NOVEMBER 2001
"Urban Churches: Coming Together, Growing Apart"
City Churches Come Together in Dallas
By Roger Johnson, Editor -- CityVoices
America’s city churches have truly come together this final week of November to celebrate with the Christian Community Development Association as it conducts its thirteenth annual convention in the heart of Dallas, Texas. We respond to the call "Come Together" out of joy and anticipation for all that God has in store for us this year as we once again greet old friends, and meet new colleagues in city ministry who will teach and encourage us in ways we can only anticipate! Coming Together in Dallas is truly for all of us.
And yet, as we come together in a convention, let us remember that we do this very much out of necessity. For we are not by nature, even as city churches or city Christians the kind of people who just naturally gather as "one people" or "one church." No, the differences (which could potentially be points of division) among America’s urban churches, are in fact more striking than all the urban sociology that binds us together!
Let’s face it. Urban America has become an extreme complex place in recent years, and hopelessly difficult to try and understand. Just look at the immense difficulty outsiders are having in understanding us as of late. New York Times commentator Richard Todd surveyed the scene from New England in late October and realized "… what is true here is true, in varying degrees, throughout the country; there is much I don’t know about Osama bin Laden, but there is something he doesn’t know about me, and you, and the rest of us. He doesn’t know what a disparate culture we live in, how constantly at odds with itself it is. One paradox of our country is that the society that looks like such a monolith from without, looks, from within, so fragmented." (The New York Times, October 28, 2001)
Come Together:
Tradition to Transition to Transformation
Yes, but that’s the crux of the matter, is it not? Secular urban society, in all its sophistication has literally fragmented itself to ruin! But we as the church in the city have held ourselves together! We’ve triumphed over racism, we’ve gotten around classism. We’ve been able to pay for good doctors and psychiatrists to heal the wounds we’ve inflicted upon one another. We’ve learned how to divide ourselves from one another in a "Christian-like" way, rather than truly learn how to be one church. You see, we’ve brought this science of fragmentation to new Christian-like heights. And we’ve become quite good at it all.
This is why the Christian urban culture is a disparate culture as well, a culture at odds with itself, if you will. Oftentimes one needs a good "cultural, racial and theological" road map to figure one’s way from one end of the city to the other. Then again, the terrain has become so rough and complex that its often better to use no map at all and to simply trust God’s Spirit (as the Spirit would prefer anyway) and be delighted by the wonderful results that ensue!
Todd goes on to offer this critique, "Culture in recent years has become to a large extent a matter of individual choice and expression. To be an American means figuring out how to be an American. We are, as the French would say, bricoleurs in our own culture – we pick and choose, paste together, make it up as we go along. We shop. The consumerism that is our great shared activity operates chiefly as an opportunity to express our differences, carves out a private identity. And in turn we rely on a commodified understanding of one another."
Let us not as urban Christians reduce ourselves to a commodified understanding of our churches or ourselves. Let us not identify each other by how we look, what we buy or what we would like to buy. That would indeed be a cheap and shallow existence for people of faith. Sisters and brothers, let’s go deeper with all that marks our common identity. Let’s remain as people who pray longingly, study the Gospels always and consistently fellowship with each other. Let these be the hallmarks of our lives. As people see us, may they know us first off as people of pray and people of the Bible. All our picking and choosing will be done. God has already done it for us!
Contact: Roger Johnson, CityVoices, 1242 West Addison Street, Chicago, IL, 60613, (773) 477-8163, roger@cityvoices.com
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Coming Together, Around God’s Word
By Roger Johnson
All right, time to see what the Bible has to say about all this "coming together" has to say for itself. Do you suppose it’s biblical at all, or is it simply a late 20th century cultural vestige that sounds and feels real good tagged on the front and rear end of our religion as kind of an advertisement. Wouldn’t put it past our western imperialistic faith, right! Well, you may be half-right, but let’s look at the documents to be sure.
Word searches turn up some interesting things. When we study for the word "division" in the New Testament, we find that the Apostle Paul warned first century urban Christians, in Rome and especially Corinth about the danger of divisions within their circles. In Romans 16 he urges the believes to watch out for "those who would cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them."
I Corinthians 1:9-11 leads off with a strong appeal in the name of Jesus Christ that everyone "agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought." After tackling a litany of sins too awful to take on here, Paul returns to the theme of divisions (and unity) in chapters 11 and 12. "I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it," (v. 18). Paul goes on to lecture in chapter 12, v. 24-26, "But God has so composed the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together."
