c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) On Saturday, my wife and I took an outing into cultural diversity.

We delivered our son to orchestra rehearsal, where he joined an ethnic kaleidoscope _ African-Americans, Asians and Caucasians _ seeking to master classical music.

We proceeded to an Asian market that sells Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese. The Korean owner explained how to cook sweet potato noodles.

Back home, we listened to “A Prairie Home Companion,” being broadcast from Miami, where host Garrison Keillor noted that 78 percent of residents speak a language other than English at home. His guests played Cuban music.

This was the peaceful and charming upside of diversity _ different nationalities, different races, different orientations in everything from sexuality to music, all getting along, adding new textures, flavors and sounds to our lives.

Then we watched “Crash,” an Oscar-nominated ensemble film about the dark side of diversity in a city where no one dares to connect. In this Los Angeles, a white policeman fondles a black motorist and dares her husband to intervene. A black supervisor ignores racial injustice because intervening might endanger his advancement. A clerk hangs up on a customer for mocking her “black name” and then screams at an Asian woman to “speak American!” A white homeowner puts down a Hispanic locksmith as an obvious thief, then is snubbed by a “friend” who is too busy having a massage to help her after a fall. A Middle Eastern shop owner is shouted down by a white gun dealer, is vandalized with anti-Arab slurs, then turns his rage against a Hispanic family. Two black men see racial hostility on every side, then feed stereotypes by hijacking cars. A black detective worried about his junkie mom ignores racism at work but perpetuates it with his white girlfriend.

The film is heavy-going, and yet it captures the tension and hostility that diversity can bring. Even in cities like mine, where diversity is well established, tempers flare at school board meetings over racial issues, political arguments have a constant black vs. white subtext, black vs. Hispanic tension is growing, and in countless ways that mirror the tensions of Los Angeles in “Crash,” residents snarl at each other.

American religion isn’t helping. With their relentless attacks on homosexuality, conservative evangelicals communicate the message that diversity is dangerous and discrimination acceptable. With their relentless tokenism _ in which every nominating slate, every committee, every clergy team must have a correct balance _ liberal denominations end up communicating exactly the same message.

Even though our shared Savior intentionally cut his culture’s bigotry, we prowl the Scriptures looking to justify ours. We line up to cast the first stone. No “love thy neighbor” when it comes to Christians debating “values.” No “one in the Spirit” when it comes to chasing alliances with politicians. No “dying to self” when it comes to purging nonconformists. No “love thy enemy” when it comes to church conventions.

The “enemy” in the Los Angeles of “Crash” isn’t diversity _ too many unalike people occupying a single space _ it is isolation, disconnection, a world where life happens indoors and anything outside is an angry collision about to occur.

This should be our problem to solve. If Christianity knows anything, it knows how to help people join hands in song, blend efforts in mission work, pray for people we don’t know, welcome strangers, “fling wide the portals of our hearts.” We are _ or should be _ in the business of breaking down isolation. We, of all people, should know the imperative of forming community.

It is tragic when, in our various forms of moral perfectionism, we add fuel to a fire of intolerance that could destroy us all.

MO/JL END RNS

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

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