Disciples are an amazingly diverse group of Christians. Home-grown in North America since the early 1800s, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada has reflected North America’s changing populations and cultures. The denomination’s roots in the Christian unity movement predisposed it toward inclusion rather than isolation, further clearing the way for today’s diverse collection of congregations and members.

For example, at historic Ghent Christian Church in Akron, Ohio, choir director Marilyn Hayden Bolen often listens to the sermon through headphones as it is translated into English from Korean. Bolen, a descendent of William Hayden — who, with Alexander Campbell founded the church in 1845 — now takes time to paste Korean characters under English words so that everyone in her choir can understand what they are singing. “We sing in Korean and English together, and we sound lovely.”

For years, two Korean congregations “nested” at the church. Finally, the three groups decided to share resources, worship, and even pastoral leadership. Today, Ghent Christian Church is served by Senior Minister Lee Song-Wan. Bolen says her congregation’s commitment has “mirrored the covenant of our denomination to encourage growing diversity within the church and the community.”

Like the Ghent congregation, Disciples have become more racially and ethnically diverse over the years, changing with the times. As new waves of immigrants come to the United States and Canada, they become Disciples. As North Americans move from farms to cities, so do Disciples. Through the social and religious upheavals caused by the nations’ wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights movement, and globalization, Disciples have changed their attitudes about social, racial, and economic inequality, furthering our inclination to practice inclusion.

Today, Disciples are young and old, rich and poor, white-collar and blue-collar, rural and urban, male and female, conservative and liberal, prisoners and police officers, Democrats and Republicans, gay and straight, married and single, immigrants, laborers, teachers, doctors, and lawyers in all shades of black, brown, tan, and beige. We live in 46 states plus Canada and Puerto Rico. In 3,750 congregations with a total membership of about 690,000, we speak many languages and practice many different traditions.

This diversity extends beyond demographics. Disciples regularly make different, sometimes conflicting claims about who God is and what Jesus would have us do. Reflecting this diversity, DisciplesWorld has published opposing views on salvation, the person and work of Jesus, pacifism and just war, and the ordination of gays and lesbians, to name just a few. Some Disciples emphasize the divinity of Jesus; others think that it’s not so important. We read the Bible differently, define faith differently, worship differently, sing different hymns, even think and pray differently.

Isn’t it grand?

Disciples celebrate this diversity, of course. The denomination’s vision statement and priorities echo its historic commitment to inclusion and unity. Intending to “share the Good News of Jesus Christ … from our doorsteps to the ends of the earth,” the church hopes to “become a pro-reconciling/anti-racist church,” establish 1,000 new congregations, transform 1,000 existing congregations, and provide the best leadership possible for this work — all by the year 2020.

In fact, the effort to establish new congregations is further expanding the diversity of the fellowship. Today, 14 percent of all Disciples congregations are new — started in the years since 2001. Of that 14 percent, 31 percent are Hispanic congregations, 16 percent are African American, and 10 percent are Asian American. (See “By the numbers” on page 4 for more statistics.)

None of this is surprising. The nineteenth-century movement that became the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) was founded on the belief that Christians should not be divided at the Lord’s Supper because Jesus, who’s meal it is, prayed to God that his followers would “become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me” (John 17:23).

Formed out of the dust of division, Disciples followed a practice of inclusion and unity they believed was essential to living and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. What better show of progress toward the ideal of Christian unity than the continuing existence of this crazy, diverse hodge-podge of a people Disciples manage to hold together in community?

A tapestry pulling apart at the seams?

Of course, maintaining such a radically diverse group of Christians is not easy. We tend to celebrate from a distance, where the disagreements and hurt feelings, the discrimination and outright fighting are not as visible. And from a distance, the diversity appears as a beautifully woven tapestry, vibrant and alive, one work of art. Up close, the tapestry can seem like a confused and painful mess, sometimes pulling apart at the seams.

As part of the larger society, the church also struggles with the legacy of racism and exclusion in North America. The church has participated in broad systems of interaction and organization that benefit from racism even if the individuals in the systems have not intended to do so. Struggles around race, but also gender, sexual orientation, and theological differences continue to haunt the church.

Lawrence A. Q. Burnley’s recently published book, The Cost of Unity: African-American Agency and Education in the Christian Church, 1865–1914 (Mercer University Press, 2009), explores the history of educational institutions established for African Americans by white Disciples, and raises questions about agency and power. Burnley argues that although black Disciples played an active role in creating the institutions, the model of education itself significantly disempowered African Americans, both in the church and in the wider society.

