in the cafeteria and the library, is a powerful force in American universities. It's also a powerful force in American Christianity. I've spent a lot of time recently studying the manifestations of that particularism as it takes shape in congregations that serve Mexican Americans, Korean Americans, Indian Americans or some other immigrant group.

That's what makes the church Gerardo Marti writes about a precious anomaly: it has no racial majority but has roughly equal numbers of Hispanics, Asians and whites, along with a few African Americans.

Mosaic is the name of this 60-year-old Southern Baptist congregation in Los Angeles which at the time of writing (Marti says the church is constantly changing) consisted of over 2,000 mostly single young adults of every imaginable color who come, together every week for one or more of several multisensory services in a variety of rented spaces, including a downtown nightclub. Allied congregations exist in Berkeley, Seattle and New York, and missionaries from the congregation are all over the world. The senior pastor is Erwin Rafael McManus, a native of El Salvador, who is the author of An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God Had in Mind (Group Publishing) and Seizing Your Divine Moment (Nelson Books).

Marti is a sociologist and clergyman who was a member of Mosaic's pastoral staff while he was researching his dissertation on the church. He obviously believes in what the church and its pastor are doing. His task is not to defend Mosaic but to explain how it can exist.

As Marti sees it, the key to building a congregation of people from diverse, often alienated ethnic backgrounds is to appeal to them in ways that trump their differences. The bulk of the book consists of chapter-long analyses of five such appeals, called "havens."

Mosaic first of all offers a "theological haven," by which Marti means that Mosaic affirms orthodox beliefs, albeit in unconventional and decidedly non-Calvinist ways. The church's "artistic haven" attracts people on the creative edge--painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers, actors, filmmakers--of the kind who gravitate to Hollywood. The church is also an "innovator haven," Marti says--"a refuge for people who in other churches have been called mavericks, rebels or freaks." Marti's reference to the church as an "age haven" is a way of saying that the church attracts single, childless young adults.

Finally, the. "ethnic haven" is the church's appeal to second- and third-generation progeny of Los Angeles's huge and diverse immigrant population. Insofar as American culture is more media-driven, more edgy and more youthful with every passing year, and Americans themselves less likely to derive from European stock, Marti sees Mosaic as a model, perhaps the model, for churches that are viable and faithful.

The concept of havens is the theoretical key to Mosaic's astounding internal diversity. A church of its sort must offer things that appeal to people across the boundaries of their differences. Yet for Mosaic, no single haven is sufficient. Each haven shelters some of Mosaic's people but deters others. While some are drawn to alternative forms of worship, others are put off by them, finding them "wild," "unbiblical," even cultlike.

The attention the church gives to the arts appeals to Hollywood people, but it makes others feel inadequate. The stress on innovation excites some but wearies others.

R. Stephen Warner teaches sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A collection of his essays, some of which originally appeared in the CENTURY, will be published in September under the title A Church of Our Own: Disestablishment and Diversity in American Religion (Rutgers University Press). The appeal to youth makes some older people feel unwanted. The diverse "ethnic haven" draws in those who have had enough of their parents' and grandparents' immigrant churches but repels those who are committed to their ethnic and racial identities. Each haven represents not only something appealing but also a refuge from something--it's a place to dispose of negative baggage.

This two-edged dynamic is particularly true regarding the theological and ethnic dimensions of the church--a complication of the argument that Marti could have spent more time on. Those who are drawn to the church's unconventional but theologically conservative worship are evangelicals turned off by the dry, boring, narrow, judgmental churches of their upbringing. The second- and third-generation immigrant youth who are drawn by Mosaic's multiethnic profile are those who, unlike their parents, do not speak with an accent and are not competent in their ancestral culture, do not experience discomfort around Americans of other races and may be dating across racial lines, and do not confine themselves to old-country music but express themselves in terms of American popular culture. Marti makes it obvious that the proximity to Hollywood is a special ingredient in the Mosaic mix, but he does not sufficiently stress that the church's demographic dependence on the Angeleno nexus of conservative Protestantism and immigrant cultures may limit its applicability as a general model.