One of the conclusions I came to after doing some very informal research was that at that time a truly multiracial congregation was most likely to emerge in churches that drew substantially from military bases and retired military men and women. One of the many things that the military teaches its recruits is that when you’re engaged in battle, the color or ethnicity of the person battling alongside of you really doesn’t matter. That same mentality affected how military personnel participated in a community of faith.
You might expect that churches have become more multiracial in the past 20 years, but there has been surprisingly little change in the ethnic and racial composure of Protestant congregations during the past two decades. Our research in recent years continues to show that pastors’ descriptions of the make-up of their congregation indicate that America has few truly multiracial churches.

That came to mind recently when I read a new report from the Census Bureau regarding the racial and ethnic background of America’s children. The report noted that minorities currently represent nearly half of the children being born in the U.S. and that this year could be a “tipping point” during which the number of babies born to minorities outnumbers those born to whites. Link that fact with the notion that the combination of all “minorities” are expected to become the majority of our nation’s population within the next 40 years and you have a major challenge for the segregated Protestant churches of the U.S. For instance, in 2008 the Census Bureau reports that about 52% of all babies born in the U.S. were white, 25% were Hispanic, 15% were black, 4% were Asian, and roughly 4% were identified by their parents as multiracial.

The challenge is not just about getting people of different backgrounds to worship together. The ongoing segregation of the body of Christ also relates to how we minister to children; our understanding of family dynamics and how to assist families; the development of internal cultures within a congregation; our planning for a different racial and ethnic balance in all aspects of ministry; and even how churches assist congregants in thinking about matters of public policy such as immigration law, educational policy, and health care spending. (Consider, for example, that there are now more Hispanic women of prime childbearing age, and they tend to have more children, than is true among women of other races – and average of 3 children per Hispanic mother, compared to less than 2 per Caucasian mother and about 2 per black and Asian mother).

Demographers have been predicting this shift in the nation’s racial and ethnic balance for a couple of decades, so it may not be “news” but it certainly is a significant trend. Are we, as the Church, prepared to embrace this unfolding reality and to get in front of the curve in our thinking, planning and ministry?

Because I am a professional researcher, I wanted to get everything just right; it’s a matter of professional pride. So I read the cover letter carefully. I read the simple questionnaire form a couple of times to be sure that I understood what they wanted, to see if professionally I could learn anything from their questionnaire construction, and also to address my surprise at just how short the form has become. (The Bureau now supplements the decadal census with massive monthly surveys, allowing them to reduce the census questionnaire to just a handful of questions – much shorter than the versions used in previous cycles.)

I filled in the information about myself and my wife without problems. Smooth sailing. Quick and simple. But then I got to person #3 in our household, our oldest daughter. She is adopted from Guatemala. Under question 4 – a question about origins – marking her down as Hispanic was a no-brainer. But the related query, question 5, stumped me. It’s about racial identity. The options provided were white, black, American Indian, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian, Other Pacific Islander, and Other Asian. Nothing that fits anyone from Guatemala. Or Mexico, the nation that has provided the U.S. with the largest number of non-native residents. In fact, there was no category that would describe American citizens of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origins who came from any country located in Central or South America.

It made no sense that there’d be categories provided for groups that represent less than one-half of one percent of the population, but no category for those who represent 16% of the population. And yes, I understand that the Bureau will combine the two variables of origin and race to create a Hispanic origin category, but without instructions, how will the more than 50 million Hispanic residents of the U.S. complete that second question? Will many of them check one of the boxes provided, assuming they apparently belong to one of those groups since infinitesimally small racial groups had their own category to mark? Surely the uber-funded Census Bureau, with the nation’s professional and scholarly talent pool available to draw upon, and a 10-year window in which to create their six question survey, would not have developed a confusing, incomplete question. Especially with trillions of dollars at risk. Clearly, 30 years of experience and advanced degrees in survey research notwithstanding, I was missing something.

And the problem was compounded by my realization that I’d face the same dilemma for person #4 of our household, our next-oldest daughter, who was also adopted from Guatemala.
Stymied, I called the Census Bureau. First, I got the recorded messages which walked me through the process. However, the pre-recorded explanation did not address my concern, so I indicated a need to speak to a representative. Once a live Bureau staffer came on the line I explained my dilemma. She offered to read me the same statement that I had just heard from the automated voice. After I respectfully declined the offer, she indicated that she was not allowed to tell me how to answer the question. I explained my frustration with that, knowing that real money was on the line here – how my tax dollars (and trillions of others) would be allocated according to the percentages emanating from the Census statistics. She was well-trained, though, and refused to help me beyond telling me she was not allowed to assist me in figuring out how to answer their question.

So I hung up feeling as if my concern had not been heard or cared about – which, of course, is nothing new when dealing with the federal bureaucracy. And for my two daughters from Guatemala, I half-heartedly checked the “Other” box and wrote in “Hispanic/Mayan.”
What a bizarre situation. Robert Groves, who heads the Bureau, is a very competent, experienced, and respected researcher. I doubt that he would let a gaffe of this magnitude go unrepaired, if he had the ability to make revisions. Perhaps the questionnaire contains this unfortunate question because the most dreaded event in the life of a researcher occurred: questionnaire design by committee. Departmental committees. House committees. Senate committees.

In the end, the bad news is that there will inevitably be a lot of inaccurate information collected and reported from our government’s $15 billion tax-funded research project, resulting in inappropriate financial allocations of our other tax dollars. But the good news is that I did not have to wrestle with this issue over person #5 in our household, our youngest daughter, who was adopted from Russia. I’m pretty sure she is “white.” And the best news of all may be that I am not the Director of the Census Bureau, forced to have political committees approve the art of survey research and having to deal with complaints from people like me.