These were strong words of caution two centuries ago, and if anything their power has increased over the years. God’s Word has a way of reinforcing itself, when studied correctly, looking for consistent themes. As we consider the admonition "come together" we realize that it is far more than a convention moniker, or a nice sounding theme brought out of mouth balls every generation or so. It’s a biblical theme we live with, but must live with quite carefully. Let’s look at the occurrences of these words and understand fragile territory upon which we tread.
A quick search reveals that when the Bible speaks about people "coming together" it is most often speaking about people coming together for worship. Ezekiel 39:17, "Assemble and come together from all around to the sacrifice I am preparing for you, the great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel." Matthew 18:20, "For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." 1 Corinthians 14:26, What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.
A coming together for worship, with guidelines increasingly being given to God’s people, just as more and more free grace is revealed. Yes, we’re commanded to come together. Certainly, we must not forsake our common assembly together. But with that assembly, come some significant responsibilities as the people of God.
To sum up:
We are to never follow the teachings leading to discord and fragmentation. Always we must seek unity as we meet and fellowship together.
Coming Together is a biblical act for all believers to carefully enter into
The Scriptures teach us that we best come together around worship, but even then need to be careful as to how as to how we approach fellow believers lest we lead to divisions within the body of Christ.
Key passages include: Matthew 18: 19-21, Romans 16: 16-18, I Corinthians 1:9-11, 1 Corinthians 14:25-27, Ephesians 2:20-23.
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Snapshots of Urban Diversity
Ethnic diversity grows, but not integrationBy Laurent Belsie, Staff writer, The Christian Science Monitor, March 14, 2001
The United States is becoming steadily more ethnically diverse. But it's also as segregated as ever.
America's urban neighborhoods remain largely dominated by one group or another. Even recent moves by minorities into the suburbs have failed to breach the color barrier. At least, that's the preliminary conclusion based on new figures coming out of Census 2000.
"We're not more integrated - that's the bottom line," says John Logan, director of the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research. The center, at the University at Albany in New York, has conducted a study based on the handful of state figures released so far by the US Census Bureau.
If the results hold up across the country, the implications could prove enormous. At a minimum, they suggest that four decades of efforts to integrate communities have largely failed. While other research suggests that racial attitudes with regard to housing have lessened, actual settlement patterns remain rooted in the past. Children of the early 21st century will likely grow up isolated from people of other ethnic groups - much as the children of the early 20th century did.
Do you wish your neighborhood had more ethnic diversity?
Take a quick poll.
These findings have been obscured somewhat by other Census numbers indicating America's rapid diversification. For example, the nation's Hispanic population grew a surprising 58 percent from 1990 to 2000. That means Hispanics now rival blacks as the nation's largest minority.
Other fast-growing groups: Asians, whose totals are up by at least 48 percent, and American Indians, up at least 26 percent (though these groups still represent relatively small shares of the US population - roughly 4 percent and 1 percent, respectively).
"The nation is much more diverse in the year 2000 than it was in 1990," says Jorge del Pinal, chief of special population statistics for the Bureau. "And that diversity is much more complex than we've ever measured before."
Racial overlap
The complexity comes from two factors. First, the census doesn't consider Hispanics a racial group (since they're differentiated by language). So the census puts Spanish-speaking blacks both in the "black" category and the "Hispanic" category. This overlap makes exact comparisons difficult. Should all Hispanics be compared to all blacks or just non-Hispanic blacks?
Further complicating matters, Census 2000 for the first time allowed Americans to put themselves in more than one racial category. Some 98 percent chose only one race. But the slight overlap again makes comparisons difficult. For example, the number of people who only consider themselves native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders grew 9 percent during the 1990s. But the number of people who claimed that category as well as some other racial classification rose some 140 percent during the same period.
Demographers will have to sift through this statistical stew to reach clear conclusions. Yet despite this evidence of America's increasing ethnic variety, the view from neighborhoods remains stubbornly segregated.
Take greater Jersey City, N.J., a community of some 610,000 people hemmed in between Newark and New York City. As a whole, the city and its suburbs have become more diverse over the past decade, mirroring national trends. Its Asian population has nearly doubled. Hispanics now represent its largest racial grouping, while non-Hispanic blacks have held their own and non-Hispanic whites have seen their numbers dwindle.
But at the neighborhood level, integration remains a distant dream. Using a "dissimilarity index," which compares the distribution of racial groups over neighborhoods, researchers at the Mumford Center found that it stood at 69 percent for whites and blacks last year. (Any reading over 60 is considered very segregated.) The number had barely moved from the 72 percent recorded in 1990.
