Against All Odds: The Struggle for Racial Integration in Religious Organizations

Against All Odds: The Struggle for Racial Integration in Religious Organizations by Brad Christerson, Korie L. Edwards and Michael O. Emerson New York University Press, December 2004 $55, ISBN 0-814-72223-7

Statistics show less than eight percent of all Christian congregations in the United States are racially integrated to any significant degree. In Against All Odds, the authors use six case studies to examine the factors that perpetuate segregation in churches. Notwithstanding doctrines of love and brotherhood that dominate Christian ideology, the authors assert that conflict persists because cultural and racial identities drive biblical interpretation, bureaucratic structure, …