TY - JOUR
AU - Edwards, Korie, L
AB - Abstract Congregational identity formation is a challenge for any head clergy. It is particularly challenging for head clergy of racially and ethnically diverse congregations as these leaders occupy positions uniquely situated for destabilizing or instantiating racial hierarchies. Drawing upon the Religious Leadership and Diversity Project (RLDP), this article examines multiracial church pastors’ stories of how they achieve ethnic and racial inclusion in their congregations. We pay particular attention to how these leaders reference and draw upon four contestable cultural worship elements—language, ritual, dance, and music—that operate as primary terrain for collective identity construction. Integrating theories on identity, race, ethnicity, and culture, we take a realistic context-sensitive approach to the nature of how worship works as a bridge, recognizing that cultural markers are not neutral but can simultaneously activate ethno-specific identities in racially and ethnically diverse spaces, instantiating hierarchies of value and thus making worship a potential barrier to the formation of a unified diverse community. INTRODUCTION Pastor Mack, dressed in a plaid shirt and neat slacks, called out to me (the lead author) with a friendly wave. He walked toward me from the manse across the lush landscaped lawns dotted with statuary and Stations of the Cross, his playful black Lab gamboling alongside. This middle-aged white priest leads a diverse suburban parish just inside the metro ring of a Midwestern city. As he walked into the basement church office with his Lab and me in tow, he easily greeted the older African American security guard, connected with the busy Latina executive assistant, and chatted in Spanish with a young mom and her child. Upstairs was a somewhat small, plain sanctuary and a large adjacent wing of classrooms filled with racially and ethnically diverse youth and adults working toward their high school diplomas. This not-for-profit degree completion program is unaffiliated with the church, but its rental of church space provides continuing education to the community and extra funds for the cash-strapped parish. A majority of Pastor Mack’s parishioners are recent and poorer immigrants. On any given Sunday, Pastor Mack delivers his homily simultaneously in English and Spanish, even though it requires time-intensive preparation and is somewhat cumbersome for him and his worshippers. The bilingual worship represents an effort to build bridges in a congregation with cultural and linguistic divides. Pastor Mack constantly negotiates a new collective identity for his church, readily altering practices some congregants find more culturally comfortable than others with the purpose of fostering inclusion. He intentionally utilizes sacred symbols and space to bridge various cultural practices associated with the different racial and ethnic groups in the church. In person, and with respect to his parish’s population, Pastor Mack seems to genuinely welcome people—“no matter color/race, culture, creed, or class” (his words)—into loving and appreciative community. But such an approach comes with challenges. Pastor Mack’s case, although specific to his context and experience, is a reality many pastors face as they lead racially and ethnically diverse congregations. They have to affirm their congregants and build equalitarian community in the context of worship, a space that is very significant and sacred for Christian communities. Yet, in racially and ethnically diverse space, achieving these two aims can be quite difficult. Pastors are charged with the delicate task of fostering a collective identity that bonds people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds while also remaining sensitive to congregants’ sense of “specialness” attached to culturally specific worship. The added challenge is that worship practices in the United States are not only important for ethnic identity construction (e.g., Warner and Wittner 1998), they are also highly racialized (e.g., see Christerson et al. 2005; Edwards 2008b,, 2009; Marti 2012; Priest and Priest 2008). While the efforts of some leaders, such as those of Pastor Mack, may work to destabilize racial hierarchies in racially diverse worship contexts, other pastors may engage in efforts that can very well instantiate them. In this article, we address how head clergy of multiracial congregations aim to cultivate collective, inclusive identity in racially and ethnically diverse worship space. We focus on these church pastors’ accounts of how they use worship, in particular, to do so. Previous work addressing the role of worship in the formation of racially and ethnically diverse churches has developed typologies of worship practice to indicate the various forms of racial integration present in diverse congregations (Emerson and Woo 2006); examined how worship rituals are used as a racial reconciliation strategy (Garces-Foley 2007); or investigated how ritual and music act as means for ethnic transcendency (Marti 2005, 2012). These approaches have assumed worship can work to support religious identities that will “allow for the existence and continued survival of multiracial religious congregations” (Edwards et al. 2013:224). On the other hand, the literature addressing the worship of racially diverse churches also indicates that the patterns of the larger “racialized society are replicated within religious congregations” (Edwards et al. 2013:224). This can be seen, for example, in the kinds of music and songs selected for worship services, the structure of worship services, and who leads in worship services (Barron 2016; Edwards 2008b; Priest and Priest 2007). We extend work addressing worship in multiracial congregations by integrating scholarship on race, ethnicity, and culture to propose an emergent theoretical framework for understanding collective identity formation through the negotiation of worship in racially and ethnically diverse religious settings. Group affiliations and collective identities are fundamental to people’s sense of who they are (Tajfel 1981, 1982; Tajfel and Turner 1979). In the United States, race and ethnicity are collective identities particularly salient to people’s sense of self and their life outcomes (Bonilla-Silva 1997; Omi and Winant 1994; Reskin 2012). Moreover, culture is used to demarcate racial and ethnic boundaries (Jenkins 1994; Nagel 1994). Race, ethnicity, and culture together then are critically important for explicating collective identity formation in an American context. Additionally, “organizational identification is a specific form of social identification” and, as such, can provide the same sorts of benefits for individuals as do groups, including connection, purpose, and empowerment (Ashforth and Mael 1989: 22). The organization, or for our purposes here, the religious organization, if it is to be effective as an organization and generate a sense of satisfaction and engagement, will cultivate a congregational identity. Indeed, one could argue that the answer to the question “Who am I?” is more paramount for religious organizations than secular ones, as most religions claim to possess a transcendent answer to this question. Conflict in how members’ understand what the organizational identity should be and how it ought to be embodied will emerge (Ashforth and Mael 1989). For congregations, head clergy are the ones most responsible for resolving these conflicts and fostering an overarching identity for their congregants. In racially and ethnically diverse churches, this can be quite challenging (Edwards 2014). Thus, attention must be paid to how head clergy navigate the critical intersection of race, ethnicity, and culture and the extent to which their leadership ameliorates or disrupts inclusive, collective identity in congregations. Drawing upon the stories of head clergy in the Religious Leadership and Diversity Project (RLDP), we look at how a diverse sample of multiracial