Suppose, for a moment, that visitors from Mars landed and picked, at random, a Presbyterian church to visit. What would they find in the way of racial ethnic diversity as they scanned the pews?
A little more than one-half of PC(USA) congregations (51.8%) report that the membership is composed entirely of a single racial ethnic group. Most of these, not unexpectedly, have all-white memberships, but several have uniform memberships from each one of the other races or ethnicities tracked by the church:
| PC(USA) congregations reporting racial ethnic membership data | 11,223 | |
|---|---|---|
| With membership of a single racial ethnic group: | 5,814 | 51.8% |
| White | 5,180 | 46.2% |
| African American/Black | 286 | 2.5% |
| Asian American | 154 | 1.4% |
| Hispanic | 122 | 1.1% |
| Native American/Indian | 67 | 0.6% |
| Other | 5 | 0.04% |
Of the racial and ethnically mixed congregations (n = 5,409; 48.2% of the total):
| 2,558 | (22.8%) | have members from 2 racial ethnic groups | |
| 1,541 | (13.7%) | have members from 3 racial ethnic groups | |
| 932 | (8.3%) | have members from 4 racial ethnic groups | |
| 313 | (2.8%) | have members from 5 racial ethnic groups | |
| 66 | (0.6%) | have members from 6 racial ethnic groups |
Most mixed congregations consist of one very dominant group, and a few members from one or more other groups. Of the 2,558 congregations with 2 (and only 2) racial ethnic groups, only 122 approach a "50-50" mix (defined here as meaning that each group has at least 25% of the membership and neither has more than 75% of the membership). The combinations, with the number of congregations of each type, are:
| Asian-Black | 2 |
| Asian-White | 14 |
| Black-Hispanic | 1 |
| Black-Native American | 1 |
| Black-Other | 1 |
| Black-White | 66 |
| Hispanic-Native American | 1 |
| Hispanic-White | 20 |
| Native American-White | 13 |
| White-Other | 3 |
Overall, including some of the 122 just noted, 64 (0.6%) congregations have 2 or more racial ethnic groups in their membership with no one group having more than 59% of the total membership. Included in this small set are a few, 18 in all, that have no racial ethnic group with as much as one-half of the membership; another 8 have one group with exactly one-half of the membership. Of these 26 congregations, 16 are in the Northeast (primarily New York and New Jersey), 3 are in the South, 2 in the Midwest (both in Chicago), and 5 in the West (3 in California).
In 12 of the 26, the largest group is white; in 7, the largest is black; in 3, it is "other"; in 1, Asian; in 1, Hispanic; and in none, American Indian. In 2 congregations, blacks and whites each have exactly 50% of the membership.
Two congregations in New York come the closest to "true" racial ethnic diversity, in that they each have sizable groups of four major racial ethnic groups among their memberships:
White |
African Amer. |
Asian |
Hispanic |
Native Amer. |
Other |
|
| Fourth, Bronx, NY | 28% | 33% | 22% | 16% | -- | -- |
| Trinity, New York, NY | 33% | 21% | 27% | 19% | -- | -- |
Probing beyond the national figures reveals several examples of racial and ethnic diversity among Presbyterian congregations. But the typical congregation is more uniform. A majority, in fact, have only a single race-ethnicity represented by their membership. Even those congregations with more than one racial ethnic group tend to have only 2 groups, rather than 3 or 4, present, and more often than not, 90% or more of the membership comes from only one of the groups.
In sum, racial ethnic diversity within Presbyterian congregations is relatively rare; most of the racial ethnic diversity in the PC(USA) is found between congregations.
Email the author: Jack Marcum
Research Services