In a March 2008 presentation reprinted in Call to Unity, a publication of the Disciples’ Council on Christian Unity, Timothy S. Lee describes how Asian Disciples congregations and communities were marginalized before and during World War II, particularly those whose members were sent to internment camps for Japanese people. He quotes U.S.-born Disciple Maureen Osuga, who wrote of her experience, “When World War II broke out, our family was allowed to take only what we could carry to the concentration camp. Vultures swooped down on my father’s two drug stores … swindling him out of his life’s work.”

Differing theological perspectives have caused harm among the Disciples fellowship as well. The movement that became the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) splintered several times in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries over basic faith claims about biblical authority, baptism, and salvation through Christ. At times, the tapestry has been torn irrevocably.

Moving toward ‘cultural competence’

After the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, which ended legal discrimination against African Americans, other identity movements began to emerge. Gender equality, gay rights, Asian American and Latino rights all came into the public sphere in the 1970s. By the 1980s, previously unheard voices were recognized and celebrated in public discourse.

In his book, Reconciliation 101 (Free Church Press, 2009), Alvin Sanders suggests that the 1990s were marked by the work of figuring out how to live well in these diverse communities we've now managed to recognize. “Cultural competence” became the challenge in that era, argues Sanders. How do we understand the many identities we not only embody as individuals — for example, female, Hispanic, educated — but also live near in our communities?

For Disciples, just how hard this work could be emerged in the early part of the twenty-first century when new church establishments began to take off. With the largest growth of new Disciples congregations since the 1930s, some began to wonder how the influx of new members would affect the theological landscape of the denomination, not just the demographic view (80 percent of new congregations are non-white). For example, in the October 2004 issue of DisciplesWorld, Lisa Davidson wrote in defense of a liberal Disciples heritage and shared her worry that some of the new congregations were not welcoming to female leadership. In response (December 2004), Rick Morse, vice president of New Church and Mission Initiatives, urged patience with both new and existing congregations in different cultural settings that are struggling with gender equality.

New approaches

In March 2008, the Disciples’ Council on Christian Unity (CCU) convened a consultation on racial diversity entitled, “Becoming a Multicultural and Inclusive Church.” The consultation was intentionally composed of equal numbers of white, African American, Pacific/Asian, and Hispanic leaders and participants. Two Haitian pastors also participated.

Through the sharing of stories and histories — some painful, some joyful — participants hoped to signal a new direction in the denomination. They called on the church not only “to welcome diversity” and “to embrace difference as a mark of our unity in Christ,” but also “to become the church God wants us to be as a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and inclusive community that reflects Christ’s love for all persons,” wrote CCU President Robert Welsh in the September 2008 issue of Call to Unity. The consultation hopes to move the church further into the gritty details of actually being an inclusive, multicultural church.

Key to moving forward, say the participants, is honesty and a willingness to build real and trusting relationships.

“What has inspired me in the consultation was the openness and honesty that was shared, prayed about,” wrote Yolanda Bowens, a recent graduate of United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, in a press release about the event.

Such relationships allow people to go deeper and challenge one another as equals, rather than just skimming the surface of a relationship looking for commonalities. Matt Harris, director of Project IMPACT in Los Angeles and a member of the consultation, put it this way: “It means we learn to settle our differences without breaking fellowship. It means we learn together, hurt together, struggle together, and overcome together.”

Unity in the midst of diversity

The consultation suggested that relationships which enable deeper theological conversation about our diversity are essential, particularly when that diversity threatens to pull us apart.

One of the most explosive issues facing congregations today is the role of gays and lesbians in congregations. Some say gay men and lesbians must be afforded the same respect and rights as others in our diverse community. Others resist recognizing homosexuality as an identity in and of itself. Differing theologies and understandings of biblical authority around this issue cut across racial and demographic lines and demonstrate how profoundly our divergent beliefs can pull at the seams of our diversity.

And it’s not just this topic but a host of others that raise basic questions about how we interpret scripture and live our faith. How should Disciples think theologically about capital punishment, abortion, divorce and marriage, war, torture, and immigration? Disciples are committed to both justice and unity. Yet efforts to maintain unity can seem to those who focus on justice to be counter-productive, while to others efforts to pursue to justice can seem to supersede inappropriately the unity for which Jesus prayed in John 17.

Ultimately, the question can only be answered by church members engaged in reflection, conversation, and mission together: How can this crazy, hodge-podge of a denomination hold together when core faith beliefs are at stake?

Looking for only the most basic commonalities and requesting tolerance for everything else won’t hold Disciples together for long.

Disciples must ask the tough questions, take even more risks, build the relationships, and converse as equals if we are going to negotiate this radical diversity in which we live and discover what it is that really does bind us one to another.