The Black Church and Faith-Based Human Development, Economic Empowerment and
Community Revitalization.
Chase Park Plaza Hotel
January 15, 2005
Reverend Alan L. Joplin, B.A., M.A., M.A., MAT. MSc., MRel., MDiv.
This Presentation examines the past, present, and future role of the Black Church as participant and catalyst for human development, economic empowerment and community revitalization in African American communities. The presentation will 1) explore the historical foundation of the Church's economic development mission; 2) examine current economic and social conditions that motivate the Church's involvement in local economic development; 3) describe a conceptual framework within which to categorize and develop faith-based economic development endeavors; 4) investigate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of Church involvement in community development; 5) highlight successful models of Church-initiated development.
"Economic cooperation among Negroes must begin with the Church group."
W. E. B. Du Bois 1907
The black church is the single most important institution in the black community. Beginning in the late eighteenth century and continuing to the present, it has been the oldest and most independent African American organization. Its importance is so great that some scholars say that the black church is the black community, with each having no identity apart from the other. Even if some would deny this claim, no informed person can deny the centrality of the black church in the black community. Therefore black liberation is, at least in part, dependent upon the attitude and role that the church assumes in relation to it.
James Cone “For My People”
"The impact of the Black church on the spiritual, social, economic, educational and political interests that structure life in America - including the mainline White churches themselves - can scarcely be overlooked in any realistic appraisal of our common religious experience," writes
C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, whose book,
The Black Church in the African American Experience,
examines the historic growth, development
and influence of the Black church.
“With rare exceptions, the black church's pastoral vision does not speak to the experience
of intense alienation of the colonized in the urban metropolitan centers in the country.”
Reverend Alan L. Joplin, Conference on Black Theology, Davenport, Iowa 2000
Introduction
Economics, by definition, is “the art of managing a household.” It comes from the same root as “ecumenical,” and connotes “God’s plan or system for the government of the world,” and “a special divine dispensation suited to the needs of a nation or period.” Economics, then, should be a suitable, even a central concern of the Christian church. In the Bible, Jesus talks continually about money and the proper allocation of resources. We find examples both of socialism and capitalism all through the scriptures (for example, Luke 15:11 [parable of the prodigal son] and Luke 16:1 [parable of the unjust steward]).
For Christians, economics should be shaped by an equitable way to create and share resources in community. The early Jews tried to correct economic imbalances through the Jubilee year, the fiftieth year, which called for hereditary properties to be restored to their original owners, for slaves to be emancipated, and for the rights of the poor to harvest the fields (Leviticus 25; Exodus 21:2-11). It may not be farfetched to regard the riots as a negative expression of Jubilee.
The Black Church is the principal social structure in Black communities across the nation. It’s a nerve center for many people, and a bastion of hope for many more. It has only begun to touch the surface of its potential to serve the interests of its people by leading a resurgent economic development of Black communities. The Black Church is a multi-million dollar operation.
The Black Church
Most churchgoers are not interested in arguments about the existence of God or the nature of God. They are interested in what God has done and can do to help with their particular concerns and problems. African Americans expect the preacher to reassure them of God’s power, not to question or doubt it. They expect the pastor to help them cope with joblessness, poverty and discrimination by transforming their despair into hope. The Black church needs to provide the content and method for changing the social, economic and political obstacles for blacks. The black church needs a practical theology that can help liberate it from social, political and economic oppression. The black church has a moral obligation to free its people from the despair and powerlessness that grip their bodies and souls.
What are some of the issues in the Black church that keeps us powerless.
• Miseducation, poor self-esteem and the failure of black Christians to understand and appreciate their own history and culture in black churches. This is evident not only in the absence of black icons but also in the rejection by many black church goers.
• Sexism against black women should also be addressed. Women in black churches outnumber men by more than four to one; yet in positions of authority and responsibility the ratio is reversed. Though women are gradually entering ministry, many men and women still resist and fear that development. The black church must deal with the double bondage of black women in church and society. The black church must eliminate exclusionist language, attitudes or practices, however benign or unintended, in order to benefit fully from the talents of women.
• Improving the economic conditions of African American will also hasten their freedom. Too many blacks survive from paycheck to paycheck while simultaneously trying to keep up with the Joneses. Most black churches are independent and financially solvent. But the individuals who constitute the church and community are often plagued by poverty and hampered by discrimination, underemployment and racism. Economically secure blacks within the church have a moral obligation to use their success to enhance the wider black community.
