The New Evangelicalism Review-3

The theme of the book I've been reading, The New Evangelicalism: Releasing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity by Soong-Chan Rah, is the white population of the United States is diminishing which has obvious implications for the future of the white church. In the last part of his book Rah discusses second generation immigrants as the logical bridge between first generation immigrant church memebers and the older white middle classes ones. He includes two other groups within what he calls, the ones with "liminal" experience. Liminals are those who are operating within two cultures - one American and the other a Third World one. Included as liminals are second generation children of immigrants, children of Third World country missionaries evangelizing America, and children of overseas American missionaries, those children who grew up in Third World cultures and now are back in America. He points out that missionareis from immigrant countries in America usually end up in poorer sections of the country since they might be limited through education, race/ethniticty and funding to live anywhere else. But their children are often upwardly mobile and may end up in more white middle and upper-middle class communities.

At the end of the book, Rah once again informs us that white Americans are going to have to begin to share church leadership power and include immigrants and immigrant churches in the "conversation" as well as in church life.