"White Flight" Missiology and Its Result: Racially Segregated Ecclesiology in the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

Functionally speaking, the most recent burst of missionary effort and funding in the Diocese of New Jersey was the period of church planting and growth that occurred aimed at serving the massive suburban growth in the state in the mid-twentieth century. This period of development in the state has been characterized by urban planners as a period of “White flight” during which White families fled urban areas and settled in newly built, and (either formally or informally) racially restricted suburban developments in order to avoid proximity to Black neighbors. 

The Diocese of New Jersey fully cooperated with this pattern of development, often funding and building new churches in suburban areas with racially restrictive covenants. The construction of Christ the King, Levittown is exemplary: Land was donated to the diocese by Levitt and sons; A diocese-wide fundraising campaign ensued, which included the forced liquidation of the historically Black congregation of St. Monica’s, Trenton in order to use proceeds from the sale of property to fund building Christ the King; parishioners of St. Monica’s were instructed to attend other churches in the name of “integration;” only one of the several Trenton-area Episcopal churches offered a formal invitation to them. And while Christ the King began in the mid-century as exclusively White, once race-restrictions were overturned and Black neighbors moved in, most White families left the area and the church, and by the 1990s the diocese formally designated it a Black church.

Many urban Episcopal churches in the diocese during this period, such as in Trenton, Atlantic City, Elizabeth, and Camden, closed after being abandoned by White Episcopalians. Other formerly all-White churches in these areas were handed over to Black residents and have become Black churches (not unlike Christ the King). While the pattern of segregation in churches in the diocese partly dates to the Jim Crow era, during which the formation of a few Black churches was allowed rather than letting overt hostility from White Episcopalians “drive [Black people] to schism by cold neglect” (to quote Bishop Scarborough’s 1890 convention address), this pattern was further buttressed and cemented by the cooperation of diocesan authorities with the systemically racist patterns of development that were occurring throughout the state mid-century.

The result today is a significantly functionally segregated diocese, with Black churches located mostly in areas that have experienced decades of economic difficulty and systemic neglect, and White churches mostly located in areas that have been comparatively prosperous and fully supported with infrastructure and services. One of the results of this geographic pattern has been the perennial underfunding of Black churches and ministries. Moreover, the relational and communication structure of the diocese has mirrored the physically segregated structure, with Black congregations siloed off from the rest of the diocese in many ways.

These current patterns of ecclesial organization in the diocese (racial segregation, respective location of thriving White churches and ailing Black churches, underfunded Black churches, siloed communication, etc.) appear to be, in part, the result of a long cooperation (on the part of the diocesan administration) with the prevailing patterns of systemic racism that produced the current, functionally segregated makeup of the state of New Jersey.