ITEMS OF INTEREST April 2, 2007 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

with contributions from Rachel Zoll

SUNDAYS AT THE ... Grace Chapel megachurch [in Lexington, Massachusetts] look like the American ideal of race relations: African-American, Haitian, white, Chinese, and Korean families sing along with a white, guitar-playing pastor.

US churches rarely have this kind of ethnic mix. But that's changing. Researchers who study race and religion say Grace Chapel is among a vanguard of megachurches that are breaking down racial barriers in American Christianity, altering the long-segregated landscape of Sunday worship. ...

A study by [Scott] Thumma and the Leadership Network, a Dallas group that works with pioneering churches, found that minorities make up 20 percent or more of worshippers in nearly one-third of the nation's 1,200 megachurches. More than half of the megachurches say they are intentionally working to attract different ethnic groups, according to the 2005 study, part of a book that Thumma and network executive Dave Travis will publish in July.

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