Ethnicity and Religion in the Vivid City

One of my favorite places in the city is Mestizo Coffeehouse. The word “Mestizo” is a Spanish term that literally means “Mixed” and is often used as an adjective to refer to a person of mixed racial ancestry. Utah is a place where more and more people are identifying themselves as multiracial. In fact, between 2007 and 2008 Utah’s mixed-race population grew the fastest of any state in the nation. Furthermore, Salt Lake City, like most cities, continues to become more and more ethnically diverse. Alongside Salt Lake City’s mixed-race population is a population made up of immigrants from all corners of the world. Here amidst the majestic Wasatch Mountains is a vivid picture of the world in which beauty is found in diversity.

In the context of the ethnic make-up of Salt Lake City is also a unique religious culture. Salt Lake City is a city settled by people who parted from Protestant Christianity in the mid-1800’s to start a new religious movement called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Referring to the Intermountain Western United States and its center in Salt Lake City, Sam Wheatley states, “There is a huge inland empire that has never been a part of a modernist Protestant-evangelical consensus, a culture that parted ways with popular Christianity 159 years ago.” Upon it’s withdraw from mainstream modernity, the Mormons settled in Salt Lake City and established, in a sense, a postmodern city. This is the city where Melissa, Noelle, and I find ourselves today. This is the unique place where we are seeking to become involved in the life of the city.

Ethnicity in Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City continues to attract many immigrants from around the world. The city is a destination in which many have moved in seeking a place of refuge. Approximately 60,000 or 33% of the city’s population (which is just over 180,000) are also non-white residents. As I strolled through Liberty Park (a park just east of downtown) the weekend of July 4th the symphony of languages reminded me of God’s world, rich with diversity and vibrant with life.

However, with a population where 33% are ethnic minorities consisting of both natives as well as immigrants from many countries, the need is high for a city-wide endeavor to develop a better understanding of one another and to seek to serve one another in love. Like most cities, there is far too little community interaction between the different people groups who share the same city boundaries. One of our desires is to learn to think differently about our culture and to learn to encourage and foster relationships that reach across boundaries. The years I spent in Chicago helped me to love the richness of a truly diverse population and I look forward to becoming more and more involved in the diversity of this city.

Religion in Salt Lake City

Among any given culture there are existing channels which influence the culture greatly. These channels include business, government, media, church, arts and entertainment, education, and the social sector. The channels of culture in Salt Lake City have been greatly influenced by the LDS church and this influence is felt across the entire Salt Lake City metro area. According to the Association of Religion Data Archives, in 2006 the LDS church’s Salt Lake City members made up 790,764 of the area’s population, which is just under 60% of the population. Although this is a significant percent of the population, the demographics of Salt Lake City indicate that a large percentage of the population, 30%, also claim no religious affiliation. This leaves just 10% who claim any kind of historic Christianity or another religious affiliation such as Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism. Less than 2% of the entire metro Salt Lake City area claim to be Evangelical Protestants.

Unique to Salt Lake City is a culture where there is also a strong anti-religious population that is unlike any other place I have known. In a quest to be heard and understood, many people have strongly reacted to the influence the LDS faith has had on cultural channels of Salt Lake City. Many see this religion as oppressive with a top-down hierarchical structure powerfully at work permeating the shared space of the city. The LDS Church holds a great deal of power in this city and much of the population here reacts with passion. The following quote from the film SLC Punk sums up the reaction I have observed during my time here:

"In a country of lost souls...
rebellion comes hard...
but in a religiously oppressive city...
which half its population
isn't even of that religion...
it comes like fire."

Like most cities in the United States, Salt Lake City does have many religious perspectives represented. However, unlike the rest of the United States where historic Christianity has had a strong influence upon the culture, Salt Lake City has always been a place where historic Christianity has had little cultural influence. Throughout its entire history, Salt Lake City has been a difficult city for the gospel to take root. In the book Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City, and the People of God, Harvie Conn and Manuel Ortiz state, “In cities where urban power is overtly religious in orientation and strongly institutionalized, it may be very difficult to see strong church growth or a change of faith” (pg. 199) With an Evangelical population of less than 2% and an entire 30% of the population claiming no religious belief, Salt Lake City is a significantly important city for new works of the gospel.

As I seek to try to learn from this culture and navigate my way through this culture my hope is to begin to work with others who want to work toward reducing the animosity and hatred between people groups. Furthermore, I do want renewal to happen both in the lives of individuals and in the life of the city itself so that the city’s cultural foundations are rebuilt and the city flourishes with beauty. We have only been back in Salt Lake City for a month and a half and already I am seeing the need to rethink how I have approached the mission to renew and rebuild. In her book The Middle of Everywhere: The World’s Refugees Come to our Town, Mary Pipher states, “The borderland where cultures collide is the best vantage point for observing human resilience. Where cultures intersect, all of the sudden everyone must do things differently.” (pg. 12) I must learn to do things differently in a culture where as a Protestant Christian I remain an outsider. But I must have an attitude of one who is willing to learn from my culture and step out and love the people of Salt Lake City well.

My hope is that one day Salt Lake City will began to experience the kind of renewal that the biblical story equates with the future city that is to come where people of all languages and of all nations humbly relate with one another in love before an amazing and gracious God.

The challenges for gospel transformation of Salt Lake City are many, but we have been promised that what began in a beautiful garden will end in a glorious city. The city today with its creative energy and its vivid diversity reflects the current reality that the kingdom of God has been inaugurated. But due to the disruption of beauty, we strive to serve toward that end while continuing to look toward the day when all things will be made new and the glorious city of God will be in our midst. In that day the city’s oppressed, the city’s oppressors, and the city’s outsiders will know that God reigns and God wins. Until that day we seek the welfare of the city in which we dwell. With hope we seek and we serve until the day God will dwell in all his fullness and we will know the reality of the new and glorious city to which we will dwell forever.