MAY 2001
Forging a New Urban Identity in 21st Century America
- By Roger Johnson, Editor CityVoicesA few points regarding how we urban Americans nave come to view ourselves in this new century. We don't very well like economic normality. We're spoiled by fast money and inflated expectations for a "new urbanism." Shouldn't a hot-looking website qualify one for a chunk of the American dream? Sounded reasonable just a year ago, but now we're forced to accept layoffs, single-digit profits and the quick demise of a swiftly created dot.com economy. "Not fair!" we cry, while time-honored voices speak of reality.
We new century types are quick to use fast-breaking Census 2000 stats to demonstrate that nearly all of America is urban just in different ways. The Sun Belt is now a far-flung mosaic of fast-growing cities. The East Coast and the West Coast: each a classic megalopolis in its own right. The Rust Belt is an increasingly dense collection of old cities: some growing, most still in decline, but the region is thoroughly urban. Florida, formerly a mere vacationland, now vies with Texas as the most urban (and significant!) of the southern states. We've transformed our deserts (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah) into our fastest growing urban centers. Perhaps the only places we are still comfortable calling rural lie out in the upper plains (Nebraska and the Dakotas).
We urbane and sophisticated Americans seem to be a bit dismayed this spring as CNN and NBC pound us with frightening scenes from the streets of Cincinnati. We thought we had moved beyond riots in city streets, to say nothing of the racism (institutional and individual) that provoked the Cincinnati tragedies. As we study the violent scenes from what we thought was one of America's more quiet and conservative cities, we realize that we still haven't gotten beyond our great national sins of slavery and racial division. Yes, the sins of our fathers and mothers do indeed continue to infect and defeat our hopes for civil life. Solutions seem increasingly elusive.
Every report and trend seems filtered through a lens which either media or popular culture wants to call "urban." We have urban riots. We have growing urban populations and places. We have an urban-based economy, dependent on the existence of modern American cities as economic engines to propel (or frustrate) growth. All is urban, and everything is about cities, or so it seems. We claim our choice of America's "top 100" based upon the airport we flew out of this morning. We like being from Seattle, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, San Diego. They're cool. We detest being from Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, St. Louis, Baltimore. They're not.
The truth is that few of us know what life is like in the South Bronx or in a decaying Chicago housing project facing demolition. America now claims to be a majority urban country, but most "urbanites" choose not to face the harsh poverty facing much of Detroit, the cruelty still embedded in the racially divided cultures of Chicago or the hopelessly broken infrastructures of places like East St. Louis.
In a country increasingly comfortable with the label "urban," the question facing pastors and other city leaders becomes one of identity. What people, places and dynamics can with integrity be called city and urban, and what is their significance within a complacent and indifferent nation?
A focus on city identity is important if we as people of faith are to take Christ's mission in the cities seriously. Poverty currently has many solutions. In many city jurisdictions we've chosen to eliminate poverty-stricken people, their homes, their churches and their cultures. And amazingly, elimination has worked quite well! It's even given us the opportunity to import entire new communities of successful-looking people in place of the poor. Another solution has been to disperse the poverty treating people as if they were a societal disease or blemish. But really solving poverty in any city is far more difficult, issuing in long-term results. It means painstaking negotiations with Wal-Marts, Boeings and Compaqs to see offices, stores and laboratories located in neighborhoods needing jobs, infrastructure and long-range economic health. As we move into the 21st century, many of America's most devastated cities have only begun to benefit from this kind of problem solving.
A specific focus on the urban identity is crucial to the city church as it works to bring the gospel into the lives of urban individuals. "Metro" types are everywhere to be found these days, and authentic city dwellers are quick to pick them out when then try to pass themselves off as "urban." We communicators of the gospel had better have our own identity straight when it comes to saying, "I am ministering to the city." Depending upon the size and scope of an urban area, city can refer to any number of differing populations, of widely varying geographic locations and completely diverse sets of needs. Pastor, before you proclaim the gospel to your city, think through carefully what you mean when say "city." Let your definition be specific (even if it has to change often). Let it be authentic, not a sellout to suburbia nor a special financial interest. Let your definition be "classic city" at it's core: great and dense numbers of people, wide and varying ethnic groups, languages and races, energy to burn, enthusiasm, eagerness to learn!