church pastors reference four cultural terrains—language, ritual, dance, and music—when discussing how they negotiate inclusive, collective identity formation in their congregations. The language chosen for worship is an obvious expression of communal cultural identity and signals a very tangible example of inclusion as full participation in Christian worship demands fluency in the language used in worship. Ritual is a worship-specific sequenced action indicative of particular, often ethnic, identities (e.g., Santo Niño festivals, black history services, denomination-specific weekly liturgical formats). Music is a quintessentially vital, yet culturally specific toolkit by which churches create their worship identity. We consider dance any movement of the body in either formal or informal choreography. We focus on these cultural terrains because they consistently emerged in the interviews as primary spaces where the pastors worked to create inclusive, collective congregational identity. This is not surprising as language (e.g., Smitherman 1986; Warner and Wittner 1998) ritual (e.g., Mitchell 2006, 2016; Nelson 2004), music (e.g., Warner 2008; Warner and Heider 2010) and dance (e.g., Nelson 1996; Wax and Wax 1978) matter for religious worship generally. Furthermore, not only are these terrains salient for most religious groups, and particularly Christian worshipping organizations, but boundaries of “us” and “them” are marked by the worship “ways” selected for regular practice. Previous work has highlighted how music (e.g., Barron 2016; Edwards 2008a; Marti 2012), ritual (e.g., Garces-Foley 2007; Marti 2005, 2012) and dance (Edwards 2008b) increase in salience in multiracial churches as competing understandings of what constitutes proper worship emerge in this context. The dilemmas, strategies, constraints, and achievements told by the religious leaders in this study inform an understanding of the role of culture and power in collective identity formation and the potential for building truly integrated multiracial congregations. DIVERSE CHURCHES AND WORSHIP Historically, Christians in the United States have segregated along racial and ethnic lines. While the earliest Protestant revivals included both black and white converts and preachers, separation occurred early (Marty 1984). However, multiracial congregations have increased considerably in recent decades (Edwards et al. 2013). With this increase, a commensurate research agenda has emerged to examine multiracial congregations (see, e.g., Christerson et al. 2005; DeYoung et al. 2003; Edwards 2008a; Emerson and Woo 2006; Garces-Foley 2007; Howell 2007; Priest and Priest 2007; Marti 2005, 2012). Several of these works have addressed the role of worship and its centrality to people’s connectedness (often strained connectedness) to the congregation (e.g., Edwards 2008b; Howell 2007; Marti 2012; Priest and Priest 2007). Worship matters for many reasons sociologically, perhaps most critically because it is a collective experience. It is in the presence of others who worship as we do where not only a sense of the sacred is achieved, but a sense of a “we” is formed. As congregants “tune” to one another, especially in musical modes, the physiological experience produces an experience of effervescence and togetherness (Warner 2008; Warner and Heider 2010). Congregants experience sacred community and, while doing so, participate in collective identity formation. When this works, participants see the experience as constitutive of “good worship.” What is constitutive of “good worship,” however, is ethnic-specific (Howell 2007; Khalsa 2017; McGlathery and Griffin 2007; Nelson 2004; Priest 2007; Priest and Priest 2007). People can more easily get in “tune” with one another, generate a sense of the sacred together, and reinforce a collective identity when they are in worship spaces with people who are like them ethnically (Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000; Warner and Wittner 1998). When people in ethnically homogeneous contexts engage in worship practices, they are selecting cultural elements that reinforce a sense of who they are religiously and ethnically because to do religion is to do ethnicity. Take, for example, music. Music is a universal means by which modern day Christians worship. However, music is not used to worship in the same way across Christian congregations. If we could listen to the worship services of churches across the United States on any given Sunday, we would find the music to vary considerably, in style, rhythm, instrumentation, and sound. And, the observed differences would in many ways be due to the ethnicity of congregants. The reason people in ethnically homogeneous worship settings can more easily achieve sacred community and experience “good worship” is because the people present know the rules of worship. They affirm the rules as well. Therein lies the challenge with racially and ethnically diverse congregations. A sense of a collective is requisite for worship in congregational settings as it is accomplished together. When there are people present who do not quite grasp or agree with the practiced rules of proper worship, as is quite likely in diverse space, cohesion is disrupted, a sense of the sacred is hindered, and collective identity formation is difficult if not impossible. This is because people in the space are not in “tune” with the rules of worship and thus one another. Moreover, negative value judgments about the worship practices of the “other” group in the congregation often surface (see Edwards 2008b:64–5; Howell 2007; Khalsa 2017; Priest and Priest 2008) making worship even more challenging. One may discover, as did sociologist Tim Nelson, that the “spirit” is missing in such situations (Nelson 1996:390). THEORIZING ETHNICITY AND RACE IN THE MULTIRACIAL WORSHIP SITE Worship is more than cultural practices: it is an expression of identity. As such, worship involves a complex set of beliefs and behaviors that are quite specific (praxis), deeply felt (body hexis), and in many cases, generally out of awareness (habitus) (Bourdieu 1977). These cultural practices, be they aesthetic, linguistic, or other, are deeply held markers of differentiation between not only “me” and you” but “us” and “them”—and they are lodged in shared memory tied to communities both real and imagined (Anderson 1983). Because identities are always in flux, they are produced and reproduced by the group and the individual through social interaction (Barth 1969; Cockburn 1998; Eriksen 2001; Jenkins 1994). What’s more is collective identities are juxtaposed against other collective identities. It is not simply enough to say who we are. Groups also define their identity by asserting who they are not. In other words, certain cultural practices are embraced while others are avoided. Both actions are done to create connection and reinforce group boundaries (Branscombe et al. 1993; Brewer 1993; Dovidio et al. 1998). The challenge then for pastors of racially and ethnically diverse congregations is that one of the most sacred spaces for Christian congregations to create community—worship services—is also the space where ethnic-specific markers denoting difference can be activated through social interaction. People may be interacting with co-ethnics who, when together, are accustomed to engaging in certain kinds of cultural practices that are deployed to communicate a collective identity and create a sense of togetherness. And, at the same time, people may be interacting with other people who are seen as the out-group against which their ethnic group defines who they are. Scholarship has addressed how collective identity is managed in multiracial congregations. One way of doing collective identity in racially and ethnically diverse congregations is by regularly affirming a superordinate identity, like “Christian,” that supersedes (or ought to supersede) in importance other identities like race or ethnicity (e.g., Marti 2005, 2008a; Stanczak 