Anyone who attended the first gathering/convening/clumping together of Presbymergent earlier this year in Louisville would have noticed something striking. It wasn’t just that an almost cultish number of the circle of laptops had little glowing apples on the back. It was that the group, for a significant portion of the gathering, was pretty much a monoculture. It was mostly men, and almost entirely Caucasian or Anglo or Honky-American or whatever it is we’re calling whitish-pinkish people these days.

This is, unfortunately, fairly reflective of our denomination as a whole.

It is also reflective of the emergent movement, which for all of our talk of relational faith and embracing the other, tends to be whiter than a polar bear drinking milk in a blizzard.

There’s an interesting pair of blog posts exploring the relationship between the emergent movement and the African American religious tradition put up by Rev. Byron Wade, the current vice moderator of the PC(USA) General Assembly.

He writes:

What would be the attraction/pull for African-Americans to worship in these places [emergent communities] knowing that most of us have grown up in a culture and heritage of strong black churches? Even those who are youth/young adults tend to gravitate towards congregations that are similar to what they are used to.

It’s a good question, and one he endeavors to answer in part one and part two of his post.