• Every black churchgoer, especially the economically secure, should understand that tithing or some larger form of proportionate giving significantly affects the liberation of African American. A tithing church will be able to influence public policy issues such as housing for the poor and equal-employment opportunities. It would not have to spend time and energy raising money to meet the ordinary demands of ministry and mission. It can actually do ministry by using its financial resources to develop ways to stem the tide of drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, divorce and family violence.
• Black churches need to pool their financial resources by withdrawing funds from institutions that do not address the development needs of the black community. In our society, money talks. African Americans should assume control of their hard-earned money and invest it in financial institutions that will challenge traditional models of risk management. Thus they will begin the process of nurturing our neglected communities back to health. The fiscal integrity of the black church and community depend on biblical ethical principles such as working together, loving one another and caring for the poor. In order for the black community to become a viable place for external investment, blacks will first have to invest in themselves. The church must invest in black youth and in the black community before society will invest in the black community.
• Black congregation should assess the needs of its constituents within a certain radius of the church. This will enable the pastor and staff better to understand their ministry context and to address specific community needs. For example, some neighbors need to learn how to read, while others may need better access to medical care. Still others may simply need to know that there are people nearby who care about their families and are willing to offer a helping hand.
Practicing Christianity has for African-Americans meant turning the other cheek, walking in humility, and enduring cruel and debasing treatment. During three centuries of slavery, African Americans learned how to sublimate their anger; they increased their chances for survival by tolerating the oppressors. This constitutes real faith in the promise of God i.e., faith as action. Blacks still sing, "There is a Bright Side Somewhere" and "Climbing Up the Rough Side of the Mountain," and all understand and identify with these words of suffering and hope, jubilation and reflection. Black should use the language of the masses to make plain the feelings, hopes, dreams, experiences and practices of African Americans.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency for socially and economically successful black Christians to ignore a call to remember there history. This lack of solidarity with the masses obscures the struggle for freedom and unnecessarily dichotomizes the black church and community.
An African American approach to theology has little practical value apart from the black church because liberation cannot be achieved without the church. James Cone, in his very compassionate book “For My People”, says that "black liberation is, in part, dependent upon the attitude and role that the church assumes in relation to it." Although black preachers and theologians may disagree on the relation of black theology to the church, the time for antagonism between preachers and theologians has passed. It is now time for unity and action -- time to practice what we teach and preach.
Church “Political” Leadership
If the current political and structural economic trends persist (and there is little reason to assume they will not), we are looking at a future blood bath of violence that will make our present nightmare look pleasant. This crisis poses moral and political questions for a generation of new black church leadership. Perhaps the most important question is, how does the black community directly challenge and mobilize its established leadership, its premier sovereign institution-the black church?
Some things are fairly clear and rarely said publicly, and now must be stated with complete candor. Much of established black church leadership in the United States stands before the world tainted with the blood of millions of black women and children whose pain and suffering have been ignored (one acknowledges the exceptions). In many cities it is easier for a homeless black teen-age girl to find sanctuary in a crack house or a bar on a Friday night than it is for her to find refuge behind the locked doors of many established black churches. Few political developments so empirically demonstrated the depth of the moral and intellectual crisis of the nation's black political and religious leadership.
Such a development was predictable for at least five reasons.
• the ascendance of black America's premier crypto-fascist was largely a function of the political collapse of the liberal-to-center ideological consensus of the established black leadership infrastructure. This infrastructure includes black elected officials as well as the managerial and protest factions of the church-based declining civil rights industry.
• a strategically and politically incoherent "pragmatic-integrationist" intelligentsia, with no sustained pedagogical relationship to our most alienated black social classes in the inner city, contributed to this growing leadership vacuum. They have produced few powerful new ideas in the areas of politics or policy, and no organizing programs.
• the leadership of the black churches-of, which there are at least 65,000 nationally, serving an estimated 23 million, blacks-are in a state of political and spiritual crisis. They too are disconnected from growing numbers of our youth in general and young urban black males in particular. They exhibit little awareness of how they might collectively reverse the deepening spiritual and cultural decay of our inner-city neighborhoods. Fewer still comprehend the historical roots or the empirical dimensions of the nihilism now engulfing a generation of young people drowning in their own blood. They are, for the most part, simply conducting business as usual.
