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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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Michael Emerson
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 7
Actor
Film Actor
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Cedar Rapids
Iowa
mike
Trying
Took
Work
Coming
Authentically
Would
Side
Shoe
Sides
Background
Understand
Backgrounds
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Cultural
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Shoes
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Worship

More quotes by Michael Emerson

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Absolutely, although every congregation will say, you know, every worship leader will say it's vital. It's very important, but again these are, you know, these are different cultural styles.
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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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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I've been blessed by doing classic plays on Broadway, which was one of my great dreams forever.
Michael Emerson
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If we go into white congregations, non-whites will sometimes say it felt like worship never started. It was sort of dead and didn't feel that warmly received. But so - and there are different realities either way, and it makes it difficult for all groups to try and cross boundaries.
Michael Emerson
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Preaching styles and people being slain in the spirit and things like that. Now it doesn't happen in all black churches, and it happens sometimes in white churches, right? But on average they're quite a bit different.
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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One of the things I like about performing on the stage is that it is a kind of meditative experience. Time does stand still. You have no concept or feeling of the passing of two or three hours' time. It's all kind of one present moment, which is a kind of a description of meditation.
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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I spent a lot of time developing in books why worshipping separately actually impacts inequality, economic, social, on and on. So I really do believe there are huge advantages to being together even though it's difficult, even though we have a lot to learn.
Michael Emerson
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To a large extent, people's interest in the character is the mystery of the character.
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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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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It's the sad fact of how race still works in our country. We find that over and over again.
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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We've had people say, Now when I go to work, I don't feel uncomfortable talking to people of different races, and I go up and introduce myself, and I start making a new friend I wouldn't have done otherwise.
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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They could never go back to being a uniracial congregation again. It brings excitement. It brings life. It allows them to be able to know people they would never know, to meet people that are outside the congregation they would have never connected with, you know, through the networks that they developed in the congregation.
Michael Emerson
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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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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