Multiracial Churches and Disruption of Racial Inequality: A "Best-Case" Setting and Its Limits

• In Event: Joint Roundtables: Social Psychology Section and Sociology of Emotions Section
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 7 - Theory

Abstract

Analyzing observational, in-depth interview, and documentary data about a little-known but theoretically strategic case of a multiracial church—the “local churches” (LC)—we build a theory of when and how multiracial/ethnic Christian churches are likely to disrupt racial/ethnic inequalities of status and power to the greatest extent. Although prior literature is mixed, overall, it suggests that multiracial churches do little to mitigate racial inequalities. However, the multiracial/ethnic LC atypically instantiates three additional conditions that combine with its multiracial/ethnic character to promote three conjoined mechanisms that make it a “best case” for mitigating racial/ethnic status and power inequalities. Additional conditions are the absence of a clergy/laity distinction, absence of bureaucratic hierarchy, and that LC members deeply inhabit at multiple spatial levels an organicist, mutualist, and inclusively egalitarian institutional logic of oneness in the Body of Christ. Together these conditions promote racial/ethnic status deconstruction, construction and maintenance of a highly prominent and salient LC Christian identity verified through behavioral enactment of racial/ethnic egalitarianism and interracial networks in which race/ethnicity is highly deconsolidated from other markers of status and authority. General implications for inequality theory and research are discussed.

Authors

• Jiayin Hu, Purdue University

• Robin Stryker, Purdue University