• With rare exceptions, the black church's pastoral vision does not speak to the experience of intense alienation of the colonized in the urban metropolitan centers in the country. Its images, symbols, and metaphors do not emanate from a dispassionate understanding of the cold political logic of market society.
• Well-known macroeconomic and structural forces have radically transformed our inner-city neighborhoods, marginalizing increasing numbers of young, black males. Many of these factors were of course driven by the escalating Republican policy wars against the poor over the last 15 years.
Leadership vacuums produce leadership opportunities.
It is here, in the areas of social policy planning and advocacy, that a unique and historic opportunity exists for a new generation of black church leadership to establish a more vital presence in the larger national church policy debates currently raging. There is an interesting irony here. For the last 15 years of the Republican counter-revolution, the domestic policy wars have been directed against the urban black poor. The logic is very simple, with the persistent poverty of the black and brown serving a variety of crucial ideological functions.
Conservative policy elites (Republican or Democratic) perceive, correctly, that poor blacks are a politically disposable population. In fact, the suffering, nihilism, and decay associated with the tragic circumstances of the urban poor can-and, in the view of conservatives, should-be exploited to ensure continued political dominance.
Congregational Leadership
Within the community, congregations are often the primary, if not only, local institution with a grassroots constituency. As such they "bring to the table" legitimacy within the community, they have been part of its past, usually associated as a stabilizing factor. The futures of church and neighborhood are intrinsically related to each other. Church leaders have long known to be true, that the likelihood that congregations are growing is correlated with the growth of its community.
• congregations have an institutional stake in quality of life and indeed, viability of the neighborhoods and communities in which they reside.
• Congregations are further attractive to community organizations because of their ongoing work of producing social capital. Central to their institutional purpose is the building of consensus through the reinforcement of values and worldview.
• Congregations are the only institutions in communities in which volunteers participate for the purpose of individual and collective systems of meaning-making.
• congregations can be in their interpretation of transformation, there is necessarily an ethos of transcendence, connecting members to that which is outside of themselves. Members therefore participate regularly in affirming that they are part of a larger purpose and reality.
• congregations of all faiths reinforce the value of public participation and service. In message and program, most congregations encourage some form of engagement with the public.
An important element of social capital which religious communities also bring to community organizing is the experience of democratic participation which is present in all but the most autocratic congregations. Even those people who are among the politically disenfranchised in the broader culture can organize power bases within the smallest congregations and bring enormous passion to conflicts within their churches. Those who are without voice in the body politic find voice in the micro-democracies inherent in many congregations. It is critical in community organizing to mobilize those for whom the memory of democratic participation is not extinguished. This can be done in the following ways:
• shared leadership as opposed to clerical leadership
• coalitional (rather than parochial) parameter of focus, issues are citywide
• grassroots empowerment (rather than accessing power)
• power structures are challenged and change is sought (rather than accommodation)
Conclusion
“theological reflection must be related to the practical imperatives
of social policy formation and execution”
The Church in the Urban Crisis is trumpeted as the land of equal opportunity. It leads the poor person to react in one of two ways: “Something is wrong with me”; or “Somebody is doing this to me deliberately.” The systematic stripping of the poor’s inability to compete begins at birth with an inadequate health care system, and continues with a poor educational system based on property taxes. This results in a lack of preparedness for good jobs and is accentuated by race and cultural discrimination. The churches in the city responded to the crisis in some predictable ways and in some unprecedented ways. Providing relief for victims of cataclysms has historically been the church’s role. The church’s relation to the poor has been tied up with the church’s identity over the years.
The churches, however, appear now to have added another issue to their responsibilities to the poor: economic development. Some would consider this a transgression into the political realm and inappropriate for religious organizations, but churches are becoming more aware that economics is a fit subject of the church’s mission. After all, to be poor is largely an economic condition. Among the root causes of injustice and materialistic greed, is the widespread lack of economic opportunity that has led to a growing disparity between the rich and the poor.
We are in a new millennium, new and creative visions are being called forth from the black church. In addition to policy advocacy, black church leadership must advance a new vision for the resurrection of black civil society. They must sponsor the establishment of accountable community-based economic development projects, including land trusts, cooperatives, community development corporations and finance institutions, and micro-enterprise projects, that go beyond "market and state" visions of revenue generation. The black church must now seize the time
What does a radically reformed vision mean programmatically? First, theological preparation of black church leadership must include a thorough understanding of the impact of public policy on the daily lives of their communities. They need to understand the necessity of careful study and advocacy to impact social policy outcomes.
