This week’s Barna Minute looks at whether or not non-white churchgoers experience racial prejudice in multicultural congregations.
In Barna’s report, Beyond Diversity, the data reveals almost three in 10 Black practicing Christians in a multiracial church (29%) say they have experienced racial prejudice on some level. Granted, racial prejudice may still exist in the monoracial environment; even predominantly Black churches, on average, have a small percentage of non-Black worshippers, and in some cases colorism (prejudice based on skin tone within the same ethnic or racial group) could also be occurring. Even so, just 11 percent of Black practicing Christians report facing prejudice in a monoracial Black church.
Looking at the experiences of all non-white churchgoers, the data on Black Christians is most stark as Asian and Hispanic Christians experiences of prejudice in a church aren’t so related to the congregation’s racial or ethnic makeup. This may be because Asian and Hispanic Christians are more likely than Black Christians to attend a language-specific enclave within a multiracial church where they can freely express their cultural identity. But this difference among Black and other non-white groups is also helpful in assessing multiracial churches: If they don’t work well for Black individuals, for whom injustices in the U.S. have been deeply felt and particularly injurious, how well do they really work?