2006). An alternative view is that race, as a macro-level structure, informs the structure and culture of congregations (e.g., Edwards 2008a, 2008b,, 2009), interfering with the capacity for multiracial religious organizations and their leaders to forge a truly collective identity. This article builds on the latter approach. It aims to locate where and how head clergy manage collective identity in racially and ethnically diverse sacred spaces, where value assessments are made, and cultural symbols become the resources competed for within delimited space/time (Alexander 1988; Blu 1980; Hale 2004; Jenkins 1994). This is not to say that leaders are always self-aware of the contestation over symbols (e.g., which worship songs/language get preference in Sunday service). As Emerson and Smith (2000) point out in their national study of evangelical Christians, long-standing racial history inflects religion itself—the very way Christians encounter the world. Thus, even when Christians affirm the same tenets of faith, unity is extremely difficult because one’s racial identity and experience impact how one also envisions the proper steps needed to create a better world here and now (e.g., cultural, economic, and political strategies). Some scholars may argue that too much attention to ethnocultural epiphenomena will divert scholarly energy from the real business at hand: material resource distribution. That is, by paying attention to culture and identity, we overlook how subordinate ethnic and racial group members receive fewer resources than dominant group members when in diverse spaces. We agree that this is critically important when examining leadership of racially and ethnically diverse spaces. However, social psychology has long recognized the importance of ethnic identity (cf. Hale 2004: 463ff; Tatum 2017). It is unhelpful, in our view, to ignore the persistence of strongly held “groupness” or social identities like race and ethnicity. Race and ethnicity can be deeply felt at a personal subjective level. They become more salient in intergroup contexts, particularly when there is a potential for competition over resources, including symbolic ones. We also assert it is unhelpful to decontextualize ethnicity by ignoring race. Cornell and Hartmann’s (2007) conceptualizations of race and ethnicity inform our understanding of how ethnicity and race intersect. Their articulation highlights why complex social dynamics can arise in racially and ethnically diverse congregations and provides a dual frame to make sense of the contexts that leaders of these organizations are engaging. Diverse Christian worship is illuminated, then, by: the race frame’s focus on social systems and transnational processes with the ethnicity frame’s focus on localized group formation and agency; the race frame’s more subtle and complex analysis of the power embedded in social systems and culture with the ethnicity frame’s concern with the felt power of supposedly primordial identities and communities; and the race frame’s emphasis on the racialization of social systems and culture with the ethnicity frame’s emphasis on how such things are locally experienced, challenged, and sometimes transformed. (Cornell and Hartmann 2007:105) This conceptualization recognizes that race is fundamentally about power. It is a macro-level system that denotes superiority and inferiority and assigns social groups’ levels of worthiness according to phenotypic characteristics. Ethnicity persists at a more intimate level of social organization than race. Ethnic identities are asserted in culturally expressive ways, marked by particularly salient markers. That is, language, music, art, foods, cultural practices, shared histories, and aesthetic judgments, can become marked as “very important” aspects of one’s shared cultural experience and thus constitutive of one’s ethnic identity. However, race, because it is pervasive, constrains and informs ethnicity. Extending these conceptualizations, race necessarily infers what is understood to be normative or deviant in a diverse space, including ethno-religious cultural practices. These practices are ranked hierarchically according to the race of the ethnic group. The ethnic practices of people who are members of the dominant racial group are assumed to be normative. The ethnic practices of people who are members of subordinate groups are assumed to be particular and different and, therefore, deviant.1 The worship service is the primary space where ethno-religious cultural practices are enacted. The practices are constructed through culturally specific modalities. It can hardly be otherwise. Take, for example, singing together which is a common practice in Christian worship services. To sing together involves tuning to one another in physiological alignment (see Warner’s work 2008, 2010). Marti (2012) highlights the vital role of music within the multiracial congregation specifically. Both Warner and Marti celebrate the potential solidarity that can derive from music done together. We want to note that it is important to problematize assumptions that can undergird analysis of music in multiracial contexts. Too often generalized descriptions and assessments of “style” obscure the sociocultural and racially inflected nuances of interaction that either “bridge” or “block” diverse worship community formation (Edwards 2008b; Pitt 2010). For example, Priest and Priest (2007), in their study of an interracial church merger, show that white members assumed authority over music in the church by relying upon dominant assumptions about what is normative culture. The consequence of this move was African Americans’ sense of belonging and connection diminished. They responded to this in different ways. Some of the African American congregants simply withdrew. Others counted the cost and assimilated. Still, others resisted—insisting on the inclusion of African American worship identity. The point here is ethnic-specific worship practices matter tremendously for the religious community and collective identity. In racially diverse space, race becomes a particularly salient factor in determining if and how ethnic-specific worship practices are done. By focusing on the stories and discourse of multiracial church pastors who use worship to try and achieve equalitarian community in their congregations, we provide a front seat view on how leaders understand, assess and negotiate culture, race, and ethnicity to achieve collective identity within a racially and ethnically diverse religious context. METHODOLOGY This study draws upon 121 interviews with head clergy of racially and ethnically diverse churches from the Religious Leadership and Diversity Project (RLDP).2,3 The RLDP is a national, multimethod study that aims to address the role of the multiracial church pastor in the United States (see Edwards forthcoming). The racial composition of the head clergy in the study is 19% African American, 13% Asian American, 5% LatinX, 2% Biracial, and 61% white. Ninety percent of the head clergy in the study are men. As for religious affiliation, 48% are conservative Protestant, 34% are mainline Protestant, and 18% are Catholic. A substantial proportion (27%) of the congregations of pastors in the study is large, having at least 750 congregants. The modal congregation is medium sized (150–749) making up 45% of the congregations represented in the sample. The remaining 29% have less than 150 congregants. Finally, the congregations are located in 12 metropolitan areas and are almost equally split across the four major U.S. regions: 27% South, 25% Midwest, 23% West Coast, and 25% Northeast.4 Of course, each congregation had its specific nuances of membership diversity, geographic location, size, and leadership demographic. We consider these in our analyses. RLDP interview protocol included questions on personal identity experiences and congregational experiences with regard to race and ethnicity. More than a quarter of the open-ended questions invited leaders’ to reflect on identity issues relevant to this article’s analysis. Interviewers also wrote up extensive field notes on the interview and the interview site, which was usually the participant’s church. This provided perspective on the interview context and often the church space. The RLDP pastoral interviews were coded for cultural specificity (e.g., Spanish language, Quinceañeras, worship music, etc.) connected to identity negotiation. We highlight the complex work of “identity making” in a context of different racial and ethnic peoples where negotiating the infusion of race and ethnicity is an inevitable component of this process. We pay attention to how these leaders reference and draw upon various worship elements that operate as primary terrain where markers of racial and ethnic identity are constructed and established in churches. We examine how worship elements are selected (or deselected) and given meaning by pastors of racially and ethnically diverse churches in an effort to affirm people’s sense of self and build a sense of community in a diverse congregation. Along the way, we pay attention to how they navigate racial and ethnic identity, recognizing that in churches the salient symbols that provide the cultural tools necessary for worship cluster around ethno-specific praxis in language, ritual (worship events/service), dance (bodily worship movement), and music (instrumentation/song choices/rhythms/volume). NEGOTIATING IDENTITY IN DIVERSE SPACE Pastor Mack’s Story Pastor Mack grew up in a nearby all-white rural area, save the town’s one Filipino doctor. He struggled with Spanish in high school but continued to study the language in seminary and now works to polish this skill. He pays for staff to take Spanish classes if they are not native speakers. Because the sanctuary is small, he conducts five masses: two Spanish, two bi-lingual, and one English. He admits that everything he does takes twice as long because he translates the homilies and prints weekly missals in Spanish, English, and parallel translation so his English speakers can learn Spanish as they sing the liturgy. He explains: “I always dabbled in it [Spanish] but never got to the point where I could carry a conversation . . . so that happened really in the practice of working and living in the parish.” At Pastor Mack’s previous metro parish, he was fascinated that Germans had historically been the immigrant congregation, and they had done everything in their ethnic language for generations—both during Mass and in the Catholic school affiliated with the parish. He related that when a woman in his current parish, who had a master’s degree, complained “why they don’t just learn English,” he explained his answer this way: “If it was so easy,” I said, “Why can’t you just learn Spanish?” Pastor Mack then went on to explain his strategic pedagogy: And so you know [I’m] trying to teach people, to get them [not] to erase their own past, because if we all look far enough into our past—why did our immigrant families come here? …We didn’t come here speaking English…. We have to learn it over several generations. Empathy and flexibility, as evidenced by his inclusive perspective on language, are core to Pastor Mack’s approach. While another priest in the RLDP used money from the offering to pay for an usher to shoo lively Latino children back into the service, Pastor Mack emphasizes that cultural differences like arriving late and allowing children to run about, or helping people celebrate Quinceañeras (an important rite of passage for 15-year-old girls), are just part of diverse church life in a community with lots of large Latino families. He wants the congregation to know: “We have to care for each other. We have to. We have to not see this as ‘those are those kids’.” Another way Pastor Mack aims to build community is by empowering his Latina secretary to actively broker for resources on behalf of the Spanish-speaking congregants. And when some members wished to travel to a remote Latin American region that desperately needed encouragement and outreach, Pastor Mack acquiesced and joined the intrepid organizers. Even though Pastor Mack sometimes feels a sense of loneliness within his call, he also experiences deep satisfaction—caring for both the resistant and the stigmatized as he reconfigures the sacred space and its boundary markers to intentionally include culturally salient elements of his minority congregants. In Pastor Mack’s case, it is the new Latino immigrant community that has affected the life of the parish in significant ways. We can see how Pastor Mack strategically works on identity formation, and how he reflects on the historic German ethnic parish as similar to his own, using it as a pedagogical device for his English-speaking parishioner. Pastor Mack has made extensive changes to his own Anglo-English identity, recognizing such change is required if an Anglo-English parish is to become truly a diverse interethnic community that does not assert the power of its preexisting language services, religio-cultural practices, and styles of interaction. Additionally, Pastor Mack is explicitly aware of how poverty, race, and class are issues to which he must attend. Although he sometimes feels loneliness inherent to leadership in a setting with racial and ethnic divides, his experience is not nearly as fraught as that of pastors of color in the RLDP sample (see Edwards and Kim this volume). For the sake of space, not every leader/case can be fully examined. Therefore, we reduce our analytical focus to theoretically relevant examples which demonstrate how salient cultural worship constitutive of identity is negotiated and formed along terrains of language, ritual, dance, and music. Which “ideal sacred symbols” are selected or deselected within the delimited space of church and Sunday services has implications for intergroup relations and potential racialization and will be discussed within each section. Language Language is a significant marker of group identity. When a congregation has multiple distinct languages, pastors have to make choices, and many churches in our sample simply split their services to address this diversity. Out of 121 RLDP churches, 33 conducted split services. A large majority of those were split to accommodate Spanish speakers (25). Nine congregations had a separate service to accommodate their Asian members, and one Catholic parish conducted a separate black gospel mass. Two churches conducted separate services in three different languages. In these cases, “thick” ethnicity,5 which comprehensively organizes social life, manifests in the form of a culturally specific worship “language” and divides congregational space along specific ethnic identity lines. One conservative Protestant church was entrepreneurial in its strategy, systematically funneling visitors at the 11:00 am hour to one of the multiple culture- and language-specific groups simultaneously worshipping within the same large building, yet in separate spaces. A white conservative Protestant pastor helped many such small ethnic-religious communities acquire their 501c3 thus encouraging culture-specific groups to maintain their ethnic boundedness, never intending these groups to form one worshipping community. This church model follows the popular homogenous unit principle commonly promoted by Evangelical seminary leaders who taught that church growth hinged on homogeneity, not diversity (McGavran 1970). Other Protestant and Catholic leaders in the RLDP took a different path. They worked very hard to create worship services and liturgies that incorporated the languages of all the people, having multiple translations projected on the screens in the sanctuary or providing translation. There was a sense that “owning” linguistic “space” within a single diverse service was an important corporate worship practice. Within diverse church settings, particularly those with new immigrants, English should not be ignored as an ethnic option. Scholars of ethnicity