The Church Got Integrated. Who Got the Power?

The Church Got Integrated. Who Got the Power?

America learned to celebrate diversity. Sharing power has proven considerably more complicated.

By Michael Smith | Reflective MVS

There's something fascinating about the way America celebrates integration.

We love the photographs. Black and white children sitting together in classrooms. Diverse groups of employees smiling beneath corporate logos. Congregations where people of every complexion raise their hands in worship.

And we should celebrate those things. There was a time, not particularly long ago, when much of this country fought tooth and nail to prevent them.

But I've always wondered whether we spend so much time celebrating who finally got through the door that we forget to ask who still owns the building.

That question came to mind recently while listening to Lurie Daniel Favors discuss multiracial churches.

The conversation centered on research examining the relationship between church attendance, racial identity, and Black political engagement. What interested me wasn't the suggestion that Black Americans shouldn't worship alongside white Americans. That would be a peculiar lesson to draw from a civil rights movement that fought so hard to dismantle segregation.

What caught my attention was something more complicated.

For generations, the Black church was one of the few American institutions where Black people exercised genuine authority. They selected their leaders, controlled their resources, established their priorities, and organized around the needs of their communities.

It wasn't simply a place to pray.

It was a place to exercise power.

And that raises a question worth examining as more Black Americans worship in multiracial congregations.

When we integrate institutions, are we sharing power or simply changing the complexion of the people who have to answer to it?

The Research Behind the Question

In October 2026, the Brookings Institution published an analysis by Rutgers University researcher Ryon J. Cobb titled How Multiracial Churches Are Depoliticizing Black Americans.

The findings deserve attention, particularly because they challenge some comfortable assumptions about diversity and progress.

According to the analysis, approximately one-quarter of religiously active Black adults attend multiracial congregations.

Among Black adults worshipping in multiracial churches, nearly 9% reported no partisan identification, roughly three times the rate among those attending predominantly Black congregations.

The research also examined Black Americans who grew up attending predominantly Black churches. More than 90% of those who remained in Black congregations identified with the Democratic Party, compared with approximately 80% of those who moved into multiracial congregations.

Now, before somebody starts waving a Bible and accusing researchers of campaigning for Democrats, let's make an important distinction.

Black political independence is not the same thing as Black political disengagement.

Black Americans don't owe permanent loyalty to any political party. And considering how often politicians discover the importance of Black voters approximately six weeks before an election, a healthy amount of skepticism seems warranted.

Nor do these findings establish that attending a multiracial church causes someone to abandon political engagement.

People choose churches for many reasons, including theology, geography, family relationships, and personal values. Some of those same factors may influence their politics.

But another finding makes the research particularly interesting.

The pattern of political disengagement was not the same in Black-led multiracial congregations.

That complicates the narrative.

Because if racial diversity itself were the problem, we might expect similar patterns regardless of who led the church.

Instead, the findings suggest that leadership and institutional culture may matter considerably more than the racial composition of the congregation.

In other words, the issue may not be who's sitting in the pews.

It may be who's standing behind the pulpit, setting the agenda, and deciding which concerns deserve the church's attention.

And that's where the conversation becomes much bigger than Sunday morning.

The Black Church Was Never Just a Church

To understand why these findings matter, we have to remember what the Black church represented in American life.

For much of this country's history, Black Americans were systematically excluded from institutions that controlled their economic, political, and social opportunities.

We were denied access to schools, neighborhoods, jobs, financial institutions, and the ballot box.

Even when we technically possessed certain rights, exercising them could invite violence, retaliation, or economic ruin.

So Black communities built institutions of their own.

Churches became places where Black Americans could select leaders, manage resources, organize communities, and exercise authority in a country determined to deny them those opportunities elsewhere.

That independence helped make the Black church a central institution in the struggle for civil rights.

Consider the Montgomery bus boycott.

Rosa Parks' refusal to surrender her seat became a defining moment, but the boycott didn't sustain itself for more than a year on moral outrage alone.

It required transportation networks, fundraising, communication, coordination, and thousands of ordinary people willing to sacrifice.

Black churches helped provide the infrastructure.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference later built upon religious and community networks to organize campaigns against segregation and racial injustice.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood that moral conviction without organization could inspire people, but organization gave them the ability to change institutions.

The Black church was never politically uniform, and not every congregation supported the civil rights movement. Some ministers resisted activism, while others worried about the consequences of challenging white authorities.

Still, the institution provided something invaluable.

A place where Black communities could turn shared concerns into collective action.

That is a different kind of power from simply being allowed to participate in somebody else's institution.

And it's worth asking what happens when that independence begins to erode.

