Worship across the Racial Divide: A Response from Three Practitioners

My new book on the dynamics of worship and music in diverse congregations has been out for just a few short weeks, but thanks to Art Lucero the first reviews are now in.

Last week, three Christian music leaders, Josh Davis, Nikki Lerner, and Jeff McCourt, took time to write their own reactions to the book. I am so pleased with how carefully they read the book and the responses they gave:

Josh Davis wrote, "Marti clearly states that no one knows 'what manner of worship is best for stimulating and accelerating racial and ethnic diversity in churches.' Absolutely. There is no one-size-fits-all method or approach to multicultural worship."

Nikki Lerner wrote, "I could not agree more with his conclusions at the end of this book: As I continued to pursue my research, I came to understand that it is not the acoustics of musical style but rather the visible presence of diversity—a racialized ritual inclusion—that stimulates integration of different racial and ethnic groups into their churches [pg. 198]."

Jeff McCourt wrote, "Honestly, I argued with Dr. Marti most of the way through the book but was beginning to feel an openness to his perspective due to the thoroughness of his research..."

Each of them wrote much more, and they're worth reading for yourself. I also provided a brief response that you can see at the bottom of the page.

Lilly Endowment ~ Congregational Studies Fellowship ~ Deadline Extended to February 1st

As a member of the Congregational Studies Team, I'm happy to pass along this opportunity for research and mentoring in the study of congregations (church, temple, mosque, etc.) -- 

Engaged Scholars Studying Congregations is a program of mentoring, networking, and study support funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. The Congregational Studies Team is pleased to announce the availability of Fellowships* to support scholars who are interested in disciplined inquiry into the life of local communities of faith. These 18-month fellowships include $18,000 in research support, plus $2000 for related travel. In addition, Fellowships include a program of mentoring by a senior-scholar coach and participation in two summer consultations that bring together the Fellows and coaches with the Team.

Applications are encouraged from scholars in a variety of disciplines — from practical theology to the social sciences, from history to biblical studies and contextual education — for projects that involve learning from and about living communities of faith. Fellows will explore avenues for making that knowledge available for the sake of those communities’ wellbeing, as well as developing strong academic contributions appropriate to their disciplines. Applicants should have completed their graduate work and be placed in a professional position at the time of application. We especially encourage early-career scholars to apply, but will consider applications from persons who have recently been tenured.

Engaged Scholar 2012 Fellowship Instructions

Note that the application deadline has been extended to 1 February 2012. For application information and instructions, visit www.hirr.hartsem.edu or contact the Engaged Scholars project office at Hartford Seminary (engagedscholars@hartsem.edu).

*This program is supported by a major grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. and is administered by the Congregational Studies Team: Nancy Ammerman, Anthea Butler, Bill McKinney, Omar McRoberts, Larry Mamiya, Gerardo Marti, Joyce Mercer, James Nieman (project director), Bob Schreiter, Steve Warner, and Jack Wertheimer.

Book Launch: Worship across the Racial Divide

Last year was great -- this year looks to be even better! The new year begins with the launch of my newest book, Worship across the Racial Divide (Oxford University Press).


A few highlights in January:

1. For now, the Kindle version of Worship across the Racial Divide is on sale, reduced to just $9.99. Download your copy here!
    
2. I'll be doing a video interview with Eric Bryant on January 11th. To sign up, you can either email Eric directly at eric.bryant@gatewaychurch.com with "Gerardo Interview" in the subject or simply visit us here at 4pm Wed., 1/11.
    
3. On Tuesday January 17th, I will be a guest on NPR's Charlotte Talks radio show with Mike Collins. Joining me will be Naeem Fazal of Mosaic Church and Howard Brown of  Christ Central Church. You can listen online, or catch the show later.
    
4. Thanks to a kind invitation from the Department of Sociology at Baylor University, on Thursday January 26th, I will be giving a public lecture with a presentation on some key findings from my research. Come say hello!
    