Such a definition of city will always lend itself to ministries stemming out of need, rather than a ministry demonstrating human strength. Most of us would opt for just a little demonstration of strength, given the clear choice. Admit it. But the boundaries of the city enhance our ministries, allowing us to flourish in ways we wouldn't have otherwise efipected. Enjoy the specific glories of your own city. Study its beautiful and particular limits. Then arrive at a definition of city that works. Most of all, let your urban concept have integrity.
Contact: Roger Johnson, CityVoices, 1242 West Addison Street, Chicago, IL 60613, (773) 477-3825, roger@cityvoices.com
********************Messing With Your Worldview - Ray Bakke
Now the camera swings in Acts 7 out to the street. There was Stephen, one of those Greek-speaking, table-waiting, ethnic Jews, standing up to speak on the street. And he was speaking to a street filled with Jewish Rush Limbaughs. These were religious and national patriots of the highest order. These were people who believed that by chosen people, the Bible meant favorite people, that the Holy Land was their land alone, and they had boxed God into that little piece of territory called Palestine. It alone was the Promised Land and of course they were in charge of it.
Well, Stephen, an ethnic Jew but a non-Palestinian, stood up in front of that crowd and preached. The first point in his sermon, which was the longest and the most significant of his points, was simply this: All the great acts of God happened outside Palestine. He went for the jugular from the first. Where did the greatest miracle in the Bible occur? Not here in Israel but down there at the Red Sea, off the map of Israel when God delivered us from the Egyptians. Where did our sacred Scripture come from? Not from the University of Jerusalem theology department, but from the Sinai Desert, off the map of Israel where God spoke to Moses in the wilderness. By this point, the temperature in the crown was rising because Stephen was messing with their worldview. He was showing them that God had an agenda far beyond the boundaries of their little land. He was stretching them to see that they had misunderstood the nature of being chosen. It was not a matter of being favorite. It was about task. It was about mission to the world. Well, the crowd killed Stephen. They couldn’t handle his message. They demanded a worldview shift, and instead of conceding, they destroyed him. Back in Acts 1, before he ascended to glory, Jesus had said, Go. Where? To Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. I want to make the point that Jesus was making: Foreign missions must never, never be an excuse to go around the people that we don’t like at home. Contact: Dr. Ray Bakke, International Urban Associates, 1013Ð 8th Avenue, Suite #405, Seattle, WA 98104-1222, (206) 381-8893, seattleiua@earthlink.net
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Tony Campolo- A New Psychology for the City
Dr. Tony Campolo's work defies simple categorization: professor, prophet, urban disciple, writer and even humorist. Tony always dares to say the things that others want to say. Below are remarks excerpted from Campolo's address to the SCUPE Urban Congress 2001 in Chicago.
You don't have to go to the third world anymore, do you? The third world is in urban centers all over our country. The same conditions that appear in the slums of the Philippines and the barrios of Santo Domingo exist in our cities here in the United States. We are engaged in spiritual warfare. For brothers and sisters, in the struggle to rescue the cities, we do not simply struggle against flesh and blood. But we are struggling against principalities and powers, rulers in high places. Those who have defined the devils in "Perretti-like" fashion as little creatures that stand on your shoulders and whisper evil things in your ear under-estimate the demonic. For the evil one comes in many forms. And the forms we have to deal with tonight are institutions, principalities, powers, that were in fact created by God for the good of the human race, but have become rebellious against their creator.
