Irvine Church Believes Cultural Understanding Is Key to Racial Harmony : Religion: Methodists’ committee for a decade has explored both the differences and common ground among groups in an effort to understand why some races behave and feel as they do.

Dolly Shimizu Kaplan was teaching Sunday school at the University United Methodist Church about a decade ago when she noticed that the textbooks her class was using were “racially biased.”

“The books were telling stories about how children should play fairly, and they had pictures of only black children behaving inappropriately,” said Kaplan, 54. “I told the minister about it, and our church changed the school material to different ones.”

To avoid other cultural problems in the future, Ron Ellison, the minister at the time, asked Kaplan to be one of the organizers to form the Committee on Religion and Race, one of few church groups that study cultural and ethnic issues.

Since its beginning, the group has organized dinners in which members were introduced to cultures of different countries including Korea and Zambia. It also has sponsored seminars on issues such as racism, and the common roots among Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

Kaplan, who is of Japanese descent, and fellow committee members said gatherings such as theirs may be part of the solution to ease cultural tension in today’s complex society.

“I think it’s important to know about other people’s experiences to understand why people behave or feel the way they do,” she said.

This helps foster harmony, whether it be among the general population in the county or the church population of about 500, Kaplan said.

Nearly 15% of the church members are African American, Asian American and Latino, said the Rev. Cynthia Williams, one of the two ministers at University United Methodist Church.

“I think, overall, the committee has been received positively,” said Williams, 34. “One of the most important things (it) does is bring awareness and attempts to build bridges across cultural differences.”

The committee also makes new members to the church feel welcomed, said Lemba Davy Nyirenda.

He came from Zambia in the 1980s to get his master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering at UCI, and stayed to work in Irvine. Two years ago, the committee asked Nyirenda to give a presentation on the history and economy of Zambia.

“The committee is very sensitive of the welfare of everyone in the church,” said Nyirenda, who belonged to a Methodist church in Zambia.

“The whole church supports the committee,” he added. “It’s one area where we touch on subjects that otherwise would never get discussed: race, different religions. We share information through that forum so that we can learn to love each other--that’s the bottom line.”

The county could use more organizations such as the Committee on Religion and Race, he said.

“Orange County is a very complex place,” Nyirenda said. “If you go to UCI, the character of that community is diverse and everybody mixes at every level. When you go into the rest of the county, many people don’t want to mix. People who do want to mix have to join specific groups, like a church.”

The religious atmosphere also encourages church members to discuss hot topics such as racism, which they did in a November seminar, he said.

Most of the 30 participants at the seminar were members of minority groups, Kaplan said.

“We shared what racism meant to each of us,” she said. “The white people had a hard time, because they couldn’t say much about it, but I admired them for coming because it was hard for them.”

The county “needs to have more of those kinds of workshops so people can relate on a personal level,” Kaplan said. “It’s good to have a place to speak your mind without negative criticisms. It was very therapeutic.”