Abstract
The goal of creating welcoming and inclusive communities within the corporate and higher education sectors has existed for several decades through efforts of diversity, equity, and inclusion. A more recent focus on “belonging,” however, is shifting the conversation toward deeper, more systemic questions. While multiracial and multicultural churches have grown in numbers during this timeframe, a growing realization is that simply having representation within congregations is not sufficient to address the deep inequalities and injustices present in the United States and the world. The important shift of focus to “belonging” can serve to challenge how Christians think about inclusion in the church.
If the past few years have taught those living in the United States anything, it is that discrimination, bias, and sometimes outright hatred toward those who are deemed “different” or “other” are still part of the daily experience of millions living in this country. The murders of Treyvon Martin in 2012, Michael Brown in 2014, and Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd in 2020 gained national headlines but represent only a few of the many black and brown people killed by police or white citizens. Although typically not making headlines, the reality is that discrimination in access to housing, education, employment, and health care continues to be the lived experience of millions, even for those who appear to be successful socio-economically and living the “American Dream.” In addition, while much of our national conversation has centered around race and ethnicity, many people today continue to experience discrimination and bias based on sexual and/or gender orientation, social class, disability, citizenship status, and religion. A further reality is that all people have multiple identities and the intersectionality of these identities leads to multiple and complex forms of oppression.
US society has continually over the past decades become more aware of these issues, and the business world, institutions of higher education, and the military have sought to address systemic inequities through various initiatives and programs. These efforts arose in response to a number of concerns: the need (and actually, by some companies, the desire) to hire returning black and brown military veterans after World War II; the demands of the civil rights movement and subsequent legislation; a push for equity in both pay and hiring practices by women in the workforce; and demands for LGBTQI+ inclusion, especially after the Stonewall Riots in 1969. The beginnings of many of these movements focused on the need for justice and righting the past wrongs perpetrated against marginalized groups. Over time, however, a broader understanding of the importance of diversity has arisen. As Damon A. Williams notes, [The] justification for diversity no longer needs to rest solely on the social justice case for addressing past discrimination or leveling the playing field for historically disadvantaged individuals or groups . . . . Leaders in the military and corporate America recognize that diversity is essential to our economic competitiveness, social stability, and even national security.
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As a result of this history, corporations and institutions of higher education developed strategies to bring about change, including an intentional focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). While these entities have undoubtedly changed and made progress on these issues, some people are critical of current efforts and point out that, in many cases, the deeper attitudinal and cultural changes needed for true transformation have not been realized. In a recent study of diversity in the workplace, including more than 30 years of data from over 800 companies, Frank Dobbins and Alexandra Kalev write, Many companies proudly announce that they “get it”—they know the corporate world has a history of excluding women, people of color, older people, LGBTQ+ workers, and people with disabilities . . . . But one Black engineer who was asked (again) to appear on the company’s website may roll her eyes. The websites show that companies can talk the talk. The data prove that they don’t know how to walk the walk.
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Simply increasing representation, mandating trainings to unmask implicit bias, or forming DEI committees, however well-intentioned, do not in themselves lead to cultural transformation or address dynamics of power. Simply having diversity in the room or sitting through a training seminar does not make an institution a place in which each person, regardless of differences, can bring the totality of who they are, including their unique history, perspectives, and gifts, because the power of white, male, heterosexual, able normativity continues to dominate while, in most cases, being unspoken and unacknowledged. I have several colleagues and friends who have experienced the pain of being invited to serve on a faculty only to find out that, if their scholarship, gifts, and voice did not serve to maintain the status quo, they were not welcomed. A number of articles on this subject in journals such as The Chronicle of Higher Education show that these experiences are not unique. 3
In an effort to address these issues, as well as refocus the work of diversity and inclusion, another word is being included with DEI: belonging. An emphasis on belonging recognizes that people must not only be invited and welcomed, but, to feel truly part of an organization or community, they must also be able to bring the totality of who they are. When thinking about the addition of belonging to the work of inclusion, LaFawn Davis, Senior Vice President of Environmental, Social and Governance at Indeed.com, puts it this way: For several years, Verna Myers, activist and VP of Inclusion Strategy at Netflix, has said that “diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.” I love that quote—and I’d like to adapt it by adding that belonging is knowing all the songs. Knowing all the songs goes beyond simply being invited to the party; you feel like you belong there. And you can’t help but dance; it’s your jam!
