emergent-us: Brian McLaren Reflects on the Emergent Summit

A new friend Steve sent me this from the emergent-us blog. He an I have had several conversation about the lack of diversity in emergent.  After reading this and looking at the comments on the blog here’s bullets of my response

• When it comes to diversity and the emergent conversation I have to say we have a long way to go.
• The problem as one commenter said is the emergent stuff is look a lot like all the other groups out there. On top of that the responses to issues of race, racial reconciliation and racism are sounding like those existing groups as well. We aren’t diverse, but at least we have women.
• The issues of diversity for white women (who represent a majority of this country and the church) are not a the same as those for African American males for instance but that has long been an excuse for the mainline church in its lack of response to diversity.
• I am more and more disappointed by the lack of creativity brought to bear on this subject by folks who so highly value creativity.

what say you

Andre

emergent-us: Brian McLaren Reflects on the Emergent Summit

First, we have been increasingly concerned about diversity for a few years. Fortunately, there has been denominational diversity among us since the beginning – and it has grown steadily in recent years as emergent has become a "post-liberal/post-conservative" common ground. But the "white maleness" of almost all Christian leadership networks has been of concern to us. (I was not surprised to learn from Tony Jones that 95% of Evangelical pastors are male; I was surprised to learn that 85% of mainline Protestant pastors are male.) We talked at length about how the Emerging Women’s Leadership Initiative has helped the emergent community seek to make progress in this regard. But EWLI has also helped bring diversity in other areas to the fore.
I’m very optimistic about what will happen as increasing numbers of First Nations, African American, Latino, Asian, and other leaders bring their leadership to emergent. When progress in this area is combined with progress in our global network (where exciting things are happening – stay tuned for amahoro.info) – our potential will multiply.

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