Let me take you to a city from whence some of you have come in Camden, New Jersey. Ninety-two percent of the children born in Camden last year were born out of wedlock. Forty percent of all the young people between the ages 12 and 20 have already been convicted of a felony, not a misdemeanor, a felony! One out of every six houses in Camden is deserted. Unemployment is currently 20 percent, and I guess it's going to get higher now that the "boom" is over. Camden is a city of 90,000 but every day 10,000 drive into Camden to buy drugs on more than 150 different corners. Incidentally, we should note that 78 percent of all drug users in America are white, but 68 percent of all people behind bars for drug offenses are black, even though black people make up only 14 percent of the population. Now if you can't look at those figures and recognize that the judicial system is working unfairly, then you need to come to Eastern College and get a good course in sociology.
We need a new psychology, and that new psychology comes through spirituality. I am tired of the pop psychologists of our time. Whether neo-Freudian or behaviorist, you have been reared to believe that what people are, is the result of the influences exercised upon them during their childhood. Everybody is a victim of past traumas and difficulties. Well don't argue with me on this. I believe that the events of our past influence us, but they do not determine us! When you give me your case study and tell me where you've come from, you haven't answered the important question. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is filled with people who came from nowhere but were going somewhere. Abraham, he had a pretty bad background. He almost killed his kid. Talk about child abuse! Then he woke up and saw he had a future and a vision from God!
We need a psychology of vision today. We're not creating the right dreams for our kids. We say, "Go to school, get a good education, and you'll get a good job, and make a lot of money, and be able to buy a lot of stuff!" And you call yourself a Christian! Cornet West is right. The consumerism in our culture has pre-occupied all young people, but especially those who are poor and oppressed. And they want stuff, they have no purpose in life other than to get stuff: the car, the clothes, the shoes, the stuff. The purpose of an education is not to gain the credentials so you can buy the stuff. The purpose of an education is to study to show yourselves approved unto God, a workman that need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. We need a psychology of community rather than a psychology of individuality.
Contact: Dr. Tony Campolo, Eastern College, EAPE-Campolo Ministries, P O Box 7238 St. Davids, PA 19087, Ph: (610) 341-1722, eape@eastern.edu
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Pastoral Letter: Dwell In My Love
Francis Cardnal George is Archbishop of Chicago and spiritual leader to Chicago's Catholic community. On April 4, 2001 he issued a pastoral letter "Dwell In My Love" addressing racism in Chicago. Below are exerts from that letter.
Jesus, the new Adam, went to his death on the sixth day to recreate us by redeeming us from sin and Satan. We are again to walk in unity, as one people enjoying the variety of plants, animals and human cultures, which constitute the world redeemed by Christ. Through his preaching and healing, through the pattern of discipleship he called people to follow, through his bodily resurrection from the dead, the Lord Jesus literally embodies for us a new way of life, which conforms to the will and reign of God. Jesus transcends, challenges and transforms everything that divides the human community (Gal. 3:28). He calls us back to a communion with one another, a unity, which reflects the communion of God's own Trinitarian life.
Racism, whether personal, social, institutional or structural, contradicts the purpose of the incarnation of the Word of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Racism contradicts God's will for our salvation. We cannot claim to love God without loving our neighbor (Matt. 22:34ff.). Since Racism is a failure to love our neighbor, only freedom from racism will enable us to be one with God and one another.
The vision of a community dwelling in God's unconditional and universal love may sound like an impossible dream, but in God all things are possible (Mark 10:27). The radical conversion needed to overcome the sin of racism is made possible by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the risen Christ, the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts and in our midst to empower us to live truly as God's people…The Spirit moves us to reflect on how to make that love visible in our neighborhoods and places of business, in our work and recreation.
I invite all Catholics to examine with me how our local Church reflects that unity in diversity, which mirrors the nature of the Blessed Trinity. We cannot be leavens of love and justice in a society fighting racism if we are captured by the sin of racism in the Church. Each of us needs to examine how we respond to Jesus' prayer that we be one. How does the Archdiocese manifest the unifying presence of the Spirit in the midst of the racial and cultural, the gender and class, the religious, theological and ideological diversity that characterizes our society?
