Latest Michael Emerson Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I liked the scenes with the baby, but the baby steals all the scenes that you're in. So that would get old after a while, because the baby is too perfect. I liked being high on ecstasy.

  Michael Emerson

  Baby, Perfect, Stealing

  Source: collider.com

• So these are the kind of things that now when people are trying to move towards multiracial congregations that they're stressing. They're talking about these scriptures that say we ought to come together, and that at Pentecost, when that the Holy Spirit is said to have come upon the first Christians, they were given the ability to speak in different languages, and so that no matter who the people were, they could all worship together.

  Michael Emerson

  Christian, Stress, Moving

  Source: www.pbs.org

• There's one denomination in particular, though, that has pushed very hard to be multiracial in its denomination - not only its denomination but, I mean, in its congregations, and it's called the Evangelical Covenant Church, http://www.covchurch.org/ which is headquartered in Chicago. Their whole goal is that's the kind of churches they start, multiracial, and I think they say now 20 percent of their churches are that.

  Michael Emerson

  Mean, Thinking, Goal

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Scripture is vast, and people can pick and choose what they emphasize, and so for hundreds of years verses that said that you are to welcome the stranger, that with Christ there's neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, we've broken down the dividing wall with the original church, where Christians were first called Christian was the church of Antioch in which for the first time you had Jews, Gentiles of all different ethnicities come together as one people. That's when they were called Christians.

  Michael Emerson

  Christian, Wall, Ethnicity

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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

  Shoes, Ideas, Trying

  Source: www.pbs.org

• You find the most in not any particular denomination specifically. It's the style of worship. So if we have what we call a charismatic worship style, that means upbeat music and a more lively style of preaching usually, people are allowed to clap, say "Amen," whether they're mainline Protestant, conservative Protestant, and Catholics, whatever, they're much more likely to be integrated.

  Michael Emerson

  Mean, People, Catholic

  Source: www.pbs.org

• We studied a mosque, and this is when we were at Notre Dame, and in this mosque they had people from a variety of countries, most of them immigrants. In some of the countries, when you go into a mosque you remove your shoes. To not do so could be punishable even by death in that nation. In other countries, it would be a great offense to remove their shoes when they come into the mosque, a sign of disrespect.

  Michael Emerson

  Country, Shoes, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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

  Believe, Shoes, Worship

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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

  Groups, Different, Definitions

  Source: www.pbs.org

• There's always the question of time. Does time at 10:00 mean 10:00 sharp? Or does it mean give or take a few minutes? And a few minutes, is that plus or minus two minutes? Or plus or minus ten, or maybe a half an hour each way?

  Michael Emerson

  Mean, Two, Giving

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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

  Stress, Afterlife, Race

  Source: www.pbs.org

• And different traditions stress different - so then there's that. I talked to an African American who says before she goes into an interracial church, she sits in her car and she listens to gospel music to get her fill, and she goes into an interracial church where they don't do gospel music, and she's ready to accept the other sorts of ways of worshipping. So there's that.

  Michael Emerson

  Stress, Car, African American

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Then of course there are bigger things that matter, like who do I see up there in the congregation? Do I see myself up there? Well, I don't.

  Michael Emerson

  Matter, Bigger, Wells

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I ask the clergy why don't I see myself represented in leadership? And I'm told, and this happens quite a bit, "We don't think about race when we hire. We just hire the best person for the job."

  Michael Emerson

  Jobs, Thinking, Race

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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

  People, Trying, Together

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Humor is so culturally based that when I try to tell a joke as me being a white American, if I tell other white Americans, they'll laugh. If I tell an African American, they might not laugh. In fact, they either might not find it funny, or they might find it offensive, and I didn't mean it to be offensive. So these are the sort of little things that build up over time, just like in a marriage. You know, the little things can build up over time.

  Michael Emerson

  Mean, White, Laughing

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I think it's going to open up a wider place for a discussion about we ought to come together in our churches, in our neighborhoods, in our work places, in our clubs and our networks. I think it'll be more acceptable to talk about it. We'll see what happens. It'll take some time. But I think it will.

  Michael Emerson

  Thinking, Together, Church

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I think with President Obama there's going to be a discussion, because he himself is multiracial, because we have for the first time a non-white president. There's going to be talk about what does this mean? What is it? Are we in a new era?

  Michael Emerson

  Mean, Thinking, White

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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

  Talking, Race, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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

  Party, Son, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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

  Pain, Confusion, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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

  Agreement, Creating, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

• There's a lot of life there, but it's a different sort, because there's a lot less immigrants and a lot more racial, the mix of black and white in particular. I've actually never been to their worship for an extended period of time, so I can't comment wisely on it.

  Michael Emerson

  Black And White, Different, Worship

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I mean, so if I've talked to whites in City of Refuge, sometimes they'll wonder, "Why do we do things a certain way, and why do we make a big deal out of events?" And what's happening is they're falling back on their understanding of the way that church should work. It's not always working exactly like that, and they feel frustration or confusion. Sometimes people leave. That's certainly common in mixed churches.

  Michael Emerson

  Fall, Mean, Frustration

  Source: www.pbs.org

• It was an all-white church. It was starting to decline. They had to hire a new pastor, and they hired him. But he came under the condition that "I want and I'm called to make this a multiethnic church." So they knew. He's interesting because he's part-Asian, part-white. He's married to a Hispanic woman, so that's their family and that's their vision.

  Michael Emerson

  White, Interesting, Vision

  Source: www.pbs.org