encourage us to recognize “hidden ethnicities,” of which Anglo culture, or as some scholars suggest, “whiteness,” can be a taken-for-granted dominant identity (Cornell and Hartmann 2007; Doane 1997:88–9). Certainly, the RLDP showed that the majority of interracial and interethnic churches worship in English as the most common ethnic option. However, when new immigrants arrive, worship-related decisions pose a unique challenge for pastoral leaders who shape their church identity. By uprooting English-only as the language of sacred communication in Sunday worship, the pastor signals a new diverse identity for what was often a historically Anglo congregation. In Pastor Mack’s case, Spanish speakers were also able to use the bilingual missal if they wanted to learn English during worship. In many ways, language is the most straightforward “ethnic” marker to be negotiated in a diverse church. As a “thick” identity marker it is analytically obvious that one would need to learn the vocabulary, grammar, and verb conjugations necessary for cross-cultural communication. Historically, Catholic and Protestant leaders planning to go outside the United States as Christian missionaries were the leaders most likely to pursue linguistics and cross-cultural studies. There was a recognition that such tools and training would be necessary to bridge boundaries well. However, many of today’s leaders of diverse churches do not necessarily view themselves as “foreign missionaries” with a need to get such education. When we saw leaders in the RLDP who did have exceptional ability to navigate ethnolinguistic boundaries, this was because they were unusually motivated to acquire cultural and language training as an adult and/or were proactive for Civil Rights. But for other leaders, it was through primary socialization that they acquired the cultural and linguistic competencies that allowed for fluent code-switching between vernaculars (Alim and Smitherman 2012; Smitherman 1986). In either case, such cultural and linguistic skills were important contributors to pastoral success in ethnically and racially diverse churches (see Okuwobi in this volume). Ritual Pastor Lucas, an Anglo priest, faced a unique racial/ethnic boundary challenge within his West Coast multiethnic/multiracial parish composed of Anglos and various Asian groups. He found that Cantonese looked down on Mandarins, and the younger generation, in general, was happy to leave the elderly congregants behind to attend English mass. Pastor Lucas, who was strongly influenced by experiences in the Civil Rights era and had availed himself of the rich local Asian Center resources, decided to foster connection across these divides. Using the New Year’s holiday, an annual pan-Asian celebration, he carefully managed this challenge. He explains: So we started out really with Chinese New Year because … you have the Mass, but then at the end of Mass you have the ceremonial tribute to the ancestors, and we build a shrine in the sanctuary, and you offer … music, incense, flowers and wine to the ancestors and then the prayer is … “A dutiful son and daughter am I. I must at this time of the year pay homage … express my gratitude to my ancestors, to my parents”…. It’s a beautiful ceremony. And then we go down to the auditorium and have a big Chinese New Year luncheon. This ritual of salient ethnic values solidified intragroup social ties. Pastor Lucas also moved the small Chinese mass from the basement to the upstairs sanctuary—despite how tight this change made the Sunday schedule. He believed this “dignified” their worship and gave them “ownership” of the sacred sanctuary space. As an important side benefit, diverse groups “rubbed shoulders” and joined one another to eat a delicious Chinese luncheon afterward each Sunday. A conservative Protestant Anglo leader, Pastor Aaron, recognized the presence of many different immigrants in his neighborhood and chose to use ethnic markers of language to transform his congregation. Through a survey, he found there were six different language groups, and he asked the various community members how they would translate “BBQ.” With this knowledge, he created a flyer with all six words emblazoned on the invitation and sent it out. He then incorporated these multiple languages into the worship services as immigrant neighbors became co-worshipers on Sunday mornings. Overruling complaints, he instituted multilingual worship choruses sung simultaneously. Headsets for translation were also made available. By strategically placing “markers” of multiple ethnic identities within the sacred multicultural space of Sunday services, the pastor proactively validated all of them together. Black history month is a nationally designated time to carve out ethno-racial “space” and build relational bridges and diverse identities in institutions not normally attentive to African American culture. A white Midwest Mainline leader, Pastor Lance, admitted it was a struggle to work within the constraints of his church’s historically European liturgical structure. He explained that the classically trained keyboard musicians at his church—a white organist and a black pianist—did not diversify the music of the regular worship services. He laughingly confided that although the organist tries to use “ethnically diverse” songs, since “they’re still being played by an organ, it doesn’t really feel ethnic.” But, for black history month, the pastor invited a black member, who does re-enactments of Harriet Tubman, to talk about Tubman’s life, faith, and the meaning of African American spirituals. He also invited the black District Superintendent to be a guest preacher. Learning the worship language and meaningful rituals of another ethnic group, especially if the leadership is not conversant in it, might require study, inviting those with the knowledge to lead, and intentionally reconfiguring the liturgy, music, and worship culture. If it is a high value, music leaders might benefit from exposure and training in the ethnic musical style(s) “missing” in their services. Still, in this particular church and others like it, identity formation conforms by default to what is a historically European worship style and structure. Apart from transient events during black history month, the ethnic markers of the weekly rituals were largely “not African American,” as the pastor admits. Dance When it came to dancing, many pastors were implicitly if not explicitly aware “dance” is not just “dance”—and “music” is not just “music.” These cultural expressions are potentially salient worship identity markers and as such can readily serve as ethnic markers if the cultural forms are identifiable with a particular group. Of 121 pastors interviewed, forty-one referenced “dance.” Seventeen of those were Catholic, and 10 were Mainline. Fourteen out of fifty-eight conservative Protestant pastors also mentioned dance. Of course, the sort of bodily movement and style engaged was quite different across these cases, but what is clear is that as an ethnic marker, dance provided a culturally expressive worship form constitutive of identity and, therefore, a potentially interactive space for ethnic identity negotiation. One white mainline Protestant pastor, Pastor Jim, said that he came to realize dance was important to the African American congregants in his East Coast church. So, when a group of black interpretive worship dancers had nowhere to practice he offered his building. He also invited them to lead in dance during worship services, and they came to do so on a regular basis, usually once or twice a month. Pastor Jim laughingly noted that this sort of dance was nothing like “guys in red tights” that he’d seen in seminary, referencing a form of mainline modern liturgical dance. Soon after the dancers participated in the worship services, a gospel choir was formed by the church membership. And they began to sing once a month. Pastor Jim moved beyond his worship culture and religious socialization and chose to validate