Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Urban NeighborhoodUniversity of Chicago Press, 2005 - 178 pages Long considered the lifeblood of urban African American neighborhoods, churches are held up as institutions dedicated to serving their surrounding communities. Omar McRoberts's work in Four Corners, however, reveals a very different picture. One of the toughest neighborhoods in Boston, Four Corners also contains twenty-nine churches, mostly storefront congregations, within its square half-mile radius. In McRoberts's hands, this area teaches a startling lesson about the relationship between congregations and neighborhoods that will be of interest to everyone concerned with the revitalization of the inner city. McRoberts finds, for example, that most of the churches in Four Corners are attended and run by people who do not live in the neighborhood but who worship there because of the low overhead. These churches, McRoberts argues, are communities in and of themselves, with little or no attachment to the surrounding area. This disconnect makes the churches less inclined to cooperate with neighborhood revitalization campaigns and less likely to respond to the immediate needs of neighborhood residents. Thus, the faith invested in inner-city churches as beacons of local renewal might be misplaced, and the decision to count on them to administer welfare definitely should be revisited. As the federal government increasingly moves toward delivering social services through faith-based organizations, Streets of Glory must be read for its trenchant revisionist view of how churches actually work in depressed urban areas. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 47
Page ii
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Page x
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Page 6
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Page 7
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Page 8
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Contents
1 Introduction | 1 |
2 Birth of the Black Religious District | 16 |
Birth of a Contemporary Religious District | 44 |
Particularism and Exilic Consciousness | 61 |
Clergy Confront the Immediate Environment | 81 |
ChurchBased Activism | 100 |
7 Who Is My Neighbor? Religion and Institutional Infrastructure in Four Corners | 122 |
Other editions - View all
Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Urban Neighborhood Omar M. McRoberts Limited preview - 2005 |
Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Urban Neighborhood Omar M. McRoberts No preview available - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
Action Coalition activism activist African American Apostolic Azusa Baker House Baptist began Black Belt Black churches Black population borhood Chicago Christ Church churches in Four clergy Codman Square community development congregations cultural denomination diverse Dorchester economic environment ethnic ethnographic exilic frame faith fellowship Four Cor Four Corners frame extension gious glossolalia groups Haitian Haitian Creole Holy Ghost Holy Road immigrants Jameson Jehovah’s Witnesses Jude Church lived located Mattapan megachurch Methodist migrant churches minister ministry mobility moved Negro neigh neighbor networks niche northern organizations orientation particularistic pastor Pentecostal percent political Powell preaching priestly programs racial religion religious district religious ecology religious institutions religious particularism residential residents revitalization Roxbury secular social transformation Sociological South End Southern Black southern migrants spiritual storefront churches Sunday tions University Press urban voluntary associations Warner West Indian White Winspeare worship York young youth