For Chicago Catholics of a certain age, and for some who are not Catholic too, seeking the answer to these questions brings us back to patterns of life, which protected and nurtured even as they also divided. "Where are you from?" could not be answered simply with Hyde Park or Humboldt Park, the West Side, the South Side, the Southeast Side, the Northwest Side or Evanston. The answer that counted was St. Clement, St. James, St. Thomas the Apostle, Holy Angels, Holy Cross… The parish - the place where Catholics attend Mass, confess their sins, send their children to school, watch children get married and bury their dead - mattered as much as official city designations. The Baltimore Catechism, once memorized by generations of Catholics, asked, "Where is God?" The answer was "everywhere" and in Chicago, Catholic parishes seemed to be everywhere. The fact that these parishes inspired loyalty to a place and devotion to God is perhaps Chicago Catholicism's great achievement. Catholic institutions have helped shape this area's story.
If strong parish communities remain today the glory of Catholic life in Chicago, the way in which parish communities can become parish fortresses was sometimes, and can be still today a source of tragedy. For too many Catholics during the decades just passed, "Where are you from?" became an interrogation, not a gesture of welcome. In some cases, the vision of faith was narrowed; the community of faith became a private club.
Resistance to racial integration is as old as the first Christian communities, where Jewish Christians and Greek Christians found themselves at odds. Chicago's "race" problem a century and more ago was one of Germans versus Irish, Protestants versus Catholics. My predecessors as Archbishop sometimes addressed these disputes, spoke to Catholics on their common membership in the Mystical Body of Christ and preached intermittently against the sin of anti-Semitism. But another mass migration, this one internal to the country, presented more imposing challenges. Between the 1910's and the 1960's hundreds of thousands of African Americans moved to Chicago from the South. Forced to live on the near south and west side of the city in often substandard housing owned by landlords living elsewhere, many African American families that could afford better housing could not move into nearby neighborhoods because of the color of their skin. Catholics, loyal to their parishes often made up the bulk of the white population in neighborhoods near the expanding African American sections of the city. Sometimes these same Catholics mixed parish loyalty with racial prejudice in a desperate, always unsuccessful, effort to "save" particular neighborhoods by preventing the entrance of black people.
In order to examine our present situation completely, it seems important also to note the factors that enter into the history of resistance to integrated neighborhoods. Most working class and middle class people, or any race, or religion, cherish their home as their biggest investment. Their house is their legacy to their children. The destruction of the economic value of their house is a threat to all that they have accomplished. Unfortunately, white people have too often equated the racial integration of a neighborhood with decreased property values. Sometimes their fears were encouraged by real estate agents eager to buy homes at prices far below their real value. Fear of economic loss is not evidence of prejudice. Fear of losing one's life savings is not the same as fear of a different race, but the two fears can reinforce each other.
There is another fear that complicates this history: the fear of violence. The desire to live without fear for one's own safety and that of one's family is not evidence of racism. Everyone shares the fear of violence. Prejudice is evident, however, if it is simply assumed that people of another race must be violent because they are who they are. White people might find themselves afraid in a black neighborhood, but blacks have even more reason to be afraid in many white neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, the fears of economic loss and of personal violence can blind people to what their Catholic faith calls them to do - dwell together in love. These fears have to be honestly addressed if we are to live in a genuinely multi-racial and multi-cultural society.
The story in the almost forty years since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. marched through Chicago neighborhoods is at once familiar and new. Racism is still found in varying degrees in our churches and schools, just as it haunts our city and suburbs. The combined influences of racial discrimination and social isolation, at a moment when a wealthy society should confront these problems directly, continue to make the plight of many African Americans and other people of color Chicago's greatest shame. Today, however, the careful way in which some Catholic parishes in neighborhoods undergoing racial and cultural transformation have begun to confront these changes directly is a source of pride to me as Archbishop of Chicago.
