Church in Color: Youth Ministry, Race, and the Theology of Martin Luther King Jr.

By Montague R. Williams

Congregational leaders are often unsure how to attend to the complexities of racism and racial division in the United States. One common response is to acknowledge that racism is wrong and then avoid the topic as much as possible. This is especially the case in youth and young adult ministries, as pastors and other youth workers attempt to foster a sense of community and identity that transcends race. While this method may seem helpful on the surface, it ultimately undermines the goal of offering young people authentically Christian mentoring, understanding, and pastoral care. There is a dire need for a practical theological framework that welcomes young people’s experiences and questions regarding race into the work of theology and vocational discernment.

In this groundbreaking ethnographic and theological account, Montague R. Williams unearths and examines the realities of race in multiracial and multiethnic youth ministries in the United States.  Church in Color invites readers to consider stories of young people in three distinct congregations and witness their longing for a Christian discipleship that grapples with rather than avoids race. Williams further analyzes how young people communicate this longing and why it is difficult for congregational leaders to recognize and respond to it. Finally, placing these findings in dialogue with an in-depth and nuanced engagement of Martin Luther King Jr.’s theological aesthetics, Williams guides congregations to embrace a discipleship that recognizes, remembers, and wrestles with the realities of race, racism, and racial identity.

Church in Color demonstrates the importance of including the questions and experiences of young people from diverse backgrounds in the work of theological construction. It also models how to bring various fields, such as congregational studies, youth ministry, race theory, pop culture, and Kingian theology, together within a broader practical theological conversation. Most significantly,  Church in Color charts a path forward for the future of intergenerational Christian communities in a racialized world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781481312233

Book preview

Church in Color

Church in Color

Youth Ministry, Race, and the Theology of Martin Luther King Jr.

Montague R. Williams

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS

© 2020 by Baylor University Press

Waco, Texas 76798

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of Baylor University Press.

Book and jacket design by Kasey McBeath

Front cover graphics by Kate Morales

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4813-1221-9

ePub ISBN: 978-1-4813-1223-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Williams, Montague R., 1983- author.

Title: Church in color : youth ministry, race, and the theology of Martin Luther King Jr. / Montague R. Williams.

Description: Waco : Baylor University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: Employs ethnographic methodology to analyze the effects of post-racialism in three congregational youth ministries-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020017774 (print) | LCCN 2020017775 (ebook) | ISBN 9781481312219 (hardback) | ISBN 9781481312257 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781481312240 (mobi) | ISBN 9781481312233 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968. | Race relations--Religious aspects--Christianity--Case studies. | Church work with youth. | Christian youth--Religious life.

Classification: LCC BT265.3 .W54 2020 (print) | LCC BT265.3 (ebook) | DDC 259/.23089--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017774

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017775

Church in Color has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: NEH CARES. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this book do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Racial Color-Blindness and Confusion in Youth Ministry

Beachland Community Church

2. Mistaking Racial Color-Blindness for a Christian Virtue

The Lingering Effects of Post-Racialism

3. Post-Racialism in a Black Multiethnic Congregation

Cityland Community Church

4. Breaking Free from Post-Racial Youth Ministry

Southland Community Church

5. Resisting Post-Racialism Takes Work

Reflections on the Habitus and Aesthetics of Race-ism

6. Aesthetic Resistance in the Theology of Martin Luther King Jr.

Envisioning the Beloved Community

7. Embracing Church in Color

Practices for Youth and Young Adult Ministry

Conclusion

Appendix A: Preliminary Survey of All Participants

Appendix B: Key Informant Interview Guide

Appendix C: Interview Guide for All Participants

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

There are several people who have contributed in significant ways to this project. To begin, I would like to thank the young people, youth workers, pastors, and congregations who opened their spaces and stories to me and this research. Amidst all of the gatherings, van rides, basketball games, and lively conversations, I am thankful for their willingness to be honest and real with me. This work would simply be impossible without them.

