wildernesse

"Many blacks are some flavor of Baptist ... they seem to be very much involved in the Southern Baptists."

Southern Baptists (the ones who protest Disney) are probably not nearly as friendly to blacks as you might think--especially as their denom was founded because they wanted to keep slaves.

Most blacks here in the South are probably some flavor of Baptist or Methodist. A person living in the South and who is Baptist is not necessarily a Southern Baptist.

Just a side note.

I do think that churches should be more integrated and open places--but then I've never been a member of a church that didn't welcome people of all races to worship (even in rural areas of the South). People want to be with people who are similar to them, so today I think it's mostly self-segregation.

I go to a great church that's mostly white, and it's sister church is a mostly black church of a different denom. Members of these two churches work together often because they have similar goals and aspirations for our community, and occasionally our pastor preaches at their church and their pastor preaches at ours. Same deal for choirs and other praise ministries.

People have traditional ties to locations and groups of people--your "church family"--and you don't just chuck all of that to find a church that's diverse. I think that as our society becomes more mobile that more churches will become much more noticeably diverse.

I have so say that I'm not really clear on what you think is painfully obvious though. That religion is simply a social construct and that makes it less valuable? Just because a behavior is socially/culturally confined doesn't make it worthless--especially to those who practice it. The idea of human rights is just a social construct.

--tibac

Stephen T-B

Luvluv wrote:
“It should be kept in mind that Christians do not always behave in a Christian fashion.”

The point is, what constitutes a “Christian fashion” when it comes to behaviour?
How many people professing to be Christians have put their hands up and said: “Ok. I got it all wrong: I shouldn’t have kept slaves / I shouldn’t have burned Mistress Saturnalia for being a witch / burned down the abortion clinic / forbidden my daughter to see that Jimmy Witherspoon ‘cause he’s black” - or done any of the very many dubious things which Christians have done in the belief that their Saviour either required it or didn’t have any very strong feelings about it?
Guided by his reading of the Bible and what the Church he has chosen to join says, Luvluv has a clear idea of how Christians should behave, but at the other end of the street there’s another church and another preacher and another congregation with very different ideas.
Did David Koresh think he wasn’t a Christian? Did any of his congregation think he wasn’t a Christian?
The Bible can be used and has been used to justify a very wide range of behaviours, and it is not sufficient for Luvluv to say of those whom he disapproves: “They say they’re Christians, but they aren’t.”
They THINK they are; just as much as he thinks he is.
This, I suppose, is a core complaint against Religion: it is not a guarantee of anything. So what good is it?
The retort: “It isn’t a guarantee of anything because God gives human beings Free Will, and they can choose to do His will or their will,” is a get-out, because if you got 150 people together who all profess to believe in God, you’d get 150 different ideas as to how their god wants them to behave: can they divorce? Some think yes, some think no; are abortions permissible? Some think yes, some think no: is homosexual love a sin? Some think yes and some think no. Does a baby go to hell if it dies before it was baptised? Some think yes, some think no? Does god mind if there are statues of Jesus, Mary and the Saints in church? Some think yes and some think no? Do I go to hell for masturbating? Some think yes and some think no. Does god approve of mixed race marriages? Some think yes and some think no. Does god approve of mixed-race congregation? Some think yes and some think no.
Is the Church racist?
Some chuches are. Some aren’t. And whether they are or they aren’t, they have this is common: they believe they are behaving in a Christian fashion.