Written by: Jeff Styer on October 28, 2024

The book I read was called Estranged Pioneers: Race, Faith and Leadership in a Diverse World.[1] In this post, I am going to talk about this book in relation to Brett Fuller and then focus on an impactful quote from the book.

My brother-in-law read this book this past summer as he may soon be pastoring a multiracial church.  I read this book after reading Brett Fuller’s Dreaming in Black and White and waited to write this post until after I heard Fuller speak on September 27, 2024, in Washington DC.  I would have loved to have sat down with Fuller to hear his personal thoughts about this book’s content, but time would not allow. However, after his talk, I was able to ask him if he had been interviewed as part of the study upon which this book reports. Fuller stated that he was unaware of the book and the study. The authors, Korie Little Edwards and Rebecca Y. Kim conducted 121 face-to-face interviews with pastors who lead multiracial churches. Edwards and Kim report that in the United States only 16% of churches are multiracial.[2]  In Washington DC, during the Q&A session with Fuller, Julie O’Hara asked Fuller whether White people have a calling to lead multiracial churches.  Dr. Fuller answered “yes” they do, and this book backs up his comment stating that approximately 84% of multiracial churches are led by White pastors.[3]

Prior to reading this book, I never considered who a multiracial church caters toward.  Edwards and Kim write that in a multiracial church “racial diversity can be maintained to the extent that white congregants are comfortable. Multiracial congregations sustain white comfort by reproducing white hegemony.”[4] Fuller made the same argument when he talked to the Black pastor of a Black church in Maryland who wanted a multiracial church.[5]  Fuller asked the pastor if he was ready to make all the changes that it would take, losing his choir, his pastoral robe, the ornate pulpit, and ultimately many members of his congregation, to create a hopefully successful multiracial church.

Edwards and Kim maintain that being a person of color (POC) is a double-edged sword when it comes to leading a multiracial church.  One the one hand POCs have the experience navigating white culture and their own culture.  On the other hand, Edwards and Kim consider them to be estranged pioneers. They are pioneers as not many of their peers are leading multiracial churches. When I explained this definition to Fuller, he agreed. What I did not mention to Fuller was the second part to this explanation of pastors of color being estranged.  Edwards and Kim state that they are estranged because they have essentially left their community to lead a multiracial church and “their endeavors are not valued or celebrated as something that will potentially benefit the communities they come from”[6] Edwards and Kim continue saying that POCs “are also othered and perceived as inferior to their white peers within the new communities that they lead.”[7]  Again it would have been interesting to hear Fuller’s thoughts about his own experiences in this realm.

I next want to focus on a quote from the book that forcefully removed the blinders from my eyes.  Edwards and Kim write,

“Everyone in the United States, though to varying degrees, is socialized to affirm whiteness and white supremacy.  That is because such processes are ubiquitous. White people and people of color are almost constantly socialized into the dominant white culture, either through direct intimate interactions in spaces predominated by white Western culture, such as schools, or indirectly through such institutions as the media. Resisting this socialization is difficult. Changing systems that reproduce it is hard work.”[8]

Deep in my soul I know this is true despite wanting so badly to believe it isn’t. In a recent 2-minute broadcast of The Policy Roundtable hosts Dave Zanotti, Wayne Shepherd, & Alan C. Duncan discussed an editorial from the Washington Post titled “Why Americans are Having Fewer Kids and Why it Could be a Problem.”[9] In this episode they talked about how America could be facing the same population decline that China recognized because of their one child policy. I immediately considered how this is only a problem if we want to keep America white. We all are aware of the United States’ immigration issue. We have hundreds of thousands of people wanting to live here. Yet many Americans are fearful of them, even when they are here legally, as evidenced by the recent rumors surrounding the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. A study published in 2022 suggests that White Americans are beginning to fear becoming a minority, thus they are becoming more stringent on who they consider to be “White”; which their study suggests can impact race relations.[10]  Why are Americans so afraid of becoming a minority?  What makes us want to cling to our culture so badly? Is it solely a fear of losing power and control?

Let me circle back to the quote. Edwards and Kim finish the quote saying “Resisting this socialization is difficult. Changing systems that reproduce it is hard work.”[11] In their book, they “define a successful racially diverse religious space in the US as one that is a structurally and culturally equitable, just community of mutuality that has decentered whiteness and white supremacy.[12] What hard work can each one of us do, to encourage our religious spaces to be racially diverse and meet Edwards and Kim’s definition of success? What can we do to love and encourage pastors, regardless of their racial/ethnic background, so that they do not feel like an estranged pioneer?

[1] Korie Little Edwards and Rebecca Y. Kim, Estranged Pioneers: Race, Faith and Leadership in a Diverse World, (New York, NY: Oxford), 2024.

[2] Edwards and Kim, 2.

[3] Edwards and Kim, 2.

[4] Edwards and Kim, 8.

[5] Brett Fuller, “untitled lecture”  (lecture, Portland Seminary, First Baptist Church, Washington DC, September 27, 2024).

[6] Edwards and Kim, 151.

[7] Edwards and Kim, 152.

[8] Edwards and Kim, 166.

[9] “TPS 2: The Problem We’ve Been Ignoring,” hosted by Dave Zanotti, Wayne Shepherd, & Alan C. Duncan, October 8, 2024,  https://thepublicsquare.com/the-problem-weve-been-ignoring/.

[10] Amy R. Krosch, Suzy J. Park, Jesse Walker, &  Ari R. Lisner,  “The Threat of a Majority-Minority U.S. Alters White Americans’ Perception of Race,”  Journal of Experimental Psychology, 99 March 2022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104266.

[11] Edwards and Kim, 166.

[12] Edwards and Kim, 157.

About the Author

Jeff Styer

Jeff Styer lives in Northeast Ohio's Amish Country. He has degrees in Social Work and Psychology and currently works as a professor of social work at Mount Vernon Nazarene University. Jeff is married to his wife, Veronica, 25+ years. Together they have 4 beautiful children (to be honest, Jeff has 4 kids, Veronica says she is raising 5). Jeff loves the outdoors, including biking, hiking, camping, birding, and recently picked up disc golf.