Several scholars read portions of this book along the way. I would like to thank Bryan P. Stone for his encouragement and guidance for me as a theologian as well as his close attention to every twist and turn of this project. I would also like to thank Walter E. Fluker for his attention to this project and offering guidance in how to creatively engage King’s theological ethics. I am grateful for Mary Elizabeth Moore, Courtney Goto, Theodore Hickman-Maynard, Michael Lodahl, Daniel White Hodge, and Brian Bantum, who were also among the first to read the entire original manuscript and offer helpful feedback. I want to acknowledge and thank Angela Sims for her encouragement and guidance as I moved toward publication. I am indebted to Pamela Lightsey who invited me to be a part of her theological work in Ferguson and inspired me to see the way theological scholarship can foster change in the church and society. It is also important for me to acknowledge and thank Preston Williams, who was my first professor in Kingian religious thought and let me know early on that there is a place for me in the field. I would like to thank Boston University’s Center for Practical Theology and Point Loma Nazarene University’s Wesleyan Center for the support of research funding they provided along the way. A special thanks goes to the team at Baylor University Press. Cade Jarrell, the managing editor, quickly caught the vision of this book and has been an excellent dialogue partner in the process. Along with Kasey McBeath from Baylor, I would like to thank Kate Morales and Charlie Lyons-Pardue for their work in helping me develop the book cover.

I am deeply appreciative for many friends and family members, too many to name here, who let me think out loud with them and who have been an inspiration to me. My wife and best friend, Jennie Williams, has walked this journey with me from before I even imagined writing this book and has been incredibly encouraging along the way. Our daughter and son, Sophia and Ethan, have not only provided me the wisdom and strength to take breaks along the way, they have also been a reminder of why I have written this book. I dedicate this book to them, as well my parents, Gordon and Lilowti Williams, who always valued learning and made room for me to ask why with a sense of honesty and hope about what is happening and possible in the world.

Introduction

Ihave had the honor of working with youth and young adults through my roles as pastor, chaplain, professor, and mentor. Like many others in congregational ministry and various pastoral roles on university campuses, I have found that young people often carry weighty stories. You cannot assume you know what young people are wrestling with just by considering the way they present themselves, and you cannot understand what aspects of Christian theology matters to them just by considering broad claims about youth culture. We gain clearer pictures of who young people are and how we ought to engage theology through those sacred moments when young people choose to share the complexity and previously hidden realities of their lives. This book is full of sacred moments. From beginning to end, this book engages in the work of theology by relying on the voices of young people in multiracial and multiethnic congregations who have chosen to speak honestly about their experiences and questions regarding race, racism, and racial identity. In most cases, these are young people who love their congregations. However, they also reveal that the church has some work to do if it is to become a community where they can bring their whole lives.

Nestled within the last few paragraphs of his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. has an interestingly incisive claim about young people and the church:

So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are. . . . If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned to outright disgust.¹

These are sharp words, but King offered them with a deep sense of hope for the church’s faithfulness. In many ways, this book serves as a commentary on King’s claim and displays its relevance for the twenty-first century with particular attention to the realities of race. Young people are disappointed and in some cases disgusted with the church’s complacency with the status quo. But the church can take young people’s lives seriously and pursue change.

In one sense, this book is about the realities of race in multiracial and multiethnic youth and young adult ministry and the possibilities of church being faithfully Christian amidst the realities of race. In another sense, this book is about how we engage the work of theology. Theological ethicist Miguel A. De La Torre explains that academic researchers of multiracial contexts, especially those interested in racial reconciliation, run the danger of attempting to stand on the outside of the community and make ethical claims that lack needed interaction with praxis. He says such a method displays a Eurocentric model of ethics that ultimately sustains imbalances of power within the community being studied and ignores the voices of those on the margins.² With the goal of moving away from problematic claims of objectivity and moving toward deep interaction with praxis, this book begins theological exploration by taking seriously the experiences and voices of young people in three congregational youth ministries in three different contexts. Only from there do I begin to make claims about what is happening in the church, why it is happening, how we ought to engage influential sources in Christian theological tradition, and how we can improve practice.³

If you are familiar with the field of practical theology, you might recognize that what I have described here is a practical theological investigation. Practical theology is the process of critical reflection on human practices with the aim of fostering faithful church practice in and for the life of the world.⁴ It is not simply applying ideas derived from reflecting on philosophical and historical theological sources. Practical theology includes in-depth engagement with these fields, but it does so within the broader work of requiring and facilitating an interdisciplinary theological discourse that begins and ends with practice.⁵ In light of this, my argument throughout this book is multilayered.