A new generation of black church leadership must develop strategic alliances to advocate more effectively for policies that benefit the black poor. Black denominationally affiliated theological centers must integrate into their curriculum every aspect of the policy process-from policy formation to implementation. This is mandatory if the black church is to avoid intellectual and political obsolescence in the 21st century.
Black Staticitic
Each day:
• 1,118 black teen-agers are victims of violent crime,
• 1,451 black children are arrested, and
• 907 teen-age girls get pregnant.
A generation of black males is drowning in their own blood in the prison camps we euphemistically call "inner cities." And things are likely to get much worse.
Some 40 years after the beginning of the civil rights movement, younger black Americans are growing up unqualified for gainful employment even as slaves. The result is a state of civil war, with children in violent revolt against the failed secular and religious leadership of the black community.
Consider the dimensions of this failure.
• a black boy has a 1-in-3,700 chance of getting a Ph.D. in mathematics, engineering, or the physical sciences;
• a 1-in-766 chance of becoming a lawyer;
• a 1-in-395 chance of becoming a physician;
• a 1-in-195 chance of becoming a teacher.
But his chances are
• 1-in-2 of never attending college, even if he graduates from high school;
• 1-in-9 of using cocaine;
• 1-in-12 of having gonorrhea; and
• 1-in-20 of being imprisoned while in his 20s. Only the details are different for his sister.
According to James A. Fox, Dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, from 1990 to 1993 (the last year for which detailed national data are available) the overall rate of murder in the United States remained virtually unchanged. For this same period, the rate of killing at the hands of adults, ages 23 and over, actually declined 10 percent; however, for young adults, ages 18-24, the rate rose 14 percent, and for teen-agers it jumped a terrifying 26 percent.
Currently there are 39 million children in this country under the age of 10-more young children than we've had for decades. Millions of them live in poverty. Most do not have full-time parental supervision at home to shape their development and behavior. And these children will not remain young and impressionable for long. By the year 2005, the number of teens ages 14-17 will increase by 14 percent, with an even larger increase among black teens (17 percent) and among brown teens (30 percent).
If homicide among teen-agers continues to increase at the rate at which it has for the past 10 years, a huge increase in this cohort will create an unprecedented epidemic in violent crime.
Community Revitalization.
Chase Park Plaza Hotel
January 15, 2005
Reverend Alan L. Joplin, B.A., M.A., M.A., MAT. MSc., MRel., MDiv.
This Presentation examines the past, present, and future role of the Black Church as participant and catalyst for human development, economic empowerment and community revitalization in African American communities. The presentation will 1) explore the historical foundation of the Church's economic development mission; 2) examine current economic and social conditions that motivate the Church's involvement in local economic development; 3) describe a conceptual framework within which to categorize and develop faith-based economic development endeavors; 4) investigate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of Church involvement in community development; 5) highlight successful models of Church-initiated development.
"Economic cooperation among Negroes must begin with the Church group."
W. E. B. Du Bois 1907
The black church is the single most important institution in the black community. Beginning in the late eighteenth century and continuing to the present, it has been the oldest and most independent African American organization. Its importance is so great that some scholars say that the black church is the black community, with each having no identity apart from the other. Even if some would deny this claim, no informed person can deny the centrality of the black church in the black community. Therefore black liberation is, at least in part, dependent upon the attitude and role that the church assumes in relation to it.
James Cone “For My People”
"The impact of the Black church on the spiritual, social, economic, educational and political interests that structure life in America - including the mainline White churches themselves - can scarcely be overlooked in any realistic appraisal of our common religious experience," writes
C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, whose book,
The Black Church in the African American Experience,
examines the historic growth, development
and influence of the Black church.
“With rare exceptions, the black church's pastoral vision does not speak to the experience
of intense alienation of the colonized in the urban metropolitan centers in the country.”
Reverend Alan L. Joplin, Conference on Black Theology, Davenport, Iowa 2000
Introduction
Economics, by definition, is “the art of managing a household.” It comes from the same root as “ecumenical,” and connotes “God’s plan or system for the government of the world,” and “a special divine dispensation suited to the needs of a nation or period.” Economics, then, should be a suitable, even a central concern of the Christian church. In the Bible, Jesus talks continually about money and the proper allocation of resources. We find examples both of socialism and capitalism all through the scriptures (for example, Luke 15:11 [parable of the prodigal son] and Luke 16:1 [parable of the unjust steward]).
