Kathy Khang reflects on the difficulty that Korean-Americans confront when attending a white church:
So it came as a bit of a shock to recognize that the churches we were visiting during our search had a different feel, a different sense of community and welcoming that we recognized as being part “Christian” and part “white” but did not fully resonate with us. The-“Where are you from? I’m from in town. Awkward pause.”-interactions. The times we would slowly walk out of a sanctuary waiting for someone, anyone to welcome us instead of just looking at us. The time-orientation of the service–in which emphasizing punctuality and ending “on time” seems more important than relational exchanges that might change the timing of the service– along with the tempo and phrasing of the worship songs. I think I had wanted to believe that a church could be racially white but not culturally white and unintentionally exclusive. I think I had wanted to believe what many of my white Christian sisters and brothers want to believe: there is no white church culture. It’s just church.
But rather than trying to be cultureless, which Khang believes is impossible, she wants white churches to acknowledge their whiteness:
Churches tend to take on the cultural influences and traditions of its members and community, but how many predominantly white churches own a white identity and name its culture as being white? The Korean immigrant church of my youth owned it in name (written in both Korean and English), language, and food but it often failed at reconciling the generational gap that grew between the Americanized youth and the Korean elders. More often than not, predominantly white churches won’t claim being culturally white but rather try to emphasize a Christian identity.
A couple of thoughts.
It is an intellectually challenging but perhaps worthwhile proposition to try to tell what parts of a worship service reflect a congregation’s cultural heritage. Language is one factor. Rule Britannia. Music is another. Most of our churches use the western musical scale and the harmonics that go with it. They may even rely upon European rhythms. Another part is sitting. Witold Rybczynski observed that human cultures are divided into the sitters and squatters. That means Americans generally falls into the white column because they with the rest of the West sit when not standing. From posture we might examine the liturgy or order of service. Some white churches will use the white evangelical service, the white P&W order, or a liturgical order from one of the European churches. All white but no one white size fits all.
Then we have what happens after the service. What kind of drink and fare do we have over fellowship? Sweets would likely put off Turks since desserts are not a specialty of Asia Minor. Coffee, as Khang shows, is not the favored drink of many in the East. And then we have the phenomenon of bad coffee that doesn’t suit either foodies or visitors from Seattle and Portland.
What about openness to outsiders? Can we chalk up friendliness to culture? We may associate the Dutch and the Scots with certain temperamental features. But once you’ve been in America for several generations, do you become as open and bubbly as Americans are supposed to be? Or is temperament a spiritual gift, or is niceness part of definitive sanctification? Churches should be friendly if only to recruit new giving units since congregations can’t rely on the state for patronage.
On the whole, Khang has a point. Our churches have a lot more culture than the vanilla places we think them to be. And much of it is decidedly of European descent. White doesn’t really do justice to this European heritage since color of skin (really pink) does not account for how important European Christianity was to the emergence of churches not only in North America but around the world. Of course, Europeans have a lot for which to ask forgiveness and European Americans should not be reticent about getting in line for that soul-searching. At the same time, without Christian Europe (Protestant and Roman Catholic) along with the colonialism and imperialism that attended the globalization that Europeans started in the fifteenth century, we wouldn’t have many churches (white, yellow, or brown) period.
Old Life 
Bad coffee aka deacon coffee.
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Everything is Awesome!
Aargh, you’ll get it if you watched The Lego Movie.
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This is a great post. I would add that many of our Churches are not just White, they are White American possibly in an effort at self-flattery. For what could be a greater compliment to a group than for its own culture to be identified as being Christian?
Thank you for this post
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How many shades of white? Our almost all-white southern church has lots of ultra-white yankees so we have way too many casseroles at meals for my redneck taste.
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“Churches should be friendly if only to recruit new giving units since congregations can’t rely on the state for patronage.” You and my pastor. Put a smile on and man the door.
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Sean, we need offerings here!!
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I had the same difficulty as Khang when I visited a local “rock & roll” worship church (and I mean real rock with guitar solos, smoke, stage lights, etc. during the “praise” time). I felt completely out of place and appalled at the raucous behavior that belies everything I understand to be worship. But alas they had a nice coffee bar in the lobby. Something that can’t be said for my own local reformed church which offers only a stale dripped blend.
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Darryl, I got ya. I was just recalling his instructions to moi.
