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# when churches commodify diversity - Doctors Without Boredom
- URL: https://mereorthodoxy.com/matthewloftus-2018-04-30-209/
- Published: 2018-04-30T08:31:43.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-22T16:49:44.000Z
- Description: What happens when urban churches try to commodify diversity? It gets ugly.
- Author: Mere Orthodoxy
- Tags: Matthew Loftus

Duke Kwon allows the text to speak for itself in [his review of *The Urban Church Imagined: Religion, Race, and Authenticity in the City*](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/urban-church-imagined/?ref=mereorthodoxy.com):

> This consumer orientation also has implications for the way the church relates to racial diversity and its members of color. Not only has “the ‘urban experience’ itself . . . become a commodity for consumption” (7), but due to the racialization of the urban, diversity has also been commodified. The city is a place where the affluent and educated middle class has come to expect to consume diversity “as experience, as entertainment, and as a part of personal identity” (13). This may especially be the tendency of churches who attract educated and culturally liberal “young professionals.”

There’s a strong academic tone to the quotes he shares, but the underlying reality is pretty brutal: in some urban churches, people want “diversity” in their churches as another consumer perk, like a cool band or a short-enough sermon, but they’re less enthused about actually meeting the needs of diverse people within their congregations. Kwon emphasizes the themes of “the imaginary” and how the idea of “serving *the city*” overtakes actual neighbor-love as well as this “commodification of diversity” that imports the worst of the seeker-sensitive movement into a new context with a new set of tastes.