So you find a lot of these sixth Americans congregate in these interracial congregations. They hang out together at work, at school, wherever.
Michael EmersonAbsolutely, although every congregation will say, you know, every worship leader will say it's vital. It's very important, but again these are, you know, these are different cultural styles.
Michael EmersonI think of myself as a problem-solver. I want to go in and help the director and the writer to get the best they can out of the text they're working with.
Michael EmersonSo we didn't get the denominations and the separate congregations really till about into Civil War time. What's happened then, of course, is now that we've had well over 100 years of this history to establish separate cultures, different ways of worshipping, and different ways of understanding theology so that when people try to come together makes it very difficult. And then, of course, social networks, you know, how do we find a place to worship?
Michael EmersonOne of the things we find when we talk to people that attend these congregations, they all have social cost to it. People want to know why they're doing that. Sometimes they're questions about selling out on their race or "Are we not good enough that you have to go to this kind of congregation and not ours?" So there are costs to it, and I think they're a little bit higher in the South because of its history.
Michael EmersonAnd different traditions stress different - so then there's that. I talked to an African American who says before she goes into an interracial church, she sits in her car and she listens to gospel music to get her fill, and she goes into an interracial church where they don't do gospel music, and she's ready to accept the other sorts of ways of worshipping. So there's that.
Michael Emerson