For Christians, economics should be shaped by an equitable way to create and share resources in community. The early Jews tried to correct economic imbalances through the Jubilee year, the fiftieth year, which called for hereditary properties to be restored to their original owners, for slaves to be emancipated, and for the rights of the poor to harvest the fields (Leviticus 25; Exodus 21:2-11). It may not be farfetched to regard the riots as a negative expression of Jubilee.
The Black Church is the principal social structure in Black communities across the nation. It’s a nerve center for many people, and a bastion of hope for many more. It has only begun to touch the surface of its potential to serve the interests of its people by leading a resurgent economic development of Black communities. The Black Church is a multi-million dollar operation.
The Black Church
Most churchgoers are not interested in arguments about the existence of God or the nature of God. They are interested in what God has done and can do to help with their particular concerns and problems. African Americans expect the preacher to reassure them of God’s power, not to question or doubt it. They expect the pastor to help them cope with joblessness, poverty and discrimination by transforming their despair into hope. The Black church needs to provide the content and method for changing the social, economic and political obstacles for blacks. The black church needs a practical theology that can help liberate it from social, political and economic oppression. The black church has a moral obligation to free its people from the despair and powerlessness that grip their bodies and souls.
What are some of the issues in the Black church that keeps us powerless.
• Miseducation, poor self-esteem and the failure of black Christians to understand and appreciate their own history and culture in black churches. This is evident not only in the absence of black icons but also in the rejection by many black church goers.
• Sexism against black women should also be addressed. Women in black churches outnumber men by more than four to one; yet in positions of authority and responsibility the ratio is reversed. Though women are gradually entering ministry, many men and women still resist and fear that development. The black church must deal with the double bondage of black women in church and society. The black church must eliminate exclusionist language, attitudes or practices, however benign or unintended, in order to benefit fully from the talents of women.
• Improving the economic conditions of African American will also hasten their freedom. Too many blacks survive from paycheck to paycheck while simultaneously trying to keep up with the Joneses. Most black churches are independent and financially solvent. But the individuals who constitute the church and community are often plagued by poverty and hampered by discrimination, underemployment and racism. Economically secure blacks within the church have a moral obligation to use their success to enhance the wider black community.
• Every black churchgoer, especially the economically secure, should understand that tithing or some larger form of proportionate giving significantly affects the liberation of African American. A tithing church will be able to influence public policy issues such as housing for the poor and equal-employment opportunities. It would not have to spend time and energy raising money to meet the ordinary demands of ministry and mission. It can actually do ministry by using its financial resources to develop ways to stem the tide of drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, divorce and family violence.
• Black churches need to pool their financial resources by withdrawing funds from institutions that do not address the development needs of the black community. In our society, money talks. African Americans should assume control of their hard-earned money and invest it in financial institutions that will challenge traditional models of risk management. Thus they will begin the process of nurturing our neglected communities back to health. The fiscal integrity of the black church and community depend on biblical ethical principles such as working together, loving one another and caring for the poor. In order for the black community to become a viable place for external investment, blacks will first have to invest in themselves. The church must invest in black youth and in the black community before society will invest in the black community.
• Black congregation should assess the needs of its constituents within a certain radius of the church. This will enable the pastor and staff better to understand their ministry context and to address specific community needs. For example, some neighbors need to learn how to read, while others may need better access to medical care. Still others may simply need to know that there are people nearby who care about their families and are willing to offer a helping hand.
Practicing Christianity has for African-Americans meant turning the other cheek, walking in humility, and enduring cruel and debasing treatment. During three centuries of slavery, African Americans learned how to sublimate their anger; they increased their chances for survival by tolerating the oppressors. This constitutes real faith in the promise of God i.e., faith as action. Blacks still sing, "There is a Bright Side Somewhere" and "Climbing Up the Rough Side of the Mountain," and all understand and identify with these words of suffering and hope, jubilation and reflection. Black should use the language of the masses to make plain the feelings, hopes, dreams, experiences and practices of African Americans.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency for socially and economically successful black Christians to ignore a call to remember there history. This lack of solidarity with the masses obscures the struggle for freedom and unnecessarily dichotomizes the black church and community.
An African American approach to theology has little practical value apart from the black church because liberation cannot be achieved without the church. James Cone, in his very compassionate book “For My People”, says that "black liberation is, in part, dependent upon the attitude and role that the church assumes in relation to it." Although black preachers and theologians may disagree on the relation of black theology to the church, the time for antagonism between preachers and theologians has passed. It is now time for unity and action -- time to practice what we teach and preach.
