Comparing Catholic and Evangelical Integration Efforts

The rallying cries of a multiethnic, multiracial, and multicultural church movement echo through diocesan offices and evangelical megachurches, traversing the largest "families" that make up Christian America: Roman Catholic, evangelical, and mainline Protestant.' Two social factors are certainly behind the current push to integrate churches: first, the dramatic increase in immigration to the United States post-1965; and second, the increasing acceptance of integration on the part of white Americans. The confluence of dramatic demographic changes and long-fought for attitudinal changes has produced both an opportunity for the formation of integrated churches and a formidable challenge for those who would prefer to continue the American tradition of the ethnic church (including the white American ethnic church). Religious leaders from divergent theological and ecclesiastic traditions are responding to the changing demographics and attitudes toward diversity in the United States in remarkably similar ways. Specifically, they are seeking to overcome the long-standing racial, ethnic, and cultural divisions among their members and create multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural churches. Given this shared goal, it is tempting to imagine the emergence of a national Christian movement toward, what I will call for reasons I explain below, "integrated churches." But no such unified movement exists across Christian families. Instead, there are three independent movements pushing for institutional change across the country with almost no contact among them. The purpose of this essay is to bring those leading the charge toward integrated churches within two of these families, the Roman Catholic and evangelical, into contact theoretically for the purpose of comparison on the related questions of why and how. Although there are ample quantitative studies on membership and attendance, we have surprisingly little qualitative comparison between these groups. This may be because the gaping differences in polity give the impression that one is comparing apples to oranges. The hierarchical structure of the global Catholic Church and the geographically defined parish are worlds apart from the congregational polity and voluntary membership of the evangelical tradition. When we look, however, at the ways in which Catholic and evangelical church leaders talk about the need to create unity across cultural and racial lines, they sound remarkably similar. Neither group cites the sociological reasons mentioned above-demographic and attitudinal shifts-as the primary impetus for change. Both Catholic and evangelical church leaders justify their institutional revisioning by invoking biblical mandates for unity and inclusion. Nonetheless, digging beneath the language of unity there are important differences in precisely which theological principles are used to justify turning away from the ethnic church model. To make matters even more complicated, within the evangelical and Catholic worlds of dis course exist ongoing debates about the costs and benefits of integrated churches and the appropriate means of forming them. As Catholics and evangelicals proceed to create integrated churches, the trajectory of institutional change and subsequent outcomes are shaped by their polity and the ology, as well as their unique histories of managing intergroup relations. At the intersection of