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This isn’t surprising. I’m treated much the same way as a single person at most PCA churches. Truth be told, evangelicalism is as much a sociological movement as it is a religious movement. I’ve been in many small groups at PCA churches where I was the only one whose beliefs were anywhere close to what the church believed on paper. In one PCA church I attended in North Carolina, several of the ruling elders were Dispensationalists.
That being said, I’ve been welcomed fairly warmly at the OPC church that’s 25-30 minutes from my home.
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“Of course, Europeans have a lot for which to ask forgiveness and European Americans should not be reticent about getting in line for that soul-searching.”
What’s with this collective guilt? Are you responsible for the sins of your fathers?
Sheesh.
I’m glad Kathy Khang finally figured out it is HER duty to accommodate to any white churches she and her family choose to join, rather than theirs to bend over backwards to accommodate her. But I wish she hadn’t spent the rest of the preceding article attacking white people for being unaware that they are ‘Eurocentric’ or whatever.
I’m a brown guy, of Scotch-Irish Canadian descent on one side and East Indian Caribbean on the other, and I worship in Dutch churches where I’m one of the few people who aren’t ‘onze volk’. Has this been a problem? No, even though I’ve known some folks who’ve kept pre-WWII Dutch attitudes about race and interracial marriage; they’ve been in the minority, and even they have been welcoming and friendly enough.
What I’ve found about ethnically homogeneous churches, is that through some degree of cultural isolation being maintained, they can be a bulwark against the worst trends of modernity, to a point at least. And so I am happy to be one of only a few non-Dutch in a Dutch sea.
Ere zij God. And pass the boterkoek.
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I think “whiteness” is such a limiting term….certainly “Anglo-Protestant” or stoic “Anglo-Protestantism” would be a more precise label for what Khang is experiencing.
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Will,
If we take pride in our heritage, then we also own part of the blame for its sins. And I rarely see someone complain about having to celebrate the accomplishments of those in the past. In addition, the collective owning has to do with shared beliefs and attitudes.
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Will S., then what’s with your collective grudge holding against the U.S.
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@ Curt: The best response, then, is to not take pride in others’ accomplishments, but also not be ashamed to be what you are.
@ DGH: I hold no collective grudge against the American government; my grudges are individual, and all my own. 😉
Note I said against the American government; not against America, the country, the people.
I like America and its people; I just spent a few days vacationing in your fair country.
I do not like your government, and its empire.
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Will, well to borrow a trope often used here, the government in the U.S. is of, for, and by the people.
So what’s with your collective grudge?
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@ DGH: That’s just it – is it really, a government of the people / by the people / for the people?
And if it really claims to support the same elsewhere, why does it overthrow democratically-elected regimes abroad which are deemed hostile to American interests, installing undemocratic dictatorships in their place that are more friendly to American interests? If the U.S. government really is all about supporting freedom and opposing tyrants, shouldn’t they be completely consistent in that, not just when it suits their interests? Of course, old-fashioned empires never worried, because they didn’t have to pretend to be about freedom and liberal democracy as America does, so they didn’t act hypocritically when they utterly crushed their enemies. The U.S. government wants to have it both ways – to crusade against Nazism, Communism, Islamic fundamentalism and tyranny when it suits them, for domestic consumption purposes of course, while supporting dictators of all different kinds – and yet overthrowing them suddenly, cutting them loose, arbitrarily turning against them – as with Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega, both of whose regimes the U.S. government had happily supported for years…
U.S. democracy is hypocrisy, and that’s part of my beef.
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Will,
What you said does not cover the values and beliefs which we share with those who committed sins against others. And when you say not to be ashamed of who you are, part of who you are includes those who preceded you and realize that we can’t so easily separate ourselves from those who preceded us. Life is not all individual
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@ Curt: Let’s say someone discovered that his father was a mass murderer. That individual would naturally feel awful that his father, who he loves, is responsible for such heinous crimes. But surely, he wouldn’t feel actual guilt or responsibility for his father’s actions, despite no doubt sharing some values and beliefs with his father. And hopefully, the families of his father’s victims wouldn’t blame him for what his father did; if they do, they are in the wrong for doing so, and shame on them!
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Wills, I think Commie Curt just told you that you’re not black/brown enough, not sufficiently “aware,” not tribal enough, and not down enough with the struggle. Listen to white Commie Curt. He has your best interests at heart, really.
