One of the big stories making the rounds this week is Time magazine's major report on Willow Creek and the progress being made in evangelical megachurches to bridge the racial divide. Time religion reporter David Van Biema uses Willow Creek's journey, and senior pastor Bill Hybel's personal spiritual awakening on the issue of race in America, as a window to how the larger evangelical church is doing in this arena. Recounting the American church's long struggle to overcome its complicated racial history, Van Biema writes:
Since Reconstruction, when African Americans fled or were ejected from white churches, black and white Christianity have developed striking differences of style and substance. The argument can be made that people attend the church they are used to; many minorities have scant desire to attend a white church, seeing their faith as an important vessel of cultural identity. But those many who desire a transracial faith life have found themselves discouraged -- subtly, often unintentionally, but remarkably consistently. In an age of mixed-race malls, mixed-race pop-music charts and, yes, a mixed-race President, the church divide seems increasingly peculiar. It is troubling, even scandalous, that our most intimate public gatherings -- and those most safely beyond the law's reach -- remain color-coded.
