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Notes -
On Free Association vs. Exclusion, or: can white people just do stuff together?
Yesterday I went to church. I would estimate that there are about 150 people at my church. There are exactly three people of color there:
One black teenaged girl, who I believe is the adoptive daughter of a white couple there.
One old guy called Antonio, who I think came from Argentina a long time ago.
A Hispanic woman who is the wife of an old white guy.
The demographics of this church are, basically, the demographics of the immediately surrounding neighborhoods and of this demonination nationally: the people who go there go there because A.) they live close by and B.) they think the EFCA has good teachings to offer about God, the world etc. Everyone comes there of their own free will; all are explicitly welcome. We have never turned anyone away - I am one of the greeters and I try to take seriously my responsibility to make anyone that arrives feel welcome.
Still, when thinking about this, something apparent to me is that this church has no racial diversity. Are we under a moral obligation to try and change that?
If we are: why is that? How did we incur it? Is it not enough to be welcoming, do we need to actively change our demographic composition? What if, as seems to be the case, there are hardly any non-white people that want to come to our church?
If we are not: why is that? Other voluntary organizations come under pressure to diversify, all the time - see "knitting too white," "hiking too white," etc. Would our church not qualify because it's too small? Because it isn't a business? Because we do not have any status to award? Because we have no social media presence?
There is a black church less than four miles away - I cannot imagine them ever coming under pressure to diversify, even though they have the same level of diversity as my church does. Why should that be? I can already think of the Conflict Theory explanation - but what would the Mistake Theory explanation for that be?
I guess what I'm wondering about or driving at is, as my title indicates - is there any limiting principle to the drive for making groupings reflect the population distribution of the country as a whole? Are there organizations for which it would be unreasonable to ask this - or are there simply only organizations whose undiversity hasn't been noticed? I'm not asking this out of any animosity towards any racial group; we would really just like for everyone to come to our church. I just find myself wondering why similar bodies, who didn't choose their racial composition at all, nevertheless come under criticism for that, and some don't.
If it's a social club or political movement, sure. A hobby group, same thing - there's nothing about knitting that says it should appeal equally to all kinds of people, or that knitters need to recruit all of humanity into knitting. Likewise, a "pagan" practice like Hinduism / Shinto / etc. would hardly surprise anyone to disproportionately attract Indian / Japanese / etc. people.
But a church (so I've been told - I'm not a churchgoer myself, much less part of your particular denomination) is explicitly not any of those things. The fundamental self-concept of Christianity is that it's the One True Faith and that it's desirable for all people to believe in it. When I see an organization that professes such a doctrine and yet inexplicably has a demographic profile vastly out-of-step with the local population, I begin to suspect that the members don't actually take their own beliefs seriously. This sort of hypocrisy rubs me the wrong way because it seems to demand a greater degree of deference (from both members and non-members) than would be given if they were just open about being a social/political/hobby/cultural etc. group. (I would say the same about the black church.)
You may accuse me of uncharity or of cynically bludgeoning you with Christian doctrine despite not being a Christian myself - which may be valid, but you can take it as just one outsider's impression given my limited time and ability to discern who among the vast array of characters demanding my attention, resources, and respect is actually deserving of them. Whether this is important to you and your church is something for you/them to decide.
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