Worship Is One Route to Unity

I imagine this is what heaven might look like, this rainbow of folks assembled on the church rostrum, voices raised in song, arms lifted in praise.

Black and white, Asian and Latino, belting out gospel music together, with all the enthusiasm--if not quite the virtuosity--of their conductor, Grammy Award-winning musician and minister Andrae Crouch.

And the folks in the pews at this suburban church are on their feet, clapping and swaying as the music lifts, invigorates and unifies them.

And I wonder as I sit among them, how they would answer tonight the age-old question my children used to ask me:

What color is God?

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In Southern California, where demographics are constantly in flux, shifting ethnic lines color our churches as well as our neighborhoods.

White parishioners move out and the pews are filled by Korean newcomers. Latinos replace blacks, and the local church adds a Spanish-language service. Church marquees add signs in Persian and Vietnamese and share space with immigrant congregations.

Yet, even here, it is rare to find church services that are truly multiethnic, where people from different races and cultures worship side by side.

“It’s true what they say . . . that Sunday morning at 10 o’clock is still the most segregated hour in America,” says Dudley Rutherford, pastor of Northridge’s Shepherd of the Hills Christian Church, which hosted Crouch during its Wednesday night revival last week.

The evangelical San Fernando Valley church shares a conservative theology with what we popularly call the Christian Right. But every Sunday, among the sea of white faces in the pews, are a growing number of blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans.

It is very different from the “all white world” Rutherford knew, growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s in Wichita, Kan., the son of a preacher whose church never had a nonwhite visitor . . . until young Dudley brought a black teammate from his high school basketball squad to service one Sunday.

“There was a lot of hostility among blacks and whites in my hometown,” he recalled. Black kids were being bused to his suburban high school, “and there were fights every day. Whites were in one corner, blacks were in another, and you didn’t walk down the hallway between them if you knew what was good for you.”

But on the day he walked his black teammate into his father’s church, “God put it in my heart to be a bridge builder,” he said. “And I wondered what would happen if we each reached out to somebody different from us and invited them to our homes, into our churches. Could we break down the barriers of race?”

It is a natural, benign separation for many. Issues of language and culture, preferences in message and music, family history and proximity . . . all dictate where churchgoers make their spiritual homes. And thorny racial issues are the last things many folks want to wrestle with on Sunday morning.

“I know there are people who walk in my church and look up and see an African American leading worship and think, ‘What is this?’ ” admits Rutherford. “But I don’t care if that bothers them. This is not my call, but God’s.”

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There are more than 1,800 people crammed into the pews when Crouch takes the stage and dives into his soul-stirring repertoire. Gospel music is new to many among them, but before long the crowd is clapping, swaying, on its feet.

A giant screen on the stage projects the larger-than-life image of the pianist accompanying him--a young, dark-skinned man, sporting a skull cap, an earring, black sunglasses . . . and a beatific smile.

And I know that if this were not church, he’s the kind of young, black man that many here would cross the street to avoid. But here, tonight, he is one of them . . . a brother leading them in praise.

There has been lots of talk on official levels about going beyond the boundaries of race. Christian, Jewish and Muslim clerics meet regularly in interfaith circles to talk of unity. A host of church leaders, from the Pope to the head of the Christian Coalition, raises the issue of racial reconciliation.

But maybe it falls to small gestures, writ large, to change the way we see others, and ourselves.

“We like to say that God is color-blind and to pretend we church-folk are so enlightened, we don’t even notice race,” says Crouch, who is pastor of Christ Memorial in Pacoima, the same church pastored by his late father when Andrae was a child.

“God does see color, but unlike us, He appreciates the differences, He savors the variety. He knows we’re all brothers and sisters, all his children.”

The question is, why don’t we?

Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.