Voluntary Church Segregation in the US

The CNN religion blog reports on a recent study noting that "nine out of ten congregations in the U.S. are segregated -- a single racial group accounts for more than 80 percent of their membership." CNN raises two interesting questions (at least one of which is addressed by the original article, "Race, Diversity, and Membership Duration in Religious Congregations" published in Sociological Inquiry). First, why is it that when so many other areas of society are so much better integrated than in the 60s, churches remain so segregated? Not to suggest that, apart from churches, we have "achieved integration," but it is rather striking. Second, given that the early church (say in the first century, mainly, but probably still in the second to a large degree) was comprised of such a diverse group -- Jews, gentiles, women, slaves, the otherwise looked-down-upon and outcast -- and that this was arguably a central element of its appeal at that time, what has changed that church has become almost the last bastion of social division, virtually the only place where segregation is not only allowed but sought out by most?

It's noted in the article that people got to church for comfort rather than to be challenged. But surely this was the case in the first century, as well.

Could it be that the Christian church (note the small "c") has become more a bastion of privilege and staus-quo-maintenance than a refuge of the poor and downtrodden, for whom their socio-economic status unites them more than their racial or national identities divide them? I suppose I have an easy habit of following Cornel West (and Roger Williams!) in wanting to blame Constantine for this shift, but one supposes that if it hadn't been Constantine, it would have been someone else. Or maybe it's just that Christ has come to be understood entirely too much as uniting all of us (whoever "us" is -- whites, blacks, whoever) against all of them (whoever is our enemy). Apparently, Americans, when they worship, want to be with "people like me," and "like me" doesn't mean "loving God," or "sinner," or "wanting help and hope," but more than anything it seems to mean, "people with my skin color."

Maybe that's actually okay. And the CNN article asks the question, is it really a goal we should have, to integrate churches? Why? Why not? Maybe it's the sort of thing that, if it were happening, would say some wonderful things, but it's not something you can set as a goal to achieve by means of . . . what? If there's a failure, maybe the failure is in church leadership in not trying to bridge these kinds of divides. But surely they would say that they are subject to the whims of parishioners. In the "church market," if you challenge people too much or ask too much of them, they leave, and then your church is history, and haven't you failed, then, too?

It's a rambly post, but the question is in my mind a difficult one to sort out, especially when the study is published in an academic journal that most people will not be able to read.