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🙂
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I’m a brown guy, of Scotch-Irish Canadian descent on one side and East Indian Caribbean on the other, and I worship in Dutch churches where I’m one of the few people who aren’t ‘onze volk’. Has this been a problem? No…
Good Will S., well, I’m a white guy of eastern European descent who looks as Dutch as the suburban onze volk with whom I fellowship. While I wouldn’t call it a problem necessarily, there is a sub-culture that is hard to surmount. At the very least, being a non-Dutchman in Dutch-land can give that same white man a sense of what’s like to be a black man in white America.
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Will,
So the Germans should the holocaust just as Americans should forget the ethnic cleansing of the land, slavery, and Jim Crow?
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@ Zrim: Oh, I’ll grant you it’s been a bit challenging for me to adjust, not always easy, but do-able, and I have always felt the duty to adjust is more mine than theirs. Because I’m the one who has joined them, not the other way around; I find those who think it’s more the duty of others to adjust to them, obnoxiously arrogant (even worse than me).
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You never wanna be number one, it’s always more expensive and you never win the PR battle. So, just go ahead and do what you want, when you want. You might as well enjoy your position. Canada enjoys all the benefits of our largesse and then thumbs it’s nose at us, typical. Cuz ‘Merica.
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@ Curt Day: Yes.
Nobody should be expected to feel guilt over / pay for the sins of their ancestors, in perpetuity.
And unless you are a white police officer in Ferguson, there’s no bloody reason to feel somehow responsible for what happened there.
White Americans would do well to stop letting black ideologues foist a massive guilt trip upon them, including that self-serving twit mentioned in the other thread, yammering on about his feelings, and how white people need to see things through his eyes, feel his emotions. No they don’t. Stop listening to such fools, white America.
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Sean, use the right name for Junior.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/America_Junior
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Will,
I didn’t ask if we should feel guilty for the sins of others, though one could make a case for saying that we guilty because of Adam’s sin. I asked whether the Germans should forget the holocaust or should Americans for their past atrocities.
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@ Sean: You’re cotton-pickin’ right I’m an ingrate. Who appointed America Earth’s guardian?
And why should I appreciate the hypocritical actions of a government that talks about national sovereignty when it suits them, but disregards it when it doesn’t?
Why should I appreciate a government that sends military vessels through our Arctic archipelago, claiming the waters are international, when they’re all between Canadian islands?
If it were up to me, Canada would have nukes, and tell the U.S. government to —- off, we can look after ourselves. We are a First World nation; if we had nukes, we’d be left alone. We don’t need the U.S. government’s help.
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@ Curt: Yes, they should / you should.
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Good Will S., I’ll accept the Wilhelmina Peppermints and bad coffee, but I draw the line at wood clogs.
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Seems to me the issue of cultural-integration in the church is as old as the new covenant church itself. Obviously the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 addressed a theological-gospel issue (was it necessary for Gentiles Christians to be circumcised in order to be saved?), but it was an issue which also had a significant cultural-sociological component to it. Namely, how could the predominantly Jewish-Christian early apostolic church integrate all these uncircumcised goyim who were coming to faith in Jesus the Messiah? How could Jewish and Gentile believers not only worship together as one body, but even enjoy table fellowship together, especially given the vast differences in their cultural and religious backgrounds? The New Testament’s answer? Unity in diversity and diversity in unity, grounded in a common confession of faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The gospel has the power to unite into one body people from a wide variety of cultural, racial and ethnic backgrounds. It’s hammering out the details of just how to do that where it can get tricky. But the issue itself is nothing new. It just takes a different form today.
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Listen up, Junior. Just keep Banff clean and pristine for when I need a Vaca from ruling the free world. It ain’t easy and rarely according to plan, not that you would have ANY notion at’all. You’ll have EXACTLY what we allow, and no more. But, if you keep it up we can arrange for it to be less. Just keep the occasional talent headed our way from Second City, some syrup and I’m kinda enjoying the occasional clip of your oh so representative Mayor Ford, so you can keep doing that too. Remember to stay within earshot so that when it strikes and I have need, you can be ready to attend to it. You’re welcome.
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Will,
Since we are all sinners, doesn’t every group has bad stuff to remember?
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@ Zrim: Yes; I draw the line at klompen, too; and at dropjes, no thanks, candies do not contain salt.