salient expressions of African American identity by intentionally and regularly incorporating interpretative dance and gospel music within the sacred space of Sunday worship, worship expressions that marked meaningful ethnic identity. A white conservative Protestant pastor, Pastor Hugh, who heads a congregation in a racially and ethnically diverse neighborhood in Chicago, heavily incorporated performing arts, dance, spoken word, hip-hop, mime, and theater within worship. His church supported a full-time band—with instruments—and dance teams. He suggested that while other pastors might deem dance “heresy,” he “embraced dance in a worship service.” What Pastor Hugh highlights here is the way in which religious culture is given meaning as righteous or, as he says, heresy by people from different racial and ethnic groups. Others have found similar social constructions (Christerson et al. 2005; Edwards 2008a). As people of diverse backgrounds come together, with very different physical modalities of worship movement, there arise potential areas of conflict as much as opportunities for incorporating new worship values and identities. Cultural practices may conflict or coincide with the doctrinal beliefs of some groups in the congregation. Congregations are then faced with critical decisions. To the extent that a cultural practice is deeply connected with ethnic identity, the dignity of a whole group may be at stake in the decision. However, merely moving the body or aligning in worship with historically denigrated ethnic movements does not necessarily unite. Cultural practices are not just lodged in cognition, but also in embodied feelings. Take, for example, Pastor Kai who observed with humor: “Chinese are like, ‘Dancing? I just want to sit here!’” This West Coast pastor recognized that there are ethnic differences when it comes to movement. Yet, as the leader of his church, he also believes change is possible and potentially a very good experience, saying: “But, you know, what’s interesting is when Asians can feel free to dance, they love it. We long for freedom.” Yet, from an analytic standpoint, cultural practices, such as dance-like movements in worship, may feel uncomfortable or wrong if one has never associated it with the sacred. When dance movement, or the lack of it, is fused with a sacred ethnic identity, dance becomes a potential barrier to collective worship identity formation. We give the following example below. Pastor Grant, a black minister, shared: “a lot of black people have come to our church, and it’s not the church for them because they go ‘well, they’re playing that white music’.” He noted that salient black worship cultural markers involve “a moving church” that “soaks your T-shirt.” Later in the interview, he explains that he is more comfortable with worship movements that include swaying and raising arms—but not heightened expressions commonly practiced in black churches (Edwards 2009; Pitt 2010). By his own definition, Pastor Grant does not fully identify with black ethno-religious culture; he is comfortable with less physical movement in worship. Here in our data, we run into a conundrum. To analyze the identity formation of diverse churches, we elicited open-ended feedback which often was communicated in nonacademic terms. When pastors refer to cultural practices in racial terms (e.g., white music “black worship”), indexing worship community styles and practices by way of racial categories, they are subjectively making sense of their world in what anthropologists’ term “emic” categories. Such categories are analytically useful not because they conform to scientific (or “etic”) categories, but because they tell us how the interviewed pastors—or persons they quote—perceive worship group “boundedness.” As diverse Christian communities work to form their worship identity, cultural forms are selected or deselected, and the reasons matter for symbolically salient reasons. Let us further examine how congregational as well as personal identity formation is negotiated in the case of Pastor Grant. African American congregations are far more likely than European American (“white”) congregations to participate in interactive and effusive worship (Edwards 2009). African American visitors who desire this culturally salient African American worship practice do not stay in Pastor Grant’s church because the worship style of his congregation is less effusive, exemplified in less movement during worship rituals, as compared to predominately black congregations. Since ethnicity relies on very particular cultural forms, which are necessarily co-constructed, the African American visitors to this church do not have co-worshippers who would fully engage and practice meaningful ethnic markers with them. Pastor Grant’s experience reveals the ways in which pastors of multiracial churches work to negotiate a collective worship identity and the costs associated with that process. He was not fully satisfied with the worship at his church, and he also lost potential African American congregants as a result of it. Music Marti’s (2012) qualitative examination of religious music in 12 diverse southern California congregations is the first broad investigation of worship music and liturgy across racial divides. Marti attended services, conducted extensive interviews, and discovered that just as niche markets cater to customer tastes, diverse congregations seek to do the same. However, Marti notes that African Americans are in a double-bind because while desirable as music leaders, they are expected to avoid “stereotype” (2012:71–3—or what Cornell and Hartman might term “thick ethnicity”). In other words, if African American worship leaders are to successfully serve diverse congregations, they must distance themselves from historically black worship culture characterized by thick ethnicity. Multiracial worship must be de-ethnicized. When musical worship markers are said to index a particular ethnic identity as a “stereotype,” ascription (outsider labeling of insider) is likely operative. If the stereotype is socially undesirable, a racialized identity is also operative. The salient symbolic tools of worship music present cultural tools that are alternatively “bridges” or “barriers” for the diverse worshipping members. Head clergy in the RLDP were asked about their own experiences with church music and how their current church organizes worship. White, black, Latino, and Asian pastors with significant numbers of black and white congregants talked about “white music” and “black worship” as ethnic markers that had to be negotiated personally as well as for their church community. Hillsong music, a genre of praise music in the soft rock tradition, was often referred to as “white music” which, one black pastor explained, required some additional “jazzing up.” Such comments indicate a need for musical “markers” to adequately reflect salient ethnic identity—both for themselves and for the churches they lead. Pastor Frank, an African American lead pastor, articulated the dilemma he experienced with regard to worship, as he tried to educate his music team—a diverse group led by his son. He explains: So, our worship is actually white, because my son doesn’t know any black music. Right. He’s a black kid that knows no black music…. So, you know, he’s more of a Hillsong guy, and that’s because in growing up, we grew up in diverse churches. So he didn’t grow up in a black church. So, I’m –I’m forcing black music down his throat. You know, I’m going, “Hey. Listen to that.” He’s going, “No. No. No. No” [I say] Listen to it, because it’s going to help you. You know, he’s a great worship leader … he leads with guitar. He leads with piano. He plays drums. He plays all instruments. He reads music for all. He teaches all three. He’s a wonderful worship leader, but he’s just kind of—this is his niche … I think everything that we do has some niche … generally; it makes those Caucasians that come feel comfortable. They can relate. As an ethnic