This last Sunday I visited a largely-African-American Baptist church congregation for their Sunday worship service. I came as a visitor of my friend and co-worker, Mike, and the whole experience made me think a ton about majority/minority culture and church.
The first thing that struck me about the service was that it was an entire experience not only of a certain "style" of worship/tradition, but that of a completely different culture than I have known in any previous churches. I have been to MANY different types of Christian churches, from Pentecostal to more ecumenical, and although these have differed in varying degrees from one another, there was a general sense that these are shared a singular "culture" of church. This African-American Baptist church, on the other hand, while it shared many things in common with other churches I have been to, was VERY distinctive in its overall cultural feel. And it was beautiful.
And it helped bring me to a greater understanding of the appreciation of the value of that culture, and how that appreciation could easily result in hostility which could easily be mistranslated into racism. This particular church, while mostly African-American, is welcoming and open to people of all races and colors, and I felt very welcomed. However, I have heard of many other African-American churches (and this is confirmed by Mike) that are less-than-open to non-African-Americans joining their church. Previously, my thought on this was, "That seems kind of racist, but I guess I can see how there'd be some mistrust there..." My thought now, having witnessed this church culture firsthand, is now more along the lines of, "Yes, I can see why there would be hostility towards cultural outsiders, because I would certainly want to preserve this cultural uniqueness that is based on a shared history and experience with others in my culture."
And fears that outsiders may come in and change this culture are not unfounded. Let's face it: the majority culture DOES tend to homogenize as many things as possible to itself. This is not necessarily intentional or malicious, but it does happen.
In summary, I found it interesting that, being a part of majority church culture in the past, I was more or less blind or unaware of the existence of completely unique culture within churches that goes beyond simple music or preaching or worship style. Why? Because as a "part" of "majority" culture (i.e., I'm white), I didn't see it as "culture", but rather as simple objective reality. Having now stepped OUTSIDE of this majority culture, it is obvious that it is also a "culture", and easier to understand why OTHER cultures would be wary of those who would (again, intentionally or not) affect change that altered their own culture or attempted to homogenize it to majority culture.
So, in a sense, I was an outsider to much of this culture, but I still felt very welcomed and was able to enjoy the service in the cultural tradition that I DO share in common, which is that of Christianity. While this church IS definitively African-American in the cultural tradition of its services (and in that sense, I will always be an "outsider"), it is so in the context of being, first and foremost, of a CHRISTIAN tradition, and in that sense I felt right at home, and will likely go back, and hopefully continue to learn and grow into the culture of Christianity, which transcends all cultures.