While African Americans and other groups have made much progress in education and employment, especially in the last generation, race relations in the Chicago metropolitan area have become more complicated as neighborhoods receive immigrants from India, China, Africa, Vietnam, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. They add new hues to Chicago's one largely black and white picture. Contemporary racism has a multicultural face.
Contact: Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago, Archdiocese Pastoral Center,
155 E. Superior Street, Chicago, IL 60610, (312) 337-5952, bsutton@archdiocese-chgo.org*******************
A Jacques Ellul - Jerusalem as Witness City
Excerpted from Jacques Ellul's "The Meaning of the City," Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1970. Now deceased, French social critic and theologian Ellul was long known for his biblical pessimism. His writings continue to be provocative and "The Meaning of the City" offers a hard alternative that urban scholars should not avoid.
Throughout her history, Jerusalem served as a witness, a witness city because she was there to show men what God's action was in regard to the city. And we have no excuse for mistakes since Jerusalem is the very city where men call on God's name. She is a witness city because she forces man to realize how serious the situation is: if God treats his own city in such a way, what will happen to the others? She is a witness city because she enables one to see here on earth, what God is doing in secret and will do openly as soon as his kingdom is fully realized. She is in truth set among the other cities to make things undeniably clear, to make them visible to all, whereas they are normally known only to those who understand prophecy. God's acts in Jerusalem are apparent and signal to all; and because of her, people will recognize what God has done, and she will be for them a reason for condemnation, humiliation, slavery and contrition, and a reason for joy and thankfulness.
Men will clearly recognize in her the mark of Yahweh. The entire Old Testament is bursting with this possibility for natural man to recognize this evidence, and it is clearly true that Jerusalem was set up to make evident God's action for the city. This is what we had in mind at the beginning of this section in saying that it was enough to read through honestly the history of Jerusalem. She is first of all, then, a witness to God's judgments and to his grace toward the city. She is already a symbol of judgment - of judgment on and for herself, first. All the partial judgments of history on cities are clearly signs, as we have said, of the greater judgment announced against them. But this quality of a sign may always be refused. After all, who among us, looking on the ashes of Hiroshima, the shell holes of London, and the ruins of Berlin or Hanoi, ever accepted these as present manifestations of a complete condemnation?
It is always easy to localize a symbol in time and space and so to remove all its worth. But to do so in the case of Jerusalem is especially emasculating since the proclamation is made that it is God who is acting. And that is why Daniel could say truthfully that "under the whole heaven there has not been done the like of what's been done against Jerusalem" (Dan. 9:12). Nothing may be compared to it, for all the other cities are bastions of men against God, and it is proper and right for them to be bombarded, devastated, annihilated in the horror of a war that goes in finitely beyond all of man's wars. But when Jerusalem, the city of the Lord, is treated in this fashion, it means that God has turned away from his own city. This is the real catastrophe. God seems, by his judgment, to be casting doubt on his adoption. And with that all hope is removed for the other cities.
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The Urban World: In Biblical Times and Today
Excerpted from William Baird's "The Corinthian Church - A Biblical Approach to Urban Culture," Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1964. Though written nearly 40 years ago, Baird's commentary on the Corinthian letters proves amazingly relevant for the 21st church ministering in a modern-day culture.
When we look back through First Corinthians, what do we see that is relevant for the church of yesterday and today? We said at the outset that Corinth and modern city offer certain parallels. These parallels, however, may be merely superficial. Today's city is situated amidst the complex machinery of a technological age; its towers are built by the principles of a scientific method; its future is predicted by barometers and computer, its tomorrow is the effect of causes graphically plotted. Yesterday's city was at home in a world of mystery; its columns were shaped by sacred hands; its future foreseen by an intoxicated prophetess, its tomorrow the destiny of a ruthless fate. Perhaps this is why the Christian religion flourished in the ancient city; perhaps this is why the church is facing such grave difficulties in the modern metropolis.
