Dallas, Texas
2022
To engage in ethnographic research in collaboration with congregations in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex in order to promote integrative ecclesial environments that bridge the racial divide between White, Black, and Latinx constituencies.
Project Summary
This research project examines how congregations in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex in Texas seek to bridge the racial divide between White, Black, and Latinx constituencies.1 The study proposes ethnographic research in collaboration with 3-4 churches intent on examining and reshaping their worship practices and community engagement in order to promote not only diversity but integrative ecclesial environments. In doing so, this project seeks to add to scholarship on North American worship and racial divides, and to equip congregations to address these complex problems in their own contexts.
What questions about worship and your discipline will be guiding your project?
Gerardo Marti argues that “integrated worship is fundamental to the vision of a truly multiracial church” (Marti 2012, 4). Recent research agendas both in academic conferences and publications seem to respond to Marti’s call to investigate congregational worship practices in light of questions about diversity, inclusion, and race. Marti focuses primarily on the White/Black racial gap in his work, while other efforts, such as the upcoming Worship through Latinx Eyes: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Public Worship Practices (2022, forthcoming), examine similar questions from the Latinx perspective. This project examines how congregations in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) metroplex seek to bridge what Marti calls the “racial divide” not only in relation to the gap between White and Black churches and worshipers, but in triangulation with the strong Latinx constituency of the DFW metroplex.
How do you envision this project will strengthen the worship life of congregations?
Building from an established starting point at the intersection of the study of worship, culture, and race, the project provides original insights that contribute an otherwise under- researched perspective to current conversations about the challenges of integrative worship practices that seek to span racial divides and heal historical, theological, and ideological divisions between these groups. It will also support and engage the worship of Christian worshiping communities by helping them to examine and reshape their own practices in relation to racial tensions in North America.
What do you expect might be your greatest challenges (or challenging opportunities)?
The two greatest challenges of our project include the ethnography itself, and the learning day discussions. Within the framework of this project, the ethnographic research requires that participants deal with questions germane to their congregational practices and questions of racial identity. Interviews may therefore generate uneasiness, pent-up emotions, and questions about institutional engagement with the topic. The second challenge is engagement with these issues during the learning days, when participants from different congregations will discuss these issues in person. Here, too, we hope for a fruitful and open discussion but acknowledge the difficulty of engaging with these questions of worship practices and racial identity.
What do you hope to learn from the Grants Event and other grant recipients?
We hope to deepen not only our understanding of our own project through the feedback of other grant recipients, but also to learn how our project fits in with the broader scope of questions being funded by the grant. We acknowledge that research projects do not exist in a vacuum, but exist within a community of scholarly conversations that we are eager to be a part of.