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Calvin Professor Writes Book About 'White Flight'

July 21, 2015

Rutgers University Press

Calvin College sociology professor Mark Mulder has written a new book that looks at a period between 1962-72 when seven Christian Reformed Church congregations moved from the core of Chicago to the suburbs.

The churches, which were located within 40 city blocks of one another on the South Side of Chicago, left as African American families were moving into the neighborhoods, says Mulder.

The book is titled Shades of White Flight: Evangelical Congregations and Urban Departure. It was published in March by Rutgers University Press.

Mulder said the story is not intended to be a judgment about the decisions that the churches made. Instead, he says, his book attempts to examine the role religion played in the decisions.

“This book is less about the people involved than it is about the organizational and institutional forces that continue to shape cities,” he writes.

“Moreover, it is about illuminating religious practices, structures, and agency within the shifting sands of residential inequality.”

The book, he said, acknowledges the reality that many social, cultural, economic and religious factors play into the reasons why churches move from the core city to outlying areas.

“What I write about is not unique to the CRC,” he said. “Many Protestant churches have faced these issues.”

His focus is on particular aspects of the CRC’s ethnic and religious heritage, along with its church polity, that played important roles in why the congregations decided — and were able in a decade’s time — to leave.

On the one hand, the members shared a common Dutch ancestry and their family lives revolved around the church. It was their church and not the neighborhood that tended to matter most.

“They were somewhat less invested in the larger civic culture,” said Mulder. “For instance, church members sent their children to Christian, and not public, schools. When it came time to make the decision, it was easier for them to leave the city.”

Most notably, the congregations followed the CRC model of church polity, in which power is ultimately placed in the local congregation, meaning a local church can decide to leave or stay without needing to obtain permission from a church hierarchy.

“When they determined they needed to leave in order to sustain themselves, relocation of these churches to the suburbs seemed instinctive,” says Mulder.

In his research, Mulder relied on minutes from church council meetings, materials in various archives, newspaper articles and interviews with people to help to carefully chronicle the decisions that led to the congregations moving.

Although it only involved seven churches in a small evangelical denomination, says Mulder, this story is part of a much larger one in which “religion and faith practices and cultures must be included” in any discussion about the reasons behind the issues of white flight and residential segregation in U.S. cities.