boundary marker, musical genres are flexible. Yet, as seen in the “negotiation” of Pastor Frank with his son, some music is particularly salient and worth contesting, particularly for an individual who values their ethnic worship identity. Painfully for Pastor Frank, the music performed in his church largely reflects what is more commonly associated with the dominant ethnic identity or what is “white,” as he puts it. It is his own son, who had different life experiences and socialization than he did, who reproduces the normativity of cultural practices associated with whites and who actively resists the incorporation of music that affirms African American identity. We see then, as highlighted elsewhere (Edwards 2008b), a racialized hierarchy of value in worship music. The cost of diverse church leadership for Pastor Frank includes ceding valuable ethnic worship identity while also losing the ability to share meaningful ethnocultural values and practices with his son. When asked about his church’s worship, Pastor Eddie, a white pastor, said that the music of his predominantly black/white Protestant congregation was “still very white and Western.” He explained that it was more “rational” as opposed to “emotional.” This pastor was “marking” an ethnic boundary in such a way that privileged certain practices over others, connected that privileged practice to “white,” thereby instantiating the racial hierarchy. Whether he was aware he was doing this is unclear. Given that he had no real aims to effect change in the worship in his church, however, suggests that “white,” “Western,” “rational” worship was preferable. Pastor Eddie is only one example of several pastors in the data that made these same statements. Across racial identities and denominations, we heard pastors voice racialized assessments regarding worship styles. That which is not white and more emotional is marked as “less desirable,” indirectly. In this, a cultural practice linked to a certain unspoken ethnic identity is simultaneously linked to racial identity. The complex ways that racial and ethnic identities interweave and overlap in negotiated interracial church space is certainly more painful for some and less painful for others, depending on whether the cultural content is deemed “worthy” or not. Given these findings, it is an open question whether diverse churches as a whole are truly de-racialized spaces or if multiracial worship is a re-racialized domain wherein hierarchies and stereotypes are re-instantiated within religious configurations. DISCUSSION In presenting an analysis of how ethnicity and race intertwine within worship practices we have avoided the more straightforward “racialized” experiences of pastors which did in fact emerge in the data: ugly anonymous racial threats when a minority is given preferential space on the worship team; or budget fights over whether a black musician can be hired along with a white musician are just a couple examples. Rather, we have sought to examine the everyday complexity of identity formation by well-meaning pastors who are aiming to build a space that is for all and by all. The structural and cultural norms guiding the worship practices of ethnic groups are not about the color of one’s skin, but about meaningful cultural praxis experientially “felt” within one’s body that expresses an ethnic connection and a racialized experience, particularly so in the American context. However, when people are in racially diverse spaces, tensions surrounding the normalcy of these practices can emerge. Priest and Priest explain: When the very “racial” hierarchy, subordination, exclusion, and stigma experienced in the wider society are replicated within an “interracial” church, church ceases to be a place of safety, a place of affirmation, a place of uplift. Indeed, such an interactive setting frequently produces ethnic boundaries, a marked sense of self versus other, and a tendency to essentialize self and other “racially.” (2007:287) Yancey points out that successful diverse churches will intentionally incorporate the worship of various racialized cultures (2006:145). Yancey references his own national research to suggest that successful churches practice inclusion by choosing representative songs for worship services, such as “black gospel, a traditional European hymn, a song in Spanish” or by designating an entire worship service to an “Asian-style” or “Latino-style” of worship (2006:145). Yancey recognizes the importance of culture-specific expressions that affirm identity. However, from what we observed in the RLDP data, this good intention which some have argued “maintains aspects of separate cultures and also creates a new culture from the cultures in the congregation” (DeYoung et al. 2003) seems to default toward an assimilated model which reflects one dominant ethnic style (e.g., Hillsong, liturgies, hymnody in standardized rhythm). In many cases, these markers are viewed as indicators of “white” identity by both white leaders and leaders of color in diverse churches. Marti’s (2017) findings confirm this. He found that multiracial church members view black musical patterns as penultimate modes of worship—even necessary for building “good” worship in a diverse church. Nevertheless, leaders make sure such music is only incorporated in “measured doses” (see chapter 7 for extended discussion, 2017). Edwards (2008b) describes this pattern in this way: “[multiracial] churches exhibit many of the practices and beliefs common to white churches … only with a few additional ‘ethnic’ practices or markers. It [is] like adding rainbow sprinkles to a dish of ice cream. In the end, you still have a dish of ice cream, only with a little extra color and sweetness” (2008:8). The findings of this article affirm that ethno-racial identity is about habitus expressed through diffuse yet identifiable ethnic worship markers. Ethnic markers maintain and crucially protect collective memory and reinforce collective identity. These expressions, when done in worship services, must compete within the delimited space and time that worship services afford. Multiracial church pastors are responsible for how to manage and distribute this time and space. In other words, they are responsible for managing power, as manifested in time and space. To the extent that multiracial church pastors are (1) aware of the racialized social structure and (2) respect the emotional, cultural, and structural needs of all their congregants—that is, to feel like they belong, to have their culture affirmed, to have meaningful influence in the congregation—they will cede power to those with more knowledge and ability about the worship practices that matter to and affirm their congregants. This is not simply the work of white religious leaders. There are white leaders that reproduce the racialized hierarchy in their worship services and those who aim to disrupt it. There are leaders of color that affirm whiteness in their congregations and those that work to incorporate ethno-religious practices of meaning for their congregants of color in their worship services. Regardless of the racial and ethnic identity of the pastor, building equalitarian worship spaces is not an easy task because race dictates that the ethnic identity and culture of members of the dominant racial group ought to be privileged. Nevertheless, it remains that this is the task at hand for head clergy of racially and ethnically diverse churches who aim to forge a collective identity that affirms their congregants and fosters an equalitarian community. The alternative is pastors of diverse congregations, including pastors of color, will default to privileging the worship practices and preferences that reproduce the “invisible” white ethnicity and thereby the racial hierarchy. CONCLUSION We began this piece with an introduction to Pastor Mack, a white priest who affirms the “heavenly” mandate for racial and ethnic unity by using tangible culturally informed strategies. He shifted his Anglo-Catholic