Yet, for all these obvious differences, Corinth and Cleveland are not really so far apart. Man in the contemporary city faces the same problems as his ancient ancestors - the problem of seeking security in a world of transiency, the problem of finding freedom in a social structure of fateful forces, the problem of man's ultimate destiny, of death, destruction, nonbeing. The church which valiantly attempts to answer these questions is not essentially different from that founded in Corinth nineteen centuries ago. Its message is the same - Christ and him crucified, a stumbling block to scientists and foolishness to the philosophers; its mission is not different - to be the body of Christ in the world, to do the work of God; its ethic is the same - to secure undivided devotion to the Lord; its hope has not changed - that God will be all in all.
Contact: Dr. William Baird, Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth TX 76129
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Global Urbanization: Theories of Urban Formation
This piece is excerpted from a fine short work published this year in the UK, "The Impact of the Global: An Urban Theology," by Rev. Laurie Green, Bishop of Bradwell in the Church of England. He is a well-known British theological writer, particularly on issues of mission and social justice. Bishop Green has also authored books entitled "Let's Do Theology" and "Power to the Powerless."
In the 1920s and 30s the Chicago School of sociology (amongst whom we number significant scholars such as Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, Harvey Zorbaugh and Louis Wirth) taught us that cities invariably develop a central core zone or business district with concentric circles or zones surrounding that core, each with its own distinct function and supporting role. Subsequent In the 1920s and 30s the Chicago School of sociology (amongst whom we number significant scholars such as Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, Harvey Zorbaugh and Louis Wirth) taught us that cities invariably develop a central core zone or business district with concentric circles or zones surrounding that core, each with its own distinct function and supporting role.
Subsequent studies of the western suburbanisation of the 60s and 70s and the demise and decay of the city centres of the western world have led us to suppose that whilst the cities of the developed world are now in the final stages of an inevitable cycle of urbanization, the new developing cities of the southern hemisphere must be just beginning the same cyclic process. In the UK the more recent studies of Massey and others warn us against this generalising approach, reminding us that each city will have its own story, for there are new forces at work which will radically divert these newly expanding cities of the South away from the old European and North American models. Calcutta is not queuing up to become another Los Angeles! It has its own particular mix of complex historical strata, sub-cultures and local environments. The California School or urban geography (see: "City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles," by Mike Davis, Pimlico, London, 1998) has likewise moved our understanding away from deterministic urban forms to an exploration of emergent trends in processes shaping urban landscapes, economies and cultures. These processes will include globalization, as well as received or imagined perceptions of the urban environment.
It is true however that cities do have in common an openness to new possibilities of interchange between people - if they fail in this, they die. All cities bring people together, concentrating and intensifying their narratives, but the stories are nevertheless speci fic and different. And although the globalizing nature of the powers that operate across the cities of the world are such that the pressing problems of poverty and inequality must be addressed by consolidated and globally co-ordinated approaches, the specific policies adopted in one city will not be uniformly applicable to all other cities. Cities remain different.
If generalising historical theories of urban formation are not sufficient in themselves, then neither are theories based solely on the processes of economics. It is true to say that a major reason why industrial cities exist is because urban concentration brings the benefits of considerable economic saving, but economic factors will not sustain a city unless there is also a commensurate development in the city's social structure and technological progress. Human beings are gregarious, not merely fiscal or efficient. The development of political, military or religious social organisation must progress sufficiently for the urban community to be able to organise and coordinate complex structures in order to take advantage of geographical, economic and historical factors. The story of the city must therefore be told from many perspectives if it is to be true - perspectives that will include the economic, historical, technological, social, religious, geographical, theological and political. Any approach to a proper and informed understanding of the urban will therefore of necessity have to be multi-disciplinary, and this is a salutary warning for the Church which has often sought to engage in urban mission without first discovering for itself this bredth of appreciation.
Contact: Rev. Laurie Green, Bishop of Bradwell, Chelmsford Diocese of the Church of England, lauriegr@globalnet.co.uk
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