In one layer, I am arguing that pastoral youth workers in multiethnic and multiracial congregations are gravely missing the mark on tending to young people’s longing for a Christian discipleship that can grapple with race, racism, and racial identity. In another layer, I am arguing that the reason for this has to do with the complex nature of race and racism in American culture. In yet another layer, I argue for an in-depth corrective rereading of one of the theological sources often used to justify these congregations’ avoidance of young people’s desire to engage race—namely, Martin Luther King Jr. In a fourth layer, I am arguing that it is possible for churches to provide space for young people to find intersections between Christian discipleship and a faithful engagement of race. And, overall, I am arguing that doing theology faithfully requires the work of intentionally seeing how race, racism, and racial identity are at work in congregations and other ecclesial communities.

SCOPE AND METHOD

When I began research for this book, I did not know what I would find. I simply had interest in learning about congregational youth ministries in multiracial and multiethnic contexts and what constructive theological resources may be necessary to assist in guiding young people to a Christian discipleship that allows them to think critically and act responsibly in light of the various political and interpersonal expectations concerning interracial community. To be clear, my research in the congregations took place during a unique moment in the United States, as a great deal of the public discourse centered on how to think about and respond to the shooting deaths of two unarmed African American teenagers. It was the summer of 2014—two and a half years after George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin and a year after Zimmerman was acquitted. It also happened to be the very summer in which police officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. While I could not have expected that tragedy, it did become an important part of this research as it impacted participants. Racial violence against young people of color was at the forefront of conversations in America, and the already rejected claims about America being postracial had been, once again, proven false. There was much to explore regarding what this meant and could mean for Christian discipleship in multiracial and multiethnic youth ministry contexts. While there is merit in focusing on just one congregation, I chose to focus on three congregations to see if any patterns, differences, and complexities emerged. I also chose not to focus on congregations that have been identified as national models for multiracial and multicultural ministry (i.e., multiracial megachurches), since the criteria for their status can be problematic. Rather, I focused on three congregational youth ministries with leaders who want to understand how they are doing in this regard and who are willing to have their context assessed for the sake of progress in the life of the church. These are everyday churches with everyday youth groups.

I have given the three congregations the following pseudonyms: Beachland Community Church (BCC), Cityland Community Church (CCC), and Southland Community Church (SCC). The three congregations are located in three different racially and culturally diverse cities in the Northeast region of the United States, and they each represent a distinct racial makeup. However, they derive from similar theological commitments and mission as they are all a part of the Wesleyan holiness theological tradition.⁶ In congregational studies, the standard definitions for multiracial and multiethnic congregations require that no more than 80 percent of the population come from a single racial or ethnic group, respectively. This is certainly the case for these three youth ministries. The Beachland Community Church youth ministry displays a diversity of African American, Latinx, Asian American, and Caucasian youth. The Cityland Community Church youth group includes a diversity of young people who identify as African American and Afro-Caribbean, and the congregation has been attempting to connect this youth ministry with the growing Latinx community in their neighborhood. The Southland Community Church includes a diversity of young people who identify as African American and Cape Verdean (rather than African American).⁷ The differences in each youth ministry’s racial makeup allowed me to compare the youth ministries and see what variables make significant differences regarding the practice and experience of evangelism and discipleship in light of race.