5. Planning for Spring and Summer 2012 will continue including visits to Indiana University and University of California, Los Angeles. Hope to meet up with more people this coming year. 

Is Steve Jobs a Saint?

The passing of Steve Jobs has created a sensation. Sympathy and adulation alongside a wonder whether he deserves so much attention.  Even more, the question of "sainthood" is providing a whole lot of additional reflection.

CNN's belief blog asked me to contribute a piece that posted today:

Short Takes: Are we turning Steve Jobs into a saint?

CNN asked four experts on religion and technology to weigh in on whether former Apple chief Steve Jobs is achieving a kind of secular sainthood. 


Excerpt from my brief take...

Let's be honest. Steve Jobs was no saint, that much is clear. Every day we know more about his character, most recently through the startling revelations in the best-selling biography published by Walter Isaacson.

Jobs could be callous and cold. He rejected paternity of his first daughter. He refused many co-workers the riches of company stock options. He thought of himself as smarter than just about anyone else he
ever met.

If "saintliness" is measured by the virtues of extraordinary kindness, generosity or humility, Jobs fails the test.

However, "saintliness" in religious practice is less measured by a person's moral perfection than his or her ability to serve as a mediator between the ordinary and the transcendent.

In lived religious experience, a saint is not always admired as a righteous person to be imitated. But a saint is always trusted as a negotiator, a bridge-builder, an esoteric "middleman," who removes obstacles, facilitates progress and promotes blessing.

Fundamentally, a saint is an intermediary who makes the intangible accessible and more readily available.

You can read the rest as well as others' responses to the question on the CNN Belief Blog.

Cover - Worship across the Racial Divide (Jan 2012) Oxford University Press

Oxford just shared with me the image for the cover of my forthcoming book, due out January 2012. 

Oxford University Press (January 2012)

Falling Back to My Stack of Books

With the start of the school year, I re-gain a few hours in the quiet of my office to sift through my ever-growing stack of books.

Visitors to my office have a common experience. They say hello to me, but soon their eyes drift around to the walls, desks, and floors of my office to absorb the umpteen volumes of books I have in all manner of organization and disarray.  Polite guests try to ignore the stuffed shelves and precarious towers, but the less inhibited quickly ask, "Have you READ all these books?"

Image by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML via Flickr

Well, yes and no.  I love to learn, and I find reading to be an efficient avenue for learning. My curiosity ranges within the social sciences, and then add history, philosophy, theology, and literature and my interests leave me constantly sorting through books old and new. Classic sources are valued alongside the most recently published monographs.

The local thrift store is just as important as our closest Barnes and Noble. You wouldn't believe the fantastic sources I've lugged home for a handful of quarters.

As I look through different sources I find surprises all the time. Serendipity is my best companion. "Why didn't I know about this?" is one of my own frequent questions. The must-read lists of other scholars I respect quickly become absorbed into my own must-read list. NYT book reviews is a great source, but so is twitter and conference book tables and tv interviews. My own amazon wish list has multiplied many times -- I've encountered a limit of some sort along the way.

Sometimes books show up in my mailbox unannounced. Really good things. I'm grateful for those.

So, I'm making another attempt to move quickly through the books I've accumulated. Some stacks have grown stale (so sad), and my current list is a fairly large bag with nine different volumes that must weigh around 30 pounds. On my hot list?

• Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life by Joshua Rubenstein
• The Mormon Rebellion: America's First Civil War 1857-1858 by Bigler and Bagley
• Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin Mitnick
• The Explanation of Social Action by John Levi Martin
• The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, 1805-1900 by Gary Dorrien
• Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age by Robert Bellah
• Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work by Steven Lukes
• Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in Evangelical Megachurches by Omri Elisha
• Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood by Christian Smith

And there's more. Believe me, a LOT more. I have several new literary novels sitting on our dining room table (sorry, honey), a few recent philosophy texts, and a range of biographies and ethnographies that are calling for my attention.

