The Urban Church Imagined - Religion, Race, and Authenticity in the City - Grand Format

The Urban Church Imagined illuminates the dynamics surrounding white urban evangelical congregations' approaches to diversifying membership. Many evangelical churches are moving to urban areas to build their congregations. In seeking to attract young, hipper members, congregations are appropriating the downtown nightlife scene and a lifestyle centered on the city, promoting themselves as "authentically urban" through gendered, raced, and class-based assumptions of the city evident in their advertising campaigns, web content, worship space, and sermonizing.
Jessica M. Barron and Rhys H. Williams explore the cultural contours of one such church in downtown Chicago. They show that church leaders and congregants' understandings of the connections between race, consumer culture, and the city is a motivating factor for many members who value interracial interactions as a part of their worship experience. But their efforts to identify themselves as urban often unintentionally exclude members along racial and classed lines, an unexpected contradiction of their goal of inclusivity.
This book contributes to emerging scholarship on American religious life and urban religious organizations, offering important insights into the growing trend of racially diverse evangelical congregations in urban areas.