Sunday is the Most Segregated Day of the Week

If you were to drop into an American Mosque, Synagogue, church, or any other place of worship you would likely see a sea of like minds and ethnicities. Theology is the logical separatist element, but it’s the ethnic separation that has many concerned.  Is it good for a “melting pot” society to be so separated on Sunday? Of course there are pockets of exceptions and many worship leaders proclaiming to welcome all and, for the most part, that is true, however, it doesn’t change the complexion of the congregation. Ultimately, we have to ask why our places of worship are segregated and then consider if this is acceptable in a society that is trying desperately to “have a dream.”

At least for the moment let’s agree that Jews will go to Synagogues, Muslims will go to the Mosque, and so on. The theological debate is moot. Aside from adventurous students of religion or the occasional event at a foreign place of worship, the vast majority of believers stick to their sect; for example, a Christian visiting a Mosque or vice versa. However, the theological differences are not reserved to the different religions, but also to the variables within those religions.

Each religion has elements on the far right and the far left with everything in between. Amongst Islam the major divider is between Sunni and Shi’a. And then there are the different forms of worship between nation states and communities. Islam, as practiced in Iraq, is different than Islam in the United States. The World Almanac estimates that there are over one billion Muslims in the world that span ethnicities from African to Arab to Southeast Asian. For the most part, thirteen million Jews are ethnoreligious meaning that they are either born of the Jewish ethnicity or converted into the religion.

The largest religion is Christianity with an estimated two billion followers. It may also be the most divided religion. There are the Catholics, the Mormons, the Jehovah Witness, the multitude of protestant sects, Orthodox just to name a few. The movements within Christianity range from Pietism and Methodism, Evangelicalism, Adventism, Modernism and Liberalism, Pentecostalism, Fundamentalism, Neo- orthodoxy, New Evangelicalism, Paleo-Orthodoxy, Ecumenism, and many others. It’s almost impossible to keep track of all of the Christian movement because the sect on the outer fringes of the religion appear and disappear as fast as political action committees (PAC).

Christianity is the largest religion with the greatest variance of theologies that make it a perfect case study of separatist Sunday. The difference in ethnic complexion varies between the movements, the sects, and the communities. In suburban Denver Colorado one may attend a “community” Christian church with almost all white European congregants and then drive around the corner to visit a Catholic church primarily filled with Hispanics. The truth is that Vietnamese believers worship with other Vietnamese and African Americans worship with other African Americans. Again, religious worship is a very personal thing so why wouldn’t you feel more comfortable with like minds and like ethnicities. Indeed, Sunday’s are the most segregated day of the week.

The real question is whether this is a good thing or a bad thing? Let’s say for a moment that there was no separation between church and state and we could force religious segregation. Would a “melting pot” of worshipers improve worship or society as a whole? The Mormon Church or The Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS Church) addresses the dilemma of congregational “clichés” by assigning worshipers to a particular parish which may be reassigned many times thus integrating the congregants, but does that strengthen the church? That brings about the question of free will. If the Mormons could pick and stick would the separation return?

It is my contention that the separation would return because people simply feel more comfortable worshiping with likeminded people generally from the same economic level. People like familiarity. The church becomes ones family. In this case, you can pick your family, but, in almost all cases, people pick congregations that reflect their socio-economic class. Even if we could force segregation should we? It would be great if Sundays reflected the dynamics of our mixed society, but the truth is that Sunday segregation exists and will continue to exist as long as we have religious freedom. In this case, a segregated Sunday is perhaps our greatest reflection of religious freedom.