Church “Political” Leadership
If the current political and structural economic trends persist (and there is little reason to assume they will not), we are looking at a future blood bath of violence that will make our present nightmare look pleasant. This crisis poses moral and political questions for a generation of new black church leadership. Perhaps the most important question is, how does the black community directly challenge and mobilize its established leadership, its premier sovereign institution-the black church?
Some things are fairly clear and rarely said publicly, and now must be stated with complete candor. Much of established black church leadership in the United States stands before the world tainted with the blood of millions of black women and children whose pain and suffering have been ignored (one acknowledges the exceptions). In many cities it is easier for a homeless black teen-age girl to find sanctuary in a crack house or a bar on a Friday night than it is for her to find refuge behind the locked doors of many established black churches. Few political developments so empirically demonstrated the depth of the moral and intellectual crisis of the nation's black political and religious leadership.
Such a development was predictable for at least five reasons.
• the ascendance of black America's premier crypto-fascist was largely a function of the political collapse of the liberal-to-center ideological consensus of the established black leadership infrastructure. This infrastructure includes black elected officials as well as the managerial and protest factions of the church-based declining civil rights industry.
• a strategically and politically incoherent "pragmatic-integrationist" intelligentsia, with no sustained pedagogical relationship to our most alienated black social classes in the inner city, contributed to this growing leadership vacuum. They have produced few powerful new ideas in the areas of politics or policy, and no organizing programs.
• the leadership of the black churches-of, which there are at least 65,000 nationally, serving an estimated 23 million, blacks-are in a state of political and spiritual crisis. They too are disconnected from growing numbers of our youth in general and young urban black males in particular. They exhibit little awareness of how they might collectively reverse the deepening spiritual and cultural decay of our inner-city neighborhoods. Fewer still comprehend the historical roots or the empirical dimensions of the nihilism now engulfing a generation of young people drowning in their own blood. They are, for the most part, simply conducting business as usual.
• With rare exceptions, the black church's pastoral vision does not speak to the experience of intense alienation of the colonized in the urban metropolitan centers in the country. Its images, symbols, and metaphors do not emanate from a dispassionate understanding of the cold political logic of market society.
• Well-known macroeconomic and structural forces have radically transformed our inner-city neighborhoods, marginalizing increasing numbers of young, black males. Many of these factors were of course driven by the escalating Republican policy wars against the poor over the last 15 years.
Leadership vacuums produce leadership opportunities.
It is here, in the areas of social policy planning and advocacy, that a unique and historic opportunity exists for a new generation of black church leadership to establish a more vital presence in the larger national church policy debates currently raging. There is an interesting irony here. For the last 15 years of the Republican counter-revolution, the domestic policy wars have been directed against the urban black poor. The logic is very simple, with the persistent poverty of the black and brown serving a variety of crucial ideological functions.
Conservative policy elites (Republican or Democratic) perceive, correctly, that poor blacks are a politically disposable population. In fact, the suffering, nihilism, and decay associated with the tragic circumstances of the urban poor can-and, in the view of conservatives, should-be exploited to ensure continued political dominance.
Congregational Leadership
Within the community, congregations are often the primary, if not only, local institution with a grassroots constituency. As such they "bring to the table" legitimacy within the community, they have been part of its past, usually associated as a stabilizing factor. The futures of church and neighborhood are intrinsically related to each other. Church leaders have long known to be true, that the likelihood that congregations are growing is correlated with the growth of its community.
• congregations have an institutional stake in quality of life and indeed, viability of the neighborhoods and communities in which they reside.
• Congregations are further attractive to community organizations because of their ongoing work of producing social capital. Central to their institutional purpose is the building of consensus through the reinforcement of values and worldview.
• Congregations are the only institutions in communities in which volunteers participate for the purpose of individual and collective systems of meaning-making.
• congregations can be in their interpretation of transformation, there is necessarily an ethos of transcendence, connecting members to that which is outside of themselves. Members therefore participate regularly in affirming that they are part of a larger purpose and reality.
• congregations of all faiths reinforce the value of public participation and service. In message and program, most congregations encourage some form of engagement with the public.
