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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.
Coming from a center-right Christian, I don't think you're doing anything wrong. I think the drive for making groupings reflect the population distribution of the country as a whole is misguided, overlysimplistic, and based on Goodharting. The argument for forced diversity is generally based on two premises (I apologize if these aren't steelmanned enough, but it's the impression I get from the mainstream):
Lack of diversity is evidence of racism. If everyone were truly equally welcome, you would have equal representation, so the fact that you don't proves you must have secret prejudices and institutionally racist structures that are driving other races away.
Diversity is a good unto itself. More diverse groups will be better and happier, and more cohesive.
I partially agree with 2, with a lot of caveats, most notably that I don't think race is the appropriate way to measure this. I strong disagree with 1, not least of which because it largely contradicts 2. Everyone is different, and has different talents and skills and likes and dislikes. This is a good thing, and should be celebrated. This is real diversity, the way God made us. It is written:
"We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully." - Romans 12:6-8
Different people are good at different things, which allows you to specialize. Maybe one person is a skilled businessman and earns lots of money to donate, maybe another person is good with children and helps in the daycare, and a third person is good at socializing and helps welcome new people. And this is true both inside and outside of the church. If one person is really good at electronics, and another person is strong and likes chopping down trees, then it would be silly to roll dice to decide what careers they end up in, they should do the thing that they're talented at and enjoy doing. And if it turns out to be the case that there are statistical difference in the talents and pre-dispositions of people based on race or gender, then this is perfectly acceptable within the Christian worldview. Similarly, if there are outliers/counterexamples, people who don't perfectly conform to racial/gendered stereotypes, then this is perfectly acceptable too. We should be celebrating people for who they are, not for whether they do or do not conform to stereotypes. If 90% of your skilled businessman charity givers are men and 90% of your daycare helpers are women, the woke would see this as a problem. The sexist logic says:
A. Being a skilled businessman with lots of money makes you better than someone who's good with children
B. Men are better at being businessman and women are better with children
C. Therefore, men are better than women.
The sexist says this is perfectly acceptable and the correct world view. The woke says that C is obviously wrong, and A is true, therefore B must be false, and everyone is equally good at everything. Which seems to me like an unhealthy perspective on diversity, and a denial of observable reality. The Christian says that A is false, therefore it doesn't matter whether B is true or not, it follows that C is false (or at least is not immediately implied by this logic, and is accepted as false for other reasons). We are all different, and equally valuable and loved children of God the way he made us.
I apologize for sort of going off on a tangent there, but I feel this is important as the foundation for the rejection of the woke view. We can reject artificial notions of equality and diversity because we have our own view which is founded in the Bible (or classical liberalism, for the atheists with similar worldviews). We can do things which the woke consider discriminatory and be confident that they aren't because they are working off of mistaken premises.
Bringing this back to race, we can then accept that there are nonrandom but not absolute trends in the talents, behavior, culture, values, and needs of people of different races, and that these are a good thing to be celebrated, not something to be denied or suppressed. But this also means that different people will feel comfortable in different environments, and that this will trend via race. Some people like loud exciting worship music, some people like more classic and solemn. Some people like shouting out when they agree with something the preacher says, some people find that distracting and want focus on the words being said. If you haven't already, I highly recommend you attend a couple services at your local black church. If you already have, try to recall the similarities and differences. And also think about other churches you've been too, regardless of the predominant race of atendees. Pay attention not just to the message being preached, but all of the differences in style and presentation. And which ones you liked/disliked. Why are you attending the church you are, and not a different church? Is it just because it's closest? Is it specific people you know and if they swapped churches you would follow them? And why is your church it the way it is. If your church and your neighboring church completely swapped styles, music/schedule/messages/pastors, would you keep going to your physical church that behaved completely different, or would you swap to the other church that became behaviorally equivalent to what you have now?
I can't say for certain, but a large component of it is in style and presentation. Different people like different things and, if you and the black church merged/mixed, and ended up with two ethnically mixed churches, you would inevitably have a bunch of people dissatisfied with the style and presentation of their new church, either because you kept things the same and the new people would lose the style they had before, or because you changed your style to match what the new people wanted, in which case the old people would lose the style they had before. Diversity doesn't just mean making every location a homogeneous mix that partially caters to the lowest common denominator to appeal to as many people as possible simultaneously, it sometimes means having a diversity of locations that appeal to lots of people. And this is something to be celebrated. Similarly, a television show doesn't need to have aliens and dragons, sappy romantic drama, and masculine sports, all in the same show (though you can do that if you really want to), you can have different shows that appeal to different tastes. And, importantly, you then don't gatekeep by stereotyping people and restricting them to only the thing you designed for them, you let people choose out of their own free will and they will sort themselves out according to their actual interests.
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That said, you don't want to take this too far. If we specialize too much and things segregate too much then we become fractured and separate communities, rather than one body of Christ. Imagine if all of the rich businessmen went to one church and had no one to take care of the children, and all of the daycare helpers went to another church and didn't have enough money. People with different talents and traits should work together and help each other and jointly advance the cause of Christ. While this does not require you to all attend the same church services, it would be good if you did stuff together and acted as part of the same cohesive community. My local (predominantly white) church regularly interacts with a nearby (predominantly black) church. The pastors are good friends and frequently meet, occasionally arrange joint services where both congregations come together and have both pastors preach, or occasionally the pastors will swap for a week and preach to the other congregation, and occasionally set up service projects to help out the local community and spread the gospel. In so far as there are cultural difference between our churches, both of us have valuable perspectives and things to say and share and teach each other, so it's good to be exposed to their perspective and view each other as part of the same overall community. But at the end of the day, I don't think we need to draw a meaningful distinction between their church or any other church, which also have different cultures and valuable perspectives, and we don't need to force or incentivize their congregation to join our church or vice versa. They're always welcome at our church, and we're welcome at theirs, and that's a good and acceptable system which isn't racist. If the rest of secular society had a better foundation for what's right and moral without being paranoid about racism, they could do something similar and function in a similar way. Sadly, they do not.
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