So, as I wait for the proof sheets for my latest book coming this January, I'm falling back to my stack of books this month. Hope you find a quiet corner to get through your own stack as well.

Worship across the Racial Divide: Order Your Exam Copy Now!

Colleagues,

My new book Worship across the Racial Divide is now listed at the Oxford University Press site. At the right side is a blue link to "Request Examination Copy" ~ 

I invite all instructors, college professors, seminary professors, and periodical reviewers to click on that link and request their copy today!

Best,

Gerardo

Finish and Rest - Taking a Breath in August

The summer has been consuming, so the past couple of weeks have been a combination of finishing final edits on my book with Oxford University Press, taking care of loose-ends, and then taking a moment to breathe.  Besides spending time with my family, I've been taking a leisurely look through a stack of Bibles I've collected around the house.

Since coming back from Michigan, by far the most important thing I've worked on is completing the final set of revisions for my book, Worship across the Racial Divide, coming out early 2012 with Oxford University Press.  These are the "copyedited" files from Oxford that are worked through before being sent to the typesetter for producing the "proof sheets."

What's critical about the copyedited files is that this becomes the LAST CHANCE to make any substantive changes in the document.  And I ended up making quite a few.

Image via Wikipedia

Making Last Changes to Manuscript before Printing?

The last stages of writing a book manuscript for me is a combination of relief and panic.  Relief that this is a critical stage before having an actual printed book in hand, a copy that I will send to my parents, and a copy I will carry around with me to show anyone who'll listen (at the gym, the grocery store, the gas station... you get the picture). But -- Panic that this is the final push before sending off to press, a final opportunity to craft what I'm going to say.

So the past two weeks have been an effort to further weave together the core narrative, accentuating key points, highlighting the main contribution. New thoughts, new arguments keep coming up as I re-read the book, like the relationship of musical taste to church music. I keep finding insights that relate to my book. For example, I read an interesting article saying that as the level of education increases, "musical tolerance" also increases. Yet the same research also shows that genres whose fans have the least education (gospel, country, rap, heavy metal) are most rejected by these “musically tolerant” people.

In contrast to such “taste-based” findings, I find situational dynamics in multiracial churches encourage all members (regardless of race, regardless of education) to strongly favor gospel music. The musical tastes members bring to their churches are not nearly as important as the situational dynamics of race/music/worship within their church. Individual musical taste is subdued in relation to value for highlighting notions of race-based diversity in multiracial churches.  Even more, a person's overall musical preference is subdued in relation to desire for people to connect with others in apart from specific genre(s) of church music.

Also on re-reading the book, the most surprising thread of argument is how important the notion of African American musicality is. All people have profound notions of how "black people" relate to music. It is an incredibly persistent theme.

African Americans bear the weight of diversity in multiracial churches in so many ways, even when few or no blacks attend the church. I can tell you that Chapter 3 on African Americans singing gospel music as the icon of "true worship" will be worth the price of the whole book. Add Chapter 7 on the importance of "gospel choirs" for multiracial worship, and I think it will be an interesting, surprising set of insights. I hope you all enjoy it!

Besides working through the copyedits for my book, I've seen a few movies, caught up on sleep, went swimming and bowling with my family. There's always quite a bit of mail (physical) and email to catch up on, and some new writing projects I'm working through.  Plenty to do.

Image via Wikipedia

The Marvel of the "Study Bible"

Perhaps most surprisingly, I found myself reviewing a dozen or so Bibles I have around the house.  Perhaps finishing my own "tome" has got me thinking about others lying around the house....

Some of the Bibles are new (New Oxford Annotated NRSV 4th Edition, MacArthur Study NASB Updated, NIV 2011) but most are quite old (Newberry Reference Bible Portable Edition 1893, Original Scofield 1917 edition, Revised Scofield 1967 edition, Dickson's New Analytical Indexed 1950, Dake's Annotated 1963 alongside the 2006 revised version). These various study editions, nearly all in the King James Version, represent aggressive attempts to systematize the scriptures, lending helps and reference points before, after, and throughout the text.