@ Curt Day: Since we’re all sinners, as individual people, we all have, as individual people, sins for which we can rightly feel guilty because we as individuals are directly responsible, having committed them ourselves. No need to feel responsible or guilty for anyone else’s sins; goodness knows we have enough of our own… And so I reject the efforts of some individuals from historically disadvantaged communities to try to make everyone feel guilty. Who made them our judges, anyway; why should we automatically listen to whatever they have to say?
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@ sean: Ah yes, America is so hard done by, being unappreciated as the ‘ruler of the free world’ yada yada. Who appointed America to that position, other than itself? Nobody asked America to assume such a responsibility. Anyway, the Cold War is over; the West won. We don’t have any other superpower, except the one that owns America, China, which is too busy making money under the status quo to bother rocking the boat.
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Will S., it’s called meritocracy-meaning we’re just better than you and everyone else. You seem to be such a big champion of self-reliance and not being a hand-wringer, you’d think you be less of a whiner about it and just submit. But, regardless here’s a little song you can hum to yourserf:
I’m So Ronery
So ronery
So ronery and sadry arone
There’s no one
Just me onry
Sitting on my rittle throne
I work rearry hard and make up great prans
But nobody ristens, no one understands
Seems like no one takes me serirousry
And so I’m ronery
A rittle ronery
Poor rittle me
There’s nobody
I can rerate to
Feel rike a bird in a cage
It’s kinda sihry
But not rearry
Because it’s fihring my body with rage
I’m the smartest most crever most physicarry fit
But nobody else seems to rearize it
When I change the world maybe they’ll notice me
But until then I’rr just be ronery
Rittle ronery, poor rittle me
I’m so ronery
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It does indeed seem good and pleasing to see the Unmarried Ruler of the Fairer Sex lecture other entities on hubris. Do go on.
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But, Good Will S., if we forget about slavery and the Holocaust what will pro-lifers be left to invoke in comparison to instill fear and loathing into the hearts of 21st century westerners? Same for Jihad-Watchers—with what to compare political Islam and stir up the western masses to hide their women and children?
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Will S., you keep forgetting about Churchill? Aren’t you part of the Commonwealth? Didn’t we save your queen? Didn’t you forget to thank us?
I’m no fan of America as empire and we’ve had our share of imperialists (which we learned from the Brits), but it wasn’t as if other didn’t invite us to the party.
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Will,
We might want to ask the following questions:
1. How is the free world free if it has a leader?
2. Why does a free world need a leader?
Regarding your remarks to me. SIn is not just individual, it is also corporate. This is not what the Scriptures say and Achan’s story recorded in Joshua 7 shows the corporate nature of sin–there are other scriptures too such as in Daniel and in Romans. The idea of making one responsible for one’s own sins only is more Western than Scriptural.
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Nice nod to Levinson’s Liberty Heights.
And I have you to thank, quite indirectly, for the incredible experience of watching The Wire. Jason Kirklin made me watch the first four episodes with him and I was hooked. I believe it was your influence that won him over to that series years ago.
I appreciate your blog and the balance it brings to the Christian blogosphere.
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Zrim,
Are you saying abortion should not be considered (at least) as heinous as slavery or the Holocaust?
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Stephen, I’m saying Good Will S. says too much. But I’m also saying these topics are so shot through with moral outrage and indignation it’s often hard to hear oneself think (and others speak).
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Indiana Matt, balance? We’re not talk about a game. We’re talking about balance?
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Maybe if we were less culturally homogeneous as a nation (which Machen lamented even in his day) we’d focus less on race. As regional and local variations die off what do we have to obsess about except race. And what transmits easier on television than skin color/race?
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“meaning we’re just better than you and everyone else”
Wait is this some Colbert type satire or are you being serious?
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3xr5r6c4
It’s a mentality like this that shuts down thoughtful criticism that might actually help spur America to reverse course in some of its downward trajectories (education, anyone?)
And I think some populations/countries negatively and directly impacted by our foreign policy machinations (both overt and covert) might disagree our actions were morally superior. But maybe by meritocracy, you just mean military power. Yes, we have that covered.
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Clete, I just really mean it. Cuz ‘Merica. Cuz Me. Try harder, do better. ‘Merica. Click, Click, Boom!
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So upward economic mobility? American dream and horatio alger and bootstraps and all that?
http://www.decisionsonevidence.com/2012/01/american-dream-is-alive-and-well-in-canada/
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More sweat of the brow and law of the harvest-stuff of the bible. American exceptionalism born of being exceptional. Lake Wobegon without the needless false humility of Lutheran pietism. That kind of thing.
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