Segregation remains less of a problem for Jersey City's whites and Hispanics - as well as its whites and Asians (48 percent for both pairings). But it actually increased over the decade. That increase doesn't necessarily suggest more prejudice, researchers say. Housing segregation often rises when rapidly expanding immigrant groups move into an area. Researchers found similar trends in Milwaukee and New Orleans.
There is some evidence such barriers are breaking down among minorities themselves. In Norfolk, Va., for example, the dissimilarity indexes have fallen anywhere from 4 to 10.5 percentage points when comparing any two of the Hispanic, black, and Asian groupings. But for whites and these groupings, the ratings have barely budged in a decade.
Color lines by neighborhood
In fact, in cities like New York and Chicago, they don't appear to have changed for whites and blacks since the 1920s - when blacks began immigrating from the South in large numbers. "You might have thought the black civil-rights movement or the rise of the black middle class or changing racial attitudes surely by now would have made a difference," says Professor Logan. But "the color line is still very strong."
The housing data don't necessarily mean racial attitudes are hardening, says Tom Smith, director of the general social survey of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. When the survey asked nonblacks in 1990 if they would object to living in a half-black neighborhood, 47 percent of respondents said yes. By 2000, that share had dropped to 32 percent, he says. And Hispanics and Asians saw even larger drops in housing prejudice.
But buying a home "depends on a lot of practical considerations," Mr. Smith adds. So for reasons of economics, comfort, school and family considerations - and sometimes because of race - Americans continue to live by and large among people who look much like themselves.
Race in America: Qué Pasa?
A census dispute over whether to count uncounted minorities has been eclipsed by news that Hispanics nearly equal the number of black Americans. Now at 35.3 million, the Hispanic population rose 57.9 percent over the past decade.
But just as newsworthy was that nearly 7 million people chose to mark more than one racial category to describe themselves. Fourteen percent of Asians, 5 percent of blacks, and 2.5 percent of whites chose this option. (Hispanic or Latino is an ethnic category, not a racial one, according to the Census Bureau, and includes a range of racial backgrounds.)
These statistics will ripple across a country that finds both strength and weakness in its diversity. They will be used to reset spending, from marketing campaigns to government aid. They will influence how legislative districts are redrawn and how civil rights are enforced.
As long as race is counted as a major issue in the United States, the Census Bureau will count the races.
These results reinforce a demographic forecast that whites will be in the minority by mid-century (they already are in California). With more equality in numbers, ethnic and racial groups could either become more competitive for rights and resources, or they could find tensions easing.
None of America's racial minorities are monolithic in their politics. Blacks, who come closest to voting as a bloc for Democrats, span the political spectrum. The Bush administration's ability to recruit well-qualified blacks to its ranks indicates contrasting views among African-Americans.
Hispanics are more diverse in their voting patterns. New York's Puerto Ricans and California's Mexican-Americans may be staunchly Democratic, while Florida's Cuban-Americans are reliably Republican. Voters of Asian background are likewise varied.
As much as these races identify as a group, will they always act collectively for political purposes? Or will they, as seen in racially diverse Los Angeles, evolve toward coalitions between blacks, Hispanics, Jews, and Asians? Race often melts away when much larger concerns, such as education, draw people together.
The American tradition of forming and reforming new communities of like interests within a democratic system is profound. The races may still cluster themselves by housing, but to focus on that lingering segregation ignores the day-to-day practice of most Americans to work together with shared values.
Social scientist Amitai Etzioni has analyzed poll findings and finds that large majorities of Americans agree on such basics as "fair treatment for all, without prejudice or discrimination." Large majorities agreed on the importance of teaching children about a common American heritage and values. And they agree that "the US is a unique country that stands for something special in the world."
Diversity can help sustain the unity of a nation that's based on shared ideals. Journalist and author Roberto Suro has written: "Ideas, not biology, are what generates oneness and homogeneity in the United States, and so long as faith in those ideas remained strong, the country has shown an extraordinary capacity to absorb people of many nationalities."
The danger comes if any one racial or ethnic community is so cut off from American society that they fail to teach the fundamentals of civic responsibility to the next generation. That's why states play a critical role in setting a school curriculum that teaches individual responsibility in maintaining healthy communities and electing responsible government.
Ultimately, the well-being of all Americans, regardless of race, springs from being free to use God-given abilities and to join in working for the common good.
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Religion and Public Life
John J. DiIulio, Jr., former director, White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and one this year’s plenary speakers for the CCDA annual convention, delivered this first annual address last spring to the Manhattan Institute in New York on "The State of Religion and Public Life."
The state of religion and public life—or if I may rephrase, the state of religion and its relation to public life—is better today than at any point over the last 50 years of American history, perhaps better in some respects than at any point in the last 100 years. Most Americans—of practically every race, region, socio-economic status and demographic description—want religion to have a greater influence in American society. Seven in 10 Americans believe that "more religion is the best way to strengthen family values and moral behavior."