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In addition, a focus on belonging forces a reckoning with both histories of marginalization and oppression, as well as the current cultural climate, both of which enable ongoing discrimination and marginalization of millions in the United States. In some sense, the justice focus of early DEI work has returned, with Lisa Coleman, Senior Vice President for Global Inclusion and Strategic Innovation at New York University, writing that in the business world, many companies recognize that “deep engagement of this work is necessary to navigate emerging shifts and address some of the most salient issues of our times, focusing on reimagining a world that can be different from today.” 5
This brief history of diversity work within the corporate and higher education sectors serves as background for discussing the importance of this same work in the church. Although DEI work in corporations and institutions of higher education is qualitatively different than working on transforming how a local church envisions diversity, lessons from what has not worked over the years, as well as the recent shift to a focus on “belonging,” could provide important lessons in thinking about churches as open and inclusive communities.
Take, for example, the issue of race. For many today, one primary way of addressing inclusivity and the church involves representation and creating multiracial and multicultural churches. Recent data show growth in the number of these churches, defined as congregations in which no single ethnic or racial group makes up more than 80% of members. According to statistics from Baylor University, mainline Protestant churches that meet this definition grew from 1% to 10% between 1998 and 2018, while, during the same time period, evangelical churches went from 7% to 22%.
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On the surface this development may seem a welcome one in the effort to make churches more welcome and inclusive spaces. David Swanson writes about the growth in multicultural congregations, noting the assumptions often made about the connections between diversity in the pews and a congregation’s awareness of and commitment to fighting racial injustice: If we are at all concerned about race, we have tended to think about the problem of racial injustice and segregation as one of racial separation, of different racial and ethnic groups being distanced from one another such that the unity of the church is compromised. From this perspective, the obvious solution is to bridge the separation and bring formerly divided people together. Multiethnic and multiracial relationships are the evidence of success in this version of racial reconciliation.
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Swanson notes, however, that simply having representation within a diverse congregation, even if the relationships formed are genuine, does not guarantee that the inclusion of different voices, backgrounds, and cultures leads to reconciliation or just relationships. Instead, he writes, in many cases multiculturalism “prioritizes the comfort of white people over the well-being of people of color. By elevating reconciled relationships, white people are not asked to grapple with the nature and impact of our own whiteness.”
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This critique is in line with the authors of the Baylor study, with co-author Michael O. Emerson noting, The path to diversity seems to be a one-way street, with people of color joining white congregations but very few whites joining Black congregations. Until congregations confront the historic structures that keep racial groups divided, diversity inside congregations may function mainly as a superficial performance.
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In addition to this critique, multicultural congregations are primarily in urban spaces. The millions who live, work, and worship in rural communities tend to experience monoracial/cultural worship and congregational life as normative.
These critiques notably have much in common with critiques within the larger DEI world mentioned above. Having diverse representation within a workforce, student body, or congregation is important, but it does not necessarily lead to just and reconciled relationships. One reason (that many would rather not admit) is that much of what separates people is systemic. Regarding systemic issues of race and religion in the United States, Robert Jones writes that racism and separateness are built into the DNA of the church: The historical record of lived Christianity in America reveals that Christian theology and institutions have been the central cultural tent pole holding up the very idea of white supremacy. And the genetic imprint of this legacy remains present and measurable in contemporary white Christianity, not only among evangelicals in the South but also among mainline Protestants in the Midwest and Catholics in the Northeast.
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And, as those involved in DEI work in corporate and higher education already realize that simply having diverse relationships will not necessarily address injustice, their move toward emphasizing belonging can also be instructive for the church.
Theologian Willie James Jennings addresses this important shift in both education and the church, writing, Theological education is supposed to open up sites where we enter the struggle to rethink our people. We think them again, but now with others who must rethink their people. And in this thinking together we begin to see what we had not seen before: we belong to each other, we belong together. Belonging must become the hermeneutic starting point from which we think the social, the political, the individual, the ecclesial, and . . . the educational.
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Just as belonging has been recently added as a lens for accomplishing the goals of DEI within the corporate and higher education worlds, an emphasis on belonging can help Christians rethink the work involved in realizing just and inclusive congregations and communities. But how might congregations and communities do this? What are strategies for creating environments in which relationships of belonging might blossom? Answering these questions is clearly neither easy nor simple. The examples below can serve as suggestions to help in thinking through this important work.
Seek partners in the community
As noted above, efforts to bring diversity to church communities has largely focused on building multicultural and multiracial congregations. Some wonderful multiracial churches have been and continue to be meaningful and life-changing places for members. Not all efforts at creating communities of belonging, however, need to focus on what happens inside the walls of the church. Instead, members’ realizing that they are part of the fabric of the larger community in which they live and serve can help create and support efforts at belonging.
The congregation I call home, Central Christian Church in Indianapolis, engages with our larger community in many ways. One example is Central’s membership in Faith in Indiana, one of many federations across the country that make up Faith in Action. Working together with ecumenical and interfaith partners, Central is part of a network of faith communities seeking to address issues such as gun violence, health care, immigrant justice, mass incarceration, and voting rights. By its very nature, Faith in Indiana, as well as the larger Faith in Action network, incorporates people and faith communities representing differences in race/ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, ability, national origin, theological beliefs and commitments, and political affiliation, seeking to create communities and a society “free of economic oppression, racism and discrimination in which every person lives in a safe and healthy environment, is respected and included, and has agency over the decisions that shape their lives.” 12
Another example is in Robert P. Jones’ book, White Too Long, in which he shares the journey of two churches, one white and one black, to grow in their understanding of their racialized past, as well as their joint commitment to envisioning a new and different future together. The two churches, First Baptist Church of Christ and First Baptist Church on New Street, are located in Macon, Georgia. Jones notes, “The unlikely and somewhat confusing configuration of the two First Baptist Churches is not the result of some out-of-control church marketing competition but of an intimate, shared history: they began as one church.” 13 Jones details the history of how the two churches separated as well as the long and difficult journey, begun in 2006 as part of former President Jimmy Carter’s New Baptist Covenant, of a racial reckoning for both. Beginning with social events and joint interracial youth outings, the churches moved toward covenanting together to “work together toward racial justice and healing” during a joint worship service in 2015. 14
The pastor at Central Christian in Indianapolis, as well as the pastors of the two Baptist churches Jones discusses, all admit that this work, and building the necessary relationships of trust, is difficult and takes time. Jones, when asking the pastor of the white church in Macon mentioned above where he thought they were after over a decade of journeying together, noted his response: “I think everybody feels like we are still scratching the surface . . . . I think we’re just getting started. I think people in both churches feel that way.” 15 This is the case whether the issues being confronted pertain to race/ethnicity, sexual and/or gender orientation, social class, disability, citizenship status, or religion. Focusing outside the walls of the church on the larger community, with an eye toward understanding the history and current context that interconnects everyone as well as how congregations might work together at efforts of justice, can be a place to start in thinking through how “we belong to one another.”
Engaging in the Missio Dei
Another way churches can address these issues is through engagement in God’s mission in the world. This natural entry point comes with an important caveat: the type of engagement matters, and, if one approaches mission from a position of power, certitude, and wanting to “help” others, these efforts are unlikely to lead to building communities of belonging and, quite likely, will have the opposite effect. Theologian Joerg Rieger has noted that churches in the United States typically engage in mission in one of the three ways: through “outreach,” “relationships,” or what he calls “inreach.” Mission as outreach involves churches seeking to help those who are less fortunate with needed aid related to, for instance, food security, education, and health care. This type of engagement can undoubtedly make a difference in people’s lives. That said, this approach generally involves those who see themselves as having access to resources, knowledge, and/or skills helping those that they see as lacking these things. Power differentials are rarely acknowledged and, in many cases, simply reinforced. The second type of engagement, mission as relationship, moves closer to fostering belonging because the focus is on getting to know others across lines of difference and building community; simply focusing on relationships, however, does not guarantee that differentials in power between people and groups will be addressed or even acknowledged. In fact, Rieger writes that one’s desire to help and build relationships can actually compound inequities: [The] problem with understanding mission as relationship is not that we would not mean well. Just the opposite: because we do mean so well, because we really want to see the other as equal, we often fail to give an account of the deeper inequalities.
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I am ashamed to admit that I have personally participated in mission efforts that failed on this count. My spouse and I moved to South Africa in 2002 to serve with a partner church, the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa. After about 6 months of working with partners, I drove a few hours to a rural congregation to discuss an agricultural project the church was interested in implementing. The pastor of the church, several deacons, and the chief of the area were all present. I had been trained that we were there to walk with our partners, to listen and learn, and to help connect them to resources to address issues they and their communities identified. As the meeting began, there were intense discussions on important issues. Where should the project take place? Who should be involved? How would the larger community benefit? As I listened, I had opinions on these issues but remained silent. After about half an hour, however, the pastor of the church turned to me and said, “Mfundisi (pastor), what do you think?” Since I saw everyone at the table, including myself, as equals, and I did have an opinion, I shared it. Suddenly, the conversation was over. The pastor looked at the others present and said, “OK, now we know what we must do.” I was stunned and, at the time, did not understand what happened. With more experience and reflection, however, I realized that my desire to be a partner and to help, along with my blindness to power differentials in the room (in a room of black South Africans, I was Western, white, male, more “formally” educated, had a US passport, represented the donor, among other things) had actually caused me to be as paternalistic as any missionary has ever been, even though my goal was exactly the opposite.
In thinking about creating the conditions for relationships that foster belonging, Rieger’s final way of engagement, which he calls mission as “inreach,” might offer unique possibilities. Rieger says mission as inreach is marked by a realization that God is the first missionary, and all of us are recipients. We continue to be recipients even in our participation in God’s mission. Even our acts of mission and solidarity with others are never one-way streets; they function as means of grace, as channels through which God’s grace comes back in our lives.
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An example of this grace can be seen in the experience of a friend and colleague, Rev. Dr. Ruth Fletcher, who formerly served as a Regional Minister in the Montana Region of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Regional Ministers work with churches in a larger geographic area on issues such as church vitality, pastoral care, and new church starts. Fletcher has a heart for the global church and once journeyed with a group to Nicaragua. She planned on building relationships and also helping the people in Nicaragua in ways that they identified. During her time there, however, she learned about how local Nicaraguan pastors engaged their churches in mission. As she listened, she said she was struck by the similarities between the issues pastors in Nicaragua faced and those in her region of the United States. Most areas were rural, with long distances between communities, and unemployment and poverty were high. As she listened, Fletcher began to see that she might be able to implement aspects of what Nicaraguan partners were doing in her own region. She came to Nicaragua thinking she would build relationships by helping. To her astonishment, she experienced the building of relationships by listening and learning. Through recognition of the expertise and agency of partners in addressing their own issues in culturally relevant ways, she was able to receive what they offered. She experienced God’s grace through that solidarity and both she and her Nicaraguan partners were changed. As a result, Nicaraguan pastors were invited to the United States to lead a workshop at a large mission conference sponsored by the DoC and United Church of Christ (UCC), sharing their expertise and helping those present to learn. In reflecting on the effects of mission on the sense of connecting and belonging to one another, Fletcher writes, To be in mission is to become friends with neighbors, to accompany them through times of trial and critical need. The root of the word accompaniment is com which means “with” and pan which means “bread.” So walking with neighbors is really about sharing bread together—about “being with” more than “doing for.”
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Working on ourselves matters
In moving toward the creation of communities of belonging, we need to be willing to continually work on ourselves. Christians can do this work in many ways, but the key is seeking to decenter oneself and one’s worldview, learning from the experiences and perspectives of others. The Anti-Racism Committee at Central Christian Church engaged with an organization called Crossroads to lead a day-long workshop, open to all members of the church. The workshop built on previous congregational engagement in book studies related to race, oppression, and power. Other activities could include visiting museums and historic sites, such as the Underground Railroad Museum, the GLBT History Museum, or the Civil Rights Trail (civilrightstrail.com) that includes more than 100 locations across 15 states. Many documentaries, such as I Am Not Your Negro, Thirteenth, Criptime, and Brother Outsider: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, can lead to rich engagement.