Everybody's Welcome. Just Don't Make Anybody Uncomfortable.

Imagine a modern multiracial church.

The congregation is diverse. The worship team is diverse. The website features smiling families from every background imaginable.

There's probably a coffee shop in the lobby, because apparently even salvation needs a loyalty rewards program.

Nothing inherently wrong with any of that.

But diversity in the congregation doesn't necessarily tell us anything about diversity in the leadership.

Nor does it tell us which issues the church is willing to address.

Suppose a Black congregant wants to discuss racial disparities in policing.

Or voter suppression.

Or the persistent economic inequalities affecting predominantly Black neighborhoods.

Will those concerns receive the same moral attention as other issues the church considers important?

Or will someone explain that discussing racism is too political, too divisive, or simply inappropriate for Sunday morning?

I've always found the idea that churches should avoid politics particularly interesting.

Religious institutions have participated in American political life for generations.

Churches have organized around abortion, marriage, sexuality, education, immigration, and religious freedom.

Some have helped shape entire political movements.

Yet discussions about systemic racism can suddenly become controversial because they threaten the congregation's sense of unity.

Apparently, Jesus can overturn tables, but questioning who owns them is where things get uncomfortable.

Of course, this doesn't describe every multiracial church.

Some are deeply committed to racial justice, community engagement, and shared leadership. Others are actively working to confront the historical inequalities that shaped American religious life.

And predominantly Black churches aren't automatically models of political courage simply because their congregations are Black.

But the distinction matters.

A church can welcome Black people into its sanctuary while remaining unwilling to confront the conditions affecting their lives.

That's not necessarily integration in its fullest sense.

It may simply be inclusion without influence.

Integration Was Necessary. But It Wasn't Supposed to Mean Assimilation.

This is where I think the conversation deserves to move beyond religion.

Integration was one of the great achievements of the civil rights movement.

Black Americans fought for the right to attend schools, work in businesses, live in neighborhoods, and participate in institutions that had excluded them for generations.

Those victories expanded opportunity and freedom.

But history rarely unfolds as neatly as the commemorative documentaries suggest.

When public schools desegregated, Black students gained access to educational opportunities previously denied to them.

At the same time, many Black teachers and administrators lost their jobs as historically Black schools closed or were reorganized.

Communities that had fought for educational equality sometimes found themselves losing the educators and institutional leadership that had sustained generations of Black students.

Something similar occurred in parts of the Black business community.

As formerly segregated establishments opened their doors, Black consumers gained choices they had every right to enjoy.

But some Black-owned businesses also faced new economic pressures as customers who had previously been excluded from white establishments began spending money elsewhere.

None of this makes segregation preferable.

That would be an absurd conclusion.

It means integration was complicated.

Access expanded, but institutional power didn't always expand alongside it.

And in some cases, Black communities lost influence over institutions they had built while gaining access to institutions controlled by others.

That distinction matters because integration and assimilation are not the same thing.

Integration should allow different communities to participate in shared institutions while retaining meaningful influence over their direction.

Assimilation often expects people entering an institution to adapt to its existing culture, priorities, and leadership structures.

One involves sharing power.

The other involves adjusting to power.

And America has spent a considerable amount of time confusing the two.

The Diversity Photograph Doesn't Tell the Whole Story

We see this contradiction in corporate America all the time.

A company can employ thousands of Black workers, celebrate Black History Month, sponsor Juneteenth events, and publish beautifully worded statements about racial equity.

Its advertisements may feature employees from every imaginable background.

Then you look at the people making the consequential decisions.

And somehow the diversity seems to have gotten lost somewhere between the break room and the executive suite.

Everybody gets invited to the diversity luncheon.

Not everybody gets invited to the budget meeting.

And the budget meeting is where you discover what an institution actually values.

The same principle applies to schools, political parties, nonprofit organizations, and religious institutions.

Representation matters.

But representation alone doesn't tell us who controls resources, establishes priorities, selects leadership, or determines which problems deserve attention.

A Black employee isn't automatically empowered because the company hired them.

A Black student isn't necessarily represented because the school admitted them.

And a Black congregant doesn't automatically gain institutional influence because the church welcomed them.

Those are starting points.

They aren't necessarily evidence that power has been shared.

We should celebrate the doors that have opened without pretending that walking through them completes the work.

The Black Church Had Problems of Its Own

None of this should become an exercise in romanticizing the past.

The Black church has never been a flawless institution.

Some congregations resisted civil rights activism. Some religious leaders prioritized maintaining their influence over challenging injustice.

Women frequently carried enormous responsibility for organizing, fundraising, teaching, and sustaining congregations while being denied access to the highest leadership positions.

