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Downsides, yeah, and when there are more downsides when churches first start - they go through stages of transforming to becoming multiracial. So in the beginning stages there's often a lot of pain, a lot of confusion, a lot of people leave.

Michael Emerson

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Michael Emerson
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 7
Actor
Film Actor
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Cedar Rapids
Iowa
mike
Church
Churches
Pain
Confusion
Often
Yeah
Firsts
Beginning
First
Becoming
People
Leave
Multiracial
Stage
Stages
Start
Transforming

More quotes by Michael Emerson

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What sort of difficulties would happen when people of different cultures try to come together to worship? Tiny little things such as let's tell jokes with each other.
Michael Emerson
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It's one of the things we find in these congregations is that they are much more likely to be sort of up-beat worship styles, more likely that people in these congregations say Amen, maybe get up and dance some, tend to be a little bit more lively than a typical white service would be, but not as lively as a typical black service would be.
Michael Emerson
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I think of myself as a problem-solver. I want to go in and help the director and the writer to get the best they can out of the text they're working with.
Michael Emerson
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It may be changing, but still it's the one place, that total control of an institution, that African Americans have. So sometimes, you know, you'll hear the statement of African Americans saying, I have to work with whites.
Michael Emerson
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So there was great clashes when, you know, if you believe you shouldn't remove your shoes and someone's taking their shoes off, how can they do this? That actually was such a big clash in this case that they had to put a curtain down the middle of where they would worship.
Michael Emerson
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What happens is sometimes these congregations will still have the white style of worship, even though they're mixed, because folks are willing to give up whatever they may have come with. So it's still quite a stretch for African Americans, yeah.
Michael Emerson
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So you find a lot of these sixth Americans congregate in these interracial congregations. They hang out together at work, at school, wherever.
Michael Emerson
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And then they would have the shoe removers on one side, and the non-shoe removers on the other side until they could work through coming to understand why we might both be trying to worship authentically, and because of our cultural background we have these different ideas. But it took a while.
Michael Emerson
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So the tradition from Europe is that you're supposed to emphasize the mind over the body, so you sing from a very kind of staid perspective. Again, there are charismatic white congregations all over, and they don't sing that way. But, you know, on the average.
Michael Emerson
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And again, this connection that you get: I meet Joe at church. Joe's connected to a whole network of people I don't know. Joe likes me. He invites me over to his son's birthday party, and I meet his whole family. I meet his friends. I get to know his neighborhood. That happens all the time.
Michael Emerson
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I have to conclude, oh, the best people are all somebody other than my own race. So that's difficult. How do we interpret the Bible? Should we stress things like justice and that God is somebody who cares about equality of all people? Or is he a God of love and a God who's there to give me an afterlife?
Michael Emerson
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I think people respond to villains because people in general are more villainous than heroic.
Michael Emerson
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That's a big fear, right, and when I talk with black pastors, the same thing: If we try to have this move towards interracial congregations, whites will just dominate then. There are so many more of them, and they're used to being in the position of power. So they'll just take over, and we'll lose the one thing we do have.
Michael Emerson
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So different groups have different definitions, and then they clash on those. So it takes adept leadership to say we're going to work through these.
Michael Emerson
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I think whites are used to being in power, so when whites think we ought to have integrated churches they think, People ought to come to our church. What can we do to get them to come?
Michael Emerson
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My mother always told me growing up I had a punchable face. Little did I know she was predicting my television career.
Michael Emerson
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Maybe there's even anger. But if they make it through that they come to a new agreement, and they start creating a new culture, and it becomes something that people just - a lot of times they'll say, I couldn't live without it. I just have to be there.
Michael Emerson
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We're going to see more, and we are seeing more, and I'll tell you exactly why. Not because white and black are more likely to get together. Only a third of the seven percent of congregations that are interracial are black and white.
Michael Emerson
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In your actor's heart, you know when you're playing well. Others may not always agree with you, but I'm always aware of when the scene is cooking or not. You have an instinct about that from years of doing scenes and plays, and I think it stands you in good stead even in the TV world.
Michael Emerson
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I think it's easier, I really do, because of not having that similar history, so that's why I think two-thirds of these mixed congregations are either white with Asian and Hispanic, or black with Asian and Hispanic.
Michael Emerson