Something happened in America on the way to privatizing God. For the first two-thirds of the past century, secularization predominated. In the last third, the picture has changed considerably. Religion refused to stay in the private ghetto to which modernity had assigned it. While I’m not positive that we are in the midst of what the great Nobel economist Robert Fogel has described as a Fourth Great Awakening in this country’s history, there can be no doubt that, over the past decade, foundations, philanthropies, even universities—and now even governments—have been either welcoming godly people back into the public square, welcoming religious programs back into civic life, or at least not wantonly waving them off. Those institutions once led secularization, and insisted, with the force of public law to back them up, that religion remain gagged and bound in the civic closet, if occasionally trotted out for suitably secular expressions of religious sensibility. We’ve witnessed a sea change.
Let me stand for a moment or two on the shoulders of one of my favorite and ever faithful giants. Father Richard John Neuhaus wrote a book with Professor Peter Berger a few decades ago that caused open-minded public intellectuals to consider that families, churches, voluntary associations and all the other mediating institutions really do have a vital role in the public square—the role that Tocqueville and other great thinkers had borne witness to—in weaving together our social fabric and fortifying our public life.
As Father Neuhaus has phrased it in the April 2001 edition of First Things, it is important to let these institutions "do their thing" without excessive government interference. If I may quote him at some length: "the minimalist proposition is that government should get out of the way, and let the mediating institutions—families, churches, voluntary associations, etc.—do their thing. Getting out of the way requires many changes, including changes in tax policy, professional certifications, and the freedom to hire in accord with an institution’s constituting vision. The maximalist proposition goes beyond getting out of the way and suggests that the government should use the mediating institutions in achieving public purposes. It is here that we need the most careful thought and experimentation, lest the mediating institutions be co-opted and fatally compromised by well-intentioned government policy." To that statement, I think one can only officially say, "Amen." Both God and the devil will be in the details of the Bush administration’s faith-based and community initiatives, and my office is now working out these details.
It’s important to remember where we begin: government has already decided to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year through nonprofit organizations to carry out the purposes of social policy. The U.S. government does little in the areas of welfare and social policy that is not done with and through nonprofit organizations and providers. It is very much "government by proxy," as Don Kettl of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has called it.
The President has also spotlighted and celebrated the enormous social contributions of secular independent organizations such as Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. It so happens he visited a Boys & Girls Club in Wilmington, Delaware, just the other day. Likewise, the President has recognized the enormous social contributions of local church congregations, synagogues, mosques and other faith-based organizations. He has warmly welcomed godly people back into the public square—people who perform good social works, who offer help and love, one person at a time, whom Bob Woodson of the National Center for Neighbor-hood Enterprise calls America’s "grassroots Josephs"—but whom I, for the sake of political correctness, will call grassroots Josephs and Josephines.
Every major survey shows that the American people agree with the President in wanting to support the good works of community helpers and healers, whether religious or secular. In a Gallup survey released just yesterday, we learned that 69 percent of people believe that faith-based organizations do the best job of reaching out to youth in poor communities. Only 25 percent felt that the federal government did the kids much good. Maybe if we connected the federal government to those groups, it would do a little bit better.
Likewise, in a Pew Commission survey released the week in which the President signed my office into being, churches, synagogues and mosques were ranked as the top nonprofit problem-solving organizations in their communities. National independent-sector organizations like Goodwill Industries came in a close second. The federal government again brought up the rear. Maybe if we connected the federal government more closely and intelligently, but still well within constitutional bounds, to these community-serving, grassroots-anchored organizations, people would think better of it, because it would be doing a better job.
A national study released in March by the Hartford Institute found that 85 percent of religious congregations offer community-serving programs, including cash, food, clothing, daycare, shelter, addiction counseling, and healthcare. You don’t think of faith-based organizations when you think of cervical and breast cancer screening, but I assure you it’s the case, especially in urban areas throughout the country. In Philadelphia alone, we have 300 congregations providing health counseling and healthcare of various kinds. Small armies of religious volunteers are now mobilized and delivering healthcare services to both children and the large and growing population of infirm elderly. They’re out there doing that work.
