Thread by @JemarTisby

In my first-ever piece for @BlkPerspectives (🙌🏾), I talk about the continuing importance of the Black Church juxtaposed with the ways Black Christians have always moved across the ecclesiastical color line.
aaihs.org/crossing-the-e…

According to @pewresearch overall, 60 percent of Black churchgoers attend Black churches…Thirteen percent attend a church that is predominantly white/other, and 25 percent attend a multiracial church where “no single race makes up a majority of attendees”
aaihs.org/crossing-the-e…

The same @pewresearch study also shows church attendance among younger Black Christians…
Millennials
53% - Black church
18% - white/other church
27% - multiracial church

Gen Z
53% - Black church
25% - white/other church
19% - multiracial church
aaihs.org/crossing-the-e…

“This racial reshuffling, however, has been almost entirely one-way. “All the growth [in multiracial churches] has been people of color moving into white churches,” sociologist Michael Emerson says.
aaihs.org/crossing-the-e…

The increasing numbers who attend white or multiracial congregations calls into question the future of the Black church in reference to its past. But a historical examination shows churches in the US have never been uniformly segregated.

aaihs.org/crossing-the-e…

It appears that there will always be some attempts at forming multiracial faith communities and that Black people will engage in such efforts on the proposition that their presence in other congregations will be accepted and even transformative.
aaihs.org/crossing-the-e…

It also appears that if Black people continue to face racism and pressure to culturally assimilate, then there will always be a need for and the presence of predominantly Black churches. 
aaihs.org/crossing-the-e…