An important element of social capital which religious communities also bring to community organizing is the experience of democratic participation which is present in all but the most autocratic congregations. Even those people who are among the politically disenfranchised in the broader culture can organize power bases within the smallest congregations and bring enormous passion to conflicts within their churches. Those who are without voice in the body politic find voice in the micro-democracies inherent in many congregations. It is critical in community organizing to mobilize those for whom the memory of democratic participation is not extinguished. This can be done in the following ways:
• shared leadership as opposed to clerical leadership
• coalitional (rather than parochial) parameter of focus, issues are citywide
• grassroots empowerment (rather than accessing power)
• power structures are challenged and change is sought (rather than accommodation)
Conclusion
“theological reflection must be related to the practical imperatives
of social policy formation and execution”
The Church in the Urban Crisis is trumpeted as the land of equal opportunity. It leads the poor person to react in one of two ways: “Something is wrong with me”; or “Somebody is doing this to me deliberately.” The systematic stripping of the poor’s inability to compete begins at birth with an inadequate health care system, and continues with a poor educational system based on property taxes. This results in a lack of preparedness for good jobs and is accentuated by race and cultural discrimination. The churches in the city responded to the crisis in some predictable ways and in some unprecedented ways. Providing relief for victims of cataclysms has historically been the church’s role. The church’s relation to the poor has been tied up with the church’s identity over the years.
The churches, however, appear now to have added another issue to their responsibilities to the poor: economic development. Some would consider this a transgression into the political realm and inappropriate for religious organizations, but churches are becoming more aware that economics is a fit subject of the church’s mission. After all, to be poor is largely an economic condition. Among the root causes of injustice and materialistic greed, is the widespread lack of economic opportunity that has led to a growing disparity between the rich and the poor.
We are in a new millennium, new and creative visions are being called forth from the black church. In addition to policy advocacy, black church leadership must advance a new vision for the resurrection of black civil society. They must sponsor the establishment of accountable community-based economic development projects, including land trusts, cooperatives, community development corporations and finance institutions, and micro-enterprise projects, that go beyond "market and state" visions of revenue generation. The black church must now seize the time
What does a radically reformed vision mean programmatically? First, theological preparation of black church leadership must include a thorough understanding of the impact of public policy on the daily lives of their communities. They need to understand the necessity of careful study and advocacy to impact social policy outcomes.
A new generation of black church leadership must develop strategic alliances to advocate more effectively for policies that benefit the black poor. Black denominationally affiliated theological centers must integrate into their curriculum every aspect of the policy process-from policy formation to implementation. This is mandatory if the black church is to avoid intellectual and political obsolescence in the 21st century.
Black Staticitic
Each day:
• 1,118 black teen-agers are victims of violent crime,
• 1,451 black children are arrested, and
• 907 teen-age girls get pregnant.
A generation of black males is drowning in their own blood in the prison camps we euphemistically call "inner cities." And things are likely to get much worse.
Some 40 years after the beginning of the civil rights movement, younger black Americans are growing up unqualified for gainful employment even as slaves. The result is a state of civil war, with children in violent revolt against the failed secular and religious leadership of the black community.
Consider the dimensions of this failure.
• a black boy has a 1-in-3,700 chance of getting a Ph.D. in mathematics, engineering, or the physical sciences;
• a 1-in-766 chance of becoming a lawyer;
• a 1-in-395 chance of becoming a physician;
• a 1-in-195 chance of becoming a teacher.
But his chances are
• 1-in-2 of never attending college, even if he graduates from high school;
• 1-in-9 of using cocaine;
• 1-in-12 of having gonorrhea; and
• 1-in-20 of being imprisoned while in his 20s. Only the details are different for his sister.
According to James A. Fox, Dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, from 1990 to 1993 (the last year for which detailed national data are available) the overall rate of murder in the United States remained virtually unchanged. For this same period, the rate of killing at the hands of adults, ages 23 and over, actually declined 10 percent; however, for young adults, ages 18-24, the rate rose 14 percent, and for teen-agers it jumped a terrifying 26 percent.
Currently there are 39 million children in this country under the age of 10-more young children than we've had for decades. Millions of them live in poverty. Most do not have full-time parental supervision at home to shape their development and behavior. And these children will not remain young and impressionable for long. By the year 2005, the number of teens ages 14-17 will increase by 14 percent, with an even larger increase among black teens (17 percent) and among brown teens (30 percent).
If homicide among teen-agers continues to increase at the rate at which it has for the past 10 years, a huge increase in this cohort will create an unprecedented epidemic in violent crime.