parish’s identity by incorporating Spanish language and ritual into the worship services. These changes were intended to create a sacred space that acts as a bridge for congregants of different ethno-racial backgrounds to connect to the worship service. In this process, Pastor Mack led and mediated the complex process of identity formation that takes place in a racially and ethnically diverse space. Other head clergy of multiracial churches in the RLDP similarly found themselves having to assess, negotiate, and mediate the deeply held meanings and cultural markers that are used to reify the racial and ethnic identities of their congregants. As leaders of sacred spaces, head clergy are uniquely positioned both to observe and to act in ways that affect how such identity formation is negotiated. Pastors of racially and ethnically diverse churches often conceive of their call in terms of scriptural and theological narratives that evoke a divine unified identity in which all differences among humanity can coexist harmoniously. Similarly, leaders in the RLDP work to stake out a common identity organized around shared symbols and Biblical passages about a “heavenly vision” of “us.” Christianity can certainly provide unifying theological and symbolic tools (DeYoung et al. 2003; Howell 2007). However, those same tools can also, regardless of intention, be used to oppress congregants and potentially re-create the same power structures that exist outside the church doors (Barron 2016; Edwards 2008b; Priest and Priest 2007). Our research investigates the nexus of religion and social stratification by attending to how the most intimate realm of the sacred worship service is a key symbolic space used by church leaders’ to reinforce racial hierarchies or destabilize them. This work also points to areas for future research. Within the sociology of religion it has been noted that more attention needs to be given to embodiment (Neitz 2003:284; Smith 2008:1564–5). There is greater attention being paid to how emotion matters for race as well.6 We suggest that a more robust treatment of embodiment will hone scholarship on multiracial churches. As it relates to worship, ethno-specific language, music, embodied movements, and worship ritual patterns are the cultural tools by which sacred emotion forges a shared identity. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva in his 2018 American Sociological Association presidential address “Feeling Race: Theorizing the Racial Economy of Emotions” encourages further attention on emotions and sociology. Apart from Bonilla-Silva and a few notable exceptions, sociology has historically neglected theorizing emotion (Cooley 1964; Goffman 1963, 1967; Hochschild 1983). It may be instructive for sociologists generally, and sociologists of religion particularly, to draw on theory and methods from disciplines that have a longer history of conducting such inquiry, such as anthropology. When key cultural markers are located and assessed with their attendant emotions and accompanying interactive dynamics, it will give a better sense for how unity or disunity works across denominational, congregational, geographic, and leadership demographics. Context-specific interaction by which some symbols are privileged, and others are not is the “stuff” by which social stratification emerges. Not every church’s story is the same, and every pastor or priest has a different leadership experience. It is not surprising that even in diverse worship spaces ostensibly devoted to unity and respect, potential fault lines may emerge where sacred ethnic markers diverge. And to the extent that these worship markers are infused with racially stigmatized ascription (e.g., Spanish language, gospel music), they will not be valued or will have to compete to be included. Therefore, in this article, we pursued “more rigorous theoretical expansion and development” (Edwards et al. 2013:225), treating race and ethnicity, as separate, yet overlapping identities, that pastors help us understand through conversation about their strategies and interactions to achieve racially and ethnically diverse community. With new analytical tools, sociologists can investigate how diverse sacred spaces are in actuality arenas of contestation between diverse people and groups (e.g., Cadge and Davidman 2006). And as bricoleurs, the RLDP intentionally deploys interdisciplinary tools with the aim to see “beyond the blinders of particular disciplines and peer through a conceptual window to a new world of research and knowledge production” (Kincheloe et al. 2011:168). This article does not assume that multiracial congregations, by their very existence, are proof of racial harmony and solidarity. Sometimes deployment of ethno-specific worship is a strategy to attract majority members or appropriate minority styles. However, leadership motivations are not always the same, as evidenced in the data. We also avoided typologies to examine the interaction around key symbols as an entry point to understand the complexity of culture, emotion, and racial hierarchies. It is hoped that this investigation will encourage new conversations about how the intersections of culture, ethnicity, and race matter for collective identity formation in diverse spaces, particularly diverse worship spaces, to identify and theorize about processes that cultivate equalitarian and inclusive multiracial community. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are truly grateful to the RLDP team members for their feedback on this article as well as the audience participants in paper sessions at scholarly meetings who provided very helpful comments and inquiries on earlier versions of this article. We also thank the editor of Sociology of Religion, Gerardo Marti, and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful feedback. REFERENCES Alexander , Jeffrey . 1988 . Action and Environments , 78 – 106 . New York : Columbia University Press . Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Alim , H. Samy , and Geneva Smitherman . 2012 . 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Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Footnotes 1 See Edwards (2008b) for an extensive examination of how race informs the normativity of ethno-religious culture. 2 The RLDP is funded by Lilly Endowment. The Principal Investigator is Dr. Korie L. Edwards. 3 The congregations headed by head clergy in the study are all racially and ethnically diverse. Eligibility for participation in the study was based, in part, on whether or not their congregations were racially diverse. The goal was to get head clergy of churches where no racial group (i.e., Asian, black, LatinX, white) was greater than 80% of the congregation. See Edwards this volume for more on this. While participation was not dependent upon ethnic diversity, we suspect that the role race plays in the formation of ethnic identity is why the congregations were also ethnically diverse as well. 4 The pastors in the study were selected from a sampling frame of head clergy of multiracial congregations that the RLDP members preconstructed using a combination of online content analysis, lists from denominations, snowball sampling, and telephone surveys. 5 See Cornell and Hartman (2007:77-95) for more on “thick ethnicity.” 6 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva at the 2018 American Sociological Association addressed this in his presidential address “Feeling Race: Theorizing the Racial Economy of Emotions.” © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:journals.permissions@oup.com. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Doing Identity: Power and the Reproduction of Collective Identity in Racially Diverse Congregations
JF - Sociology of Religion
DO - 10.1093/socrel/srz002
DA - 2019-10-15
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/doing-identity-power-and-the-reproduction-of-collective-identity-in-MguujccqJS
SP - 518
VL - 80
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -