Our Changing Nation

A recent news item on the Christian Science Monitor website entitled, "Census Bureau: Hispanics account for half of US population growth," underscores the accelerating demographic change taking place in our nation. We are becoming more and more ethnically pluralistic, and the time is coming when white Americans of European ancestry will be but another minority. There won't be one predominate majority.  Drawing on a U. S. Census Bureau "brief," the article notes that, "...[America's] Hispanic population grew by 43 percent – four times America’s overall 9.7 percent growth rate and much more than the non-Hispanic white population, which grew by barely more than 1 percent over the same period."  Hispanic growth is taking place across the nation, especially in the South and the Midwest.  It at least doubled in one-fourth of the nation's counties.  The article concludes by noting that Hispanic population growth has important political implications since Hispanics generally vote Democratic by a significant percentage.

Briefly, these changes mean several things for America's churches.  First, churches and denominations are going to have to become more multi-cultural if they want to have a meaningful place in American society.  Second, American churches are going to have to learn the term, "dialogue" and how to think and behave in a "dialogical" manner.  That is, we will have to develop skills for speaking meaningfully with people of other cultures.  Third, we will do best in the future when we think about Christ, faith, and theology in pluralistic terms.  It will be to our advantage to acknowledge that Christ can be different things to different people, that salvation takes on different meanings in different contexts, and that we can speak of God legitimately in different languages and from many different perspectives.  It will be important for us to spend less time defending our orthodoxies and more time learning from Christians of other nations, cultures, and faith traditions.

All of this could be very exciting, but one suspects that many American churches and denominations won't be able to stand the excitement.