In a time before computers, the work of notation and typesetting in these "study bibles" would have been fantastically demanding. It is hard for us to imagine the amount of time and passion that went into the construction of these books.  We may be too casual in seeing how these "mini-libraries" seem widely available today. Yet, I find that holding these books in my hand and working through the 1000+ pages of notations, I am overwhelmed with the amount of thinking and striving for coherence and accuracy represented in these works.

Given the 400th anniversary of the King James Version, it seems relevant that most of my looking through bibles has involved this version.  I have a replica of the first edition of the KJV published this year by Oxford (a truly giant book) and one of the most interesting things about it is how much "study" material is included in this book.  Modern translations have not been soley about "text," but nearly always about helping ordinary people make sense of the text, with generous help from translators and editors.

For me, the most intriguing places to look in these bibles is Genesis and Exodus, then Matthew and Revelation. Here are the places where the notes go crazy, with long footnotes, bulging cross-references, and fascinating sub-headings. I'm just today going through the building of the Tabernacle and the equipping of the High Priest (Exodus 23-28). Fascinating in any one of these bibles; supremely interesting when comparing several of them.

I'll round out the summer with attending the American Sociological Association Meetings, and the Association for the Sociology of Religion Meetings, both held in Las Vegas toward the end of August.  If you're there, maybe I'll see you at the buffet line!

Seminar in Grand Rapids

I've been directing a seminar on "Congregations and Social Change" this month through a program for scholars at Calvin College.

A wonderful, interdisciplinary group has gathered this month:

Kendra Barber (University of Maryland)
Walt Bower (University of Kentucky)
Lloyd Chia (University of Missouri)
Ryon Cobb (Florida State University)
Lisa DeBoer (Westmont College)
Janine Giordano Drake (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Lincoln Mullen (Brandeis University)
Paul Olson (Briar Cliff University)
Peter Schuurman (University of Waterloo)
Christine Sheikh (University of Denver)
Phillip Sinitiere (Sam Houston State University)
Kevin Taylor (Boston University)

Together, these scholars represent a tremendous range of knowledge and skills, drawn from the humanities and social sciences, who pursue a broad scope of ambitious questions in the study of religion. Race, work, technology, "the market," identity, women's leadership, incorporation of the arts, and the question of whether "congregations" matter or not, have all been part of rich and not-easily-resolved conversations happening in both classroom and lunchroom.

We read and think a lot together, but I think we all agree we've ate a lot together, too! Food for thought has been more than adequately matched by food for our collective stomachs.

The first three weeks we explored a range of concepts and methodologies and experienced several congregations on visits as individuals and as a group.  Although we are all fascinated by the phenomena of the megachurch (a memorable visit), a stand-out visit for me was the opportunity to meet with the Imam and several lay leaders of a newly built mosque here in the city -- the most multi-ethnic, multi-cultural congregation we encountered.

Image by steven w via Flickr

This week, participants will share from their own work, something I am really looking forward to hearing.  For me, this is the part where we get to hear ideas in development, articles being born, books being written.  The application of genius to crafting a narrative takes shape before us, further connecting us all into our collective development as scholars.

These are brilliant people, and I am learning from them. Be prepared for more work on the Black megachurch, the emerging church movement, pastor Joel Osteen, conversion narratives between Christians and Jews (both directions), parents raising atheists, second generation mosque leaders in America, congregations and the labor movement in New York, arts and worship, and more.

Special thanks to Penny Edgell (University of Minnesota), Jim Wellman (University of Washington) and Bill McKinney (recent emeritus president of Pacific School of Religion) who each spent time with us and shared their advice and expertise.  Joel Carpenter here at Calvin deserves great thanks for hospitality and his own insightful "footnotes" as well as a nice set of casual conversations with visiting scholars for other programs here in Grand Rapids.

Finally, thanks to all my colleagues in the seminar!  It's a privilege to pursue our questions in scholarship.  It's a gift to do it in community.