The reformers I spoke to told me that sometimes they feel like giving up on white evangelical institutions altogether. “It’s an ongoing choosing. There have been several moments where I have been, like, What in the world am I doing here in Southern Baptist life?” Mr. Strickland said.
(The New York Times) -- Churches seeking to diversify their pews can turn to a growing library of books and study guides, including “Multiethnic Conversations,” a curriculum written by Mark DeYmaz, a pastor in Arkansas, and Oneya Okuwobi, a doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State University and an ordained Pentecostal minister. “The cynical person would say white church attendance has been falling for years, and if you don’t bring in people of color, you’re not going to have churches,” Ms. Okuwobi told me. “I’m not going to say that there isn’t some of that.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/opinion/sunday/black-evangelicals-diversity.html
BC-360 Response: And like clockwork, every time there is an article critiquing issues of race in the Evangelical movement, their apologist pop up like groundhogs to downplay and throw shiny objects away from the core of the subject: The southern-wing of American Evangelicalism has a credibility (and race problem) with white Americans and minorities. The whining in this article does nothing to address that, and everything to highlight it, but perhaps even more noteworthy is how he writes so casually about Evangelicals— as if his particular strain of Evangelicalism owns and dictates what its priories are. Who made him/them KING of Evangelicalism? It's as if they want an Evangelicalism that compliments their reality, whilst showing indifference to other strains of it. It's beyond me. American Southern Evangelicalism, especially given its dark history with race and Republican politics should try to listen for a change, it would serve them well.
Related Sources: Pastors, Not Politicians, Turned Dixie Republican https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/27/pastors-not-politicians-turned-dixie-republican/#673700c6695f