I sought to identify patterns and themes in the practices of evangelism and discipleship of the three congregational youth ministries and give special attention to the following undergirding questions: How are evangelism and discipleship practiced, experienced, and perceived within the life of the youth ministry? and How does race, racism, and racial reconciliation factor into the youth ministry’s narrative and practices? My goals were to observe and listen closely enough to hear each congregation’s story of race, see the connections between the story and the practices, and learn how the story and practices may be influencing understandings of identity, community, and agency among young people involved.⁸

To pursue patterns and themes, I conducted ethnographic research and analysis through the frames of ecology, culture and identity, and process.⁹ In order to increase accuracy and auditability,¹⁰ I used multiple methods:

(1) Participant observation with field notes

(2) Interviews with key informants from each congregation

(3) Interviews with individuals from each congregation who have close interaction with the congregation’s youth ministry through current leadership or participation¹¹

(4) Focus groups¹²

(5) Document analysis of flyers, PowerPoint slides, bulletins, sermons, song lyrics, significant scriptural readings, organizational structure maps, and statements regarding vision, mission, and beliefs

In order to practice self-reflexivity, I also kept critical notes of any personal biases that arose along the way, whether it was in regard to theology, practice, structure, personality, or desired interpretations.¹³ I analyzed the findings and coded themes and patterns that emerged from the data.¹⁴ I also analyzed and coded the interviews using narrative analysis.¹⁵

Two patterns slowly became clear: The first was that young people in these congregations have had many experiences with race and often wonder about matters pertaining to race. In fact, they wonder about race, racism, and racial identity so much and in such intertwined ways that I developed a term to understand the combination of their ongoing questions, curiosities, confusion, hopes, and lack of hope regarding race, racism, racial identity, and interrelated issues. The term is wonders. More specifically, I use the term wonders throughout this book to refer to the dynamic interplay of young people’s questions, curiosities, and confusions about community- and identity-forming frameworks as well as longing for a way of life that can hold together (1) honest grappling with current unjust situations, (2) meaning-filled imagination of how things ought to be, and (3) tangible actions that spread this imagination and move humanity toward it. Wonders may include hope, but sometimes they include wondering about hope, longing for hope, or wondering about how to make sense of a life without hope. At times, young people express their wonders through questions, but, as I show in this book, young people often express their wonders about race, racism, and racial identity through jokes, play, storytelling and experimentation with different identities.

The second pattern was that while the young people in the three congregations were mostly thankful for their youth groups and youth workers, they found little to no space to engage their experiences and wonders meaningfully regarding race, racism, and racial identity. Each of the youth ministries responds to students’ experiences and wonders regarding race, racism, and racial identity by combining at least two of the following:

• Underestimating the influence and effects of race, racial identity, racism in the lives of young people.

• Forgetting or failing to remember the stories of race, racial identity, and racism in their community and/or congregation.

• Dismissing students’ experiences with and wonders about race, racism, and racial identity through an interpretive framework or pedagogy of racial color-blindness.

STRUCTURE

I display this finding through vignettes and narratives that consider the congregational and neighborhood context of each youth ministry. Chapter 1 focuses on Beachland Community Church, since the youth workers and lead pastor in this congregation most explicitly named their practice of racial color-blindness and desire to be racially color-blind.¹⁶ Chapter 2 offers an analysis of racial color-blindness to show why it is easy for congregational youth workers to mistake racial color-blindness for a Christian virtue. I argue that post-racialism, the socio-political belief system that positions color-blindness as necessary for progress in a nonracist manner, has become a misleading virtue tradition in the United States. Because multiracial and multiethnic evangelical churches assume the possibility and need to be exemplars of racial color-blindness and because it has been assumed that a society without racism requires a generation of youth that knows nothing about racism, multiracial and multiethnic youth ministries easily fall prey to a post-racialist framework rather than an anti-racist framework. I argue that post-racialism and its virtue of color-blindness are not helpful for youth ministry. Rather, post-racialism is a tradition that rivals Christian faith, and its virtue of color-blindness is more accurately understood as an anti-virtue in relation to faithful Christian living and pastoral care.

