Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

4-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Department

Organizational Leadership

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Linnea Rademaker

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Ben Ries

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Cynthia Sims

Abstract

With a purpose of understanding why church diversification efforts remain largely unsuccessful, this qualitative multiple case study includes an exploration of the experiences of seven African Americans and six Caucasians who are current or former members of predominantly White nondenominational churches. Interviews focused on revealing experiences and interactions that may have made African Americans feel more welcome as well as experiences and interactions that may have made African Americans feel more out of place in a predominantly White church setting. While African Americans gave a personal account of their experiences as African Americans, Caucasian participants were asked to provide their perspective of factors they believed may have made African Americans feel more welcome or unwelcome in their churches. Results include a summary of each participant’s personal experience as well as the resulting themes that emerged from the group of African American participants and the resulting themes that emerged from the Caucasian participants.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.