It was observed in the introductory chapter that metropolitan life had split into two trends -- expanding interdependence on an impersonal basis and growing exclusiveness in local communal groupings. These trends seem to be working at cross-purposes in the metropolis. Residential associations struggle to insulate themselves against intrusions. The motifs of impersonal interdependence and insulation of residential communities have polarized; the schism between central city and suburb, Negro and White, blue collar and white collar can be viewed as symptomatic of this deeper polarization of trends in the metropolis. It now becomes evident that the denominational church is intimately involved with the economy of middle-class culture, for it serves to crystallize the social class identity of middle-class residential groupings. The accelerated pace of metropolitan changes has accentuated the drive to conformity in congregations of the major denominations. This conformity represents a desperate attempt to stabilize a hopelessly unstable environment. More than creatures of metropolitan forces, the churches have taken the lead in counteracting the interdependence of metropolitan life, crystallizing and perpetuating the stratification of peoples, giving form to the struggle for social homogeneity in a world of heterogeneous peoples.

Since American life is committed above all to productivity and a higher standard of economic life, the countervailing forces of residential and religious exclusiveness have fought a desperate, rearguard action against the expanding interdependence of the metropolis. Consumer communities have suffered at the hands of the productive interests. Negroes, Puerto Ricans, and rural newcomers are slowly making their way into the cities. Soon they will fight their way into the lower middle-class suburbs, and the churches will experience the same decay and rebuilding cycle which has characterized their history for a century. The identification of the basic unit of religious organization -- the parish or congregation -- with a residential area is self defeating in a modern metropolis, for it simply means the closing of an iron trap on the outreach of the Christian fellowship and the transmutation of mission to co-optation. Mission to the metropolis contradicts survival of the congregation in the residential community, because the middle classes are fighting metropolitan interdependence with residential exclusion.