Chapters 3 and 4 address Cityland Community Church and Southland Community Church, respectively. Perhaps what makes these two congregations stand out is the fact that the youth workers attempt to practice color-blindness even though they are black and personally wrestle with race, racism, and racial identity. Each congregational youth ministry has its own distinct contextual issues that make for complex nuances of post-racialism. For Cityland Community Church, the encounter with post-racialism has to do with the congregation’s history as a haven for Caribbean immigrants and the adult congregants’ insistence to identify with Caribbean identity over against African American identity. Second- and third-generation teenagers in the congregation experience post-racialism as identity bifurcation. They feel a pressure to deny racial identity at home and church while connecting with African American peers and identity in other places. A somewhat similar history and pressure takes place at Southland Community Church, but from the Cape Verdean experience. However, the two black-identifying Cape Verdean youth workers in this congregation long to help young people engage their experiences and wonders regarding race, racism, and racial identity. They even tried to use their participation in this research as a way to break free from post-racialism. Interestingly, these youth workers quickly learned that white leaders in the congregation were not interested in such a change. To avoid conflict, the youth workers at Southland Community Church decided to embrace a post-racial framework and return to employing the (anti-)virtue of color-blindness in Christian discipleship.

To explain why CCC and SCC land at a post-racial framework, chapter 5 discusses post-racialism as a habitus and as an aesthetic. In the discussion of habitus, I make the case that post-racialism is not only an ethical framework one can choose. Rather, it functions as a societal guise that draws people into a pervasive system of racism while turning attention away from the realities of racism. In the discussion of aesthetics, I show how this habitus is spread through images, the absence of necessary language, and the cultivation of forgetfulness regarding anti-black violence. Along the way, I offer a new term—race-ism—to display the interconnections of racial classification, racial violence, and racial identifications. While a post-racialist framework would suggest that these interconnections are the very reason we need to stop using race-related language to describe issues and identity markers, an anti-racist framework acknowledges that addressing race-ism requires naming and exposing it. Post-racialism, even as it is embraced in congregations, is not a move forward from racism but rather the continuation of race-ism. I argue that resisting post-racialism requires an aesthetic disruption of this habitus of race-ism that would make space for embracing the lives and stories of victims of racial violence as a hermeneutical lens for understanding current situations and discerning vocation.

Chapter 6 turns to Martin Luther King Jr.’s understandings and practices as critical resources for discerning a way to aesthetically disrupt and resist race-ism’s manifestation as post-racialism. This is an especially important move in light of the tendency for multiracial and multiethnic congregations to rely on a post-racialist interpretation of King to guide their praxis. By focusing on King, I address the root or at least one of the major roots of the problem. My focus on King deals heavily with primary sources, offering a correction to the racially color-blind lens with which King’s theology and practices are often presented in multiracial and multiethnic congregations. His eschatological, Christological, pneumatological, and strategic frameworks are decisively anti-racist and offer a pathway to a Christian praxis of aesthetic resistance.

Chapter 7 completes the circle in the work of theology by returning to the area of practice. I offer suggestions for the three congregations to begin moving from a post-racialist framework toward an anti-racist framework of Christian discipleship. I then focus on broad areas of practice that can be pursued in a variety of youth and young adult ministry contexts.

THE AIM OF THIS WORK

This book is primarily for pastoral leaders and those preparing for pastoral ministry. However, it is also for scholars interested in creative ways of doing theology. Along the way you will encounter several young people and their youth workers. If you are people oriented or have an interest in theological ethnography, the narratives found in the chapters 1, 3, and 4 may be your favorite parts of this book. You will also encounter social and theological analysis. If you are deeply interested in the why and ought questions of life, you may find the discussions in chapters 2, 5, and 6 particularly compelling. If you are simply interested in what to do, you may appreciate chapter 7 the most. You are free to start or focus on the areas that you most connect with. That may even help generate interest and inquiry to understand and engage other parts of the book. However, this book is written with a particular flow. While it may be tempting to assume that you already understand a particular topic before reading my treatment of it, it is important to know that there are significant nuances in each chapter that are needed to fully engage the next.