In this work, those people formed by (and privileged by) the dominant culture need to move with intentionality and care. Working on ourselves involves the need to be aware of our presuppositions and, depending on one’s background, how whiteness, maleness, heterosexism, and ableism, to name a few, as normative continue to influence one’s views and reactions to others. Christians need to be willing to listen to others, to learn from their experiences and wisdom, and when necessary, to ask for forgiveness. An important aspect to this work is the need to build a tolerance for discomfort. In the face of long histories of intentional divisions, prejudice, and oppression, it takes “time, courage, and relationships.” Allowing . . . discomfort—and at times extreme anguish—to come, allowing the waves of the past to crash on the shore of the present until the rhythm is familiar enough to ring in the ears, is a critical step toward healing and wholeness.
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Conclusion
Theologian Damayanthi Niles writes that her father, noted missiologist D. Preman Niles, proposed “an image of the Church in relation to the rest of the world as ‘the people of God in the midst of all God’s people.’” 20 One of the principal tasks of the church is to be an example of an alternative community, one that seeks to live out gospel imperatives such as faith, hope, and love in a way that somehow and in some way make God’s realm recognizable in the midst of the world’s brokenness and for the benefit of all of humanity and, indeed, all of creation. The work of seeking to create communities of belonging is part of this calling. In her work on how Christians might engage in a world marked by plurality, Niles says, “The desire of God is the fullness of life found in the relationship between all things. This is the language of salvation.” 21 In our broken and fragile world, may it be so.
Footnotes
1.
Damon A. Williams, Strategic Diversity Leadership: Activating Change and Transformation in Higher Education (Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2013), 12.
2.
Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev, Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2022), 6.
3.
See, for example, Joshua Doležal, “Why Faculty of Color Are Leaving Academe: Too Many Find Themselves Disenfranchised, Exhausted, and Isolated,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 20, 2022, https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-faculty-of-color-are-leaving-academe; and Brianna Hatch, Beth McMurtrie, Wyatt Myskow, and Megan Zahneis, “Why They Left: Five stories from professors of color who’d had enough,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 30, 2022, 
.
4.
LaFawn Davis, “How Belonging Differs from Diversity and Inclusion—And Why It Matters,” Indeed for Employers, September 2, 2020, https://www.indeed.com/lead/sense-of-belonging-at-work?gclid=Cj0KCQiAgribBhDkARIsAASA5bt3j7MxrIlMS9ET4rBR6KYWyy_y819gDQWFzFodcuWgXGy8BiV2YaoaAmFCEALw_wcB&aceid=&gclsrc=aw.ds.
5.
6.
“Racially Diverse Congregations in the US Have Nearly Tripled in the Past Twenty Years, Baylor University Study Finds,” Baylor University Media and Public Relations, November 11, 2020, https://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=220972#:~:text=Results%20showed%20these%20increases%20from,multiracial%2C%20up%20from%203%25.
7.
David Swanson, Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2020), 165.
8.
Swanson, Rediscipling the White Church, 165.
9.
“Racially Diverse Congregations.”
10.
Robert P. Jones, White Too Long (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 6.
11.
Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020), 10, emphasis original.
12.
Faith In Action, “About Us,” https://faithinaction.org/about-us/. For information on local Faith in Action federations, visit “The Network,” .
13.
Jones, White Too Long, 200.
14.
Jones, White Too Long, 204.
15.
Jones, White Too Long, 210.
16.
Jorge Rieger, “Theology and Mission Between Neocolonialism and Post Colonialism,” Mission Studies 21.2 (2004): 218.
17.
Rieger, “Theology and Mission,” 220.
18.
Ruth Fletcher, Thrive: Spiritual Habits of Transforming Congregations (Gonzalez, FL: Energion Publications, 2015), 57–58.
19.
Jones, White Too Long, 226.
20.
Damayanthi Niles, Doing Theology with Humility, Generosity, and Wonder: A Christian Theology of Pluralism (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2020), 71.
21.
Niles, Doing Theology, 79.