Black LGBTQ Americans have also experienced discrimination and exclusion within religious communities that preached love and acceptance.

Those contradictions deserve acknowledgment.

And we should resist the temptation to imagine that every historically Black institution was somehow better simply because it was Black.

But institutional imperfections don't erase historical importance.

The Black church provided generations of Black Americans with a foundation for collective action.

It created spaces where communities could organize around shared concerns and exercise a degree of independence that was often unavailable elsewhere.

That is worth preserving, even if the institution itself must continue evolving.

The objective shouldn't be to protect every tradition simply because it's old.

It should be to understand which functions those traditions served and determine whether today's institutions are still providing them.

Because the loss of an institution matters most when nothing emerges to replace the power it once gave a community.

What Happens When the Institutions That Organized Us Lose Their Influence?

A 2021 Pew Research Center study found that 47% of Black adults believed predominantly Black churches had less influence than they did fifty years earlier.

That finding reflects a much larger transformation in American religious life.

Church attendance has changed. Younger generations have different relationships with organized religion. Some people have grown disillusioned with religious leadership, while others have simply found meaning and community elsewhere.

Multiracial churches alone cannot explain those changes.

But the decline of historically Black religious institutions raises an important question.

Where do Black communities build collective power when the organizations that once helped organize them become less influential?

Social media has given us extraordinary opportunities to connect, communicate, and mobilize.

But a viral post isn't an institution.

A hashtag isn't a transportation network.

And a thousand people agreeing in a comment section isn't the same thing as a thousand people organizing to change something.

The civil rights movement understood that distinction.

Churches, civic organizations, student groups, neighborhood associations, and community networks provided the infrastructure necessary to turn frustration into sustained action.

Those networks required resources, leadership, trust, and a willingness to remain engaged long after the headlines disappeared.

We still need that infrastructure.

It doesn't necessarily have to come from a church.

But it has to come from somewhere.

And whatever institutions emerge to fill that role must provide communities with more than symbolic representation.

They must provide meaningful opportunities to exercise power.

The Question Isn't Whether We Should Worship Together

I don't believe the answer to these concerns is for Black Americans to retreat into racially separate institutions.

Nor do I believe multiracial churches are inherently harmful.

The very idea that people from different racial and cultural backgrounds can come together around shared values is something worth celebrating.

But unity shouldn't require anyone to surrender their history, minimize their experiences, or abandon their community's concerns.

A genuinely integrated church should be able to welcome Black members while allowing them meaningful influence over leadership, priorities, and institutional decisions.

It should be capable of discussing racial injustice without treating the subject as an attack on unity.

And it should recognize that avoiding uncomfortable conversations doesn't make an institution neutral.

Sometimes it simply protects the existing arrangement.

The Brookings research doesn't prove that white-led multiracial churches are deliberately suppressing Black political engagement.

That would go beyond what the findings establish.

But it does provide reason to examine how leadership and institutional culture may shape political identity.

And it invites us to ask questions that apply far beyond the church.

Who controls the resources?

Who sets the priorities?

Who selects the leadership?

Whose concerns receive attention?

And when disagreements arise, whose comfort determines what can and cannot be discussed?

Those questions tell us far more about institutional equality than any diversity photograph ever could.

We Got Through the Door. Now What?

I keep returning to the generations who fought to dismantle segregation.

They weren't fighting simply for the privilege of occupying the same spaces as white Americans.

They were fighting for full participation in American life.

The right to attend.

The right to contribute.

The right to lead.

And the right to influence decisions affecting their communities.

Those struggles opened doors that had been closed for generations.

That progress deserves recognition.

But progress also deserves examination.

Because an institution can become more racially diverse without fundamentally changing who exercises authority within it.

A church can welcome Black congregants while remaining disconnected from Black community concerns.

A corporation can employ Black workers while excluding them from consequential decisions.

A political party can depend on Black voters while taking their support for granted.

And a society can celebrate integration while remaining remarkably reluctant to redistribute power.

That's the contradiction I think we need to confront.

Not whether Black people should worship with white people.

Not whether multiracial churches are good or bad.

But whether our institutions are genuinely sharing authority or simply becoming more diverse in appearance.

Because the people who fought for integration weren't demanding better seating arrangements.

They were demanding equality.

And equality requires more than an invitation.

The church got integrated.

Now let's talk about who got the power.

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Sources and Further Reading

• Ryon J. Cobb, How Multiracial Churches Are Depoliticizing Black Americans, Brookings Institution, October 1, 2026
• Pew Research Center, Faith Among Black Americans, February 16, 2021
• Pew Research Center, Religion and Politics, February 16, 2021

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