The book’s title, Church in Color, has two meanings. In one sense, it refers to the work of being honest about multiracial and multiethnic congregational life. The book is an attempt of doing this work by revealing stories that can only be heard and told through resisting the lens of racial color-blindness. Readers are invited to see the three congregations in color and consider what it might mean to see their own contexts of youth and young adult ministry in color. In another sense, the title points to a hopeful vision of multiracial and multiethnic congregational life, in which congregations actively resist the lens of color-blindness and foster a discipleship that can meaningfully engage race. I hope this book motivates pastors and other congregational youth workers to help young people explore their relationship with race. I hope reading the narratives from the congregations and young people in this book inspires a turn toward young people with a deep sense of openness to taking seriously their experiences and wonders regarding race, racism, and racial identity. I hope seeing the significance of their play and humor inspires congregations to make room in the social and physical walls of the church for disrupting race-ism. For scholars, I hope this book conjures new imagination for theological scholarship. Theology does not need to be locked within the walls of academia. We can do theology in a way that welcomes the voices and insights of people who are often left out of theological discourse. And the work of doing theological scholarship can offer pastoral care in the process.

Let me offer brief explanations of some terms in this book, namely race, racism, and racial identity. By race, I am referring to the way in which human beings have come to understand themselves and each other through categories set forth by European grasps for global power (since the beginnings of colonialism) that sought to locate the meaning and vocation of different human groups on the basis of their skin color and other phenotype. Race is not and has never been a neutral concept. Rather, it is based on the myth of whiteness, which places human beings on a spectrum from white (top) to black (bottom) and promotes the belief that those declared white are essentially good, chosen, and beautiful and those declared black are essentially the opposite.¹⁷ Within this problematic framework, some individuals and groups declared not white may work to achieve close proximity to whiteness,¹⁸ and some declared white can be understood to have fallen short of their starting point of easy access to whiteness and find themselves feeling closer proximity to the experiences or treatment of other groups.¹⁹ However, the issue is that race and its myth of whiteness use skin color and other phenotype to determine the essential value, starting point, limits, and redeemability of human beings in a manner that prioritizes and supports those declared white and those who trust in the myth of whiteness. Racism involves the actions, inactions, ideologies, policies, and other systems that perpetuate this way of imagining human beings.

As will be seen in the book, it is not only those considered white who perpetuate racism and the myth of whiteness. Everyone is vulnerable to its reach. I explain this in detail in chapter 5. Racial identity (and what I will eventually call racialized identifications) involves the work of understanding and expressing oneself in light of the realities of race and racism. Perhaps it goes without saying, but this book does not suggest that any racial group is superior or inferior to another. Anyone in any racial group can fall for the lure of racism and its myth of whiteness. And while the intrapersonal and interpersonal work may look different depending on one’s racial identity, everyone is equally called to see church in color and engage the work of anti-racism. The pastors, youth workers, and young people encountered before chapter 5 do not all necessarily operate with the understandings of race, racism, and racial identity explained here. Of course, that is partly the point; most are not sure how to name or what to do with the realities of race, racism, and racial identity. And what makes race even more confusing in some congregations is the assumption that Christian discipleship should practice, pursue, and produce racial color-blindness.

1

Racial Color-Blindness and Confusion in Youth Ministry

Beachland Community Church

I’m BLAAACK! Hakeem yells in an elongated manner at the top of his lungs. The Friday night youth group time is coming to a close at Beachland Community Church, and Hakeem had just finished chasing Nathan throughout the church building. With a gasp for air and the stance of accomplishment, Hakeem follows his exclamation with a smile. What is going on here?

Hakeem is a black/African American male and one of the oldest youth group students at Beachland Community Church (BCC). Earlier in the evening, Hakeem had noticed Nathan, a white/Caucasian male and one of the youngest youth group students, sitting alone in the fellowship hall focused on a handheld video game instead of playing basketball with the other boys in the group. Aware that Nathan was sad about a stressful family situation at home, Hakeem had