A national study released in January by the umbrella non-profit organization called Independent Sector, led by my good friend Sarah E. Melendez, found virtually the same thing. The findings are being replicated over and over. They’re becoming harder to dismiss the way some did a few years ago. The massive social-service contributions of local faith-based organizations are also meticulously documented in an ongoing series of studies by my Penn colleague, Professor Ram A. Cnaan. Based on three-hour site visits and 20-page questionnaires administered at over 1,000 congregations in Philadelphia and hundreds of congregations in other U.S. cities, we know that urban congregations make enormous community-service contributions in over 200 different types of social services. In Philadelphia alone—putting an annual dollar value on what they do, at sub-Motel 6 rates for the space and sub-minimum wage pay for the volunteer hours—these groups contribute a most conservatively estimated quarter billion dollars of hidden social safety net every year.
That’s a lot of money, a lot of value—and we underestimate that value, because we only count the top five services they provide. Many of these groups provide seven or ten different services. They run a health clinic. They run a school. They run the after-school program. They provide what exists in the way of mentoring. They run the senior center. They provide recreation. We also know that the primary beneficiaries of these faith-based good works are local children and youth who are not members and whose families are not members of the congregations or faith-based organizations that serve them. This to me continues to be the single most remarkable and inspiring fact. Remarkable also is the fact that, as every serious study shows, only a handful of the myriad community-serving congregations—even those who define themselves as highly motivated to evangelize—make a current or eventual expression of religious faith a condition of entering their buildings, receiving their services, participating in their programs and getting their help.
One of the things that President Bush has asked me to do is a performance audit of five cabinet agencies: Justice, Education, Labor, Health & Human Services, and Housing & Urban Development. We’re going to take a hard look at why it is that, while Charitable Choice legislation was passed in 1996—supposedly opening the way for religious organizations to compete for social-welfare grants and contracts on the same basis as any other non-governmental providers—almost five years later, 31 states have had zero—zero—Charitable Choice action. In the city of Philadelphia, where we’ve got one of the country’s richest and most well documented community-serving ministry sectors—25 percent of the housing rehab work being done in many neighborhoods is by community-based faith-based organizations, and a third of all day care—why is it that only one congregation, Cookman Methodist, has received any help under Charitable Choice? Why is it that only four or five states have gotten any real traction at all? Charitable Choice was passed four times—the original law in 1996, the community service block grant, welfare-to-work, and last year the mental health bill—and yet no action?
If community-based organizations, both sacred and secular, are out there with small staffs and a host of volunteers providing vital social services at the grassroots level—from day care to healthcare, from preschool to prison ministry—then why should government get in their way with bovine rules, bogus regulations, or perverse licensing requirements? Why shouldn’t the same community-helping, community-healing organizations receive private, corporate and philanthropic support vaguely commensurate with the size of their role in helping the least, the last and the lost of our society?
Why shouldn’t these Josephs and Josephines, if their leaders so choose, be eligible? In Philadelphia, we know that 40 percent of the urban congregations don’t care what Charitable Choice says, or what protections it provides—they don’t want to do it. God bless them. That’s their benevolent tradition. That’s the call of their leadership and their members. God bless them. But 60 percent say they would at least think about it. I would estimate that 20 or 25 percent would step up.
If they decide to seek public support for the social services they provide—which is not government funding religion, but government funding people who provide social services under given performance and procurement protocols—why shouldn’t they be as eligible for support as any of the other non-governmental providers of those services—even if they’re small, even if they do it one person at a time? Why shouldn’t they be able to receive support for the services they provide without having to divest themselves of their religious character, or their non-secular symbols or speech?
These are rhetorical questions, of course. I believe that they should be able to hum hymns as they hammer nails. I believe they should be able to say "God bless you" in a health clinic even when no one has sneezed. It is vital that we ask people to come as they are rather than as someone they have to pretend to be. We have built our successful social programming largely around these institutions for 35 years—and we have the results to prove it. I don’t say they hold all the answers. One measure of the real state of religion in public life will be how open we are, as people of good faith—not necessarily religious faith, as the President says, not just Methodists, Muslims, and Mormons, but also good people of no religious faith at all—to come together in a reasonable way to say how we can together improve the lives of needy children, youth and families who live in poverty and have broken lives. Can we come together to do that? I believe it can be done.
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Snapshots of Urban Diversity
New Numbers Add Up to a Decade of Diversity in Chicago
(Taken from David Mendell’s special report to the Chicago Tribune, August 12, 2001.)
As 2000 census numbers have tumbled from the federal government this spring and summer, Chicago has emerged as one of the most diverse communities in the nation – indeed, one of the most diverse in the world.
Through the 20th Century, Chicago stitched together its unique cultural tapestry in neighborhoods of hard-working Irish Catholics and devoted Italian grandmothers and freedom-seeking African-Americans. But in the 21st Century, Chicago is assuming yet a new identity.
The census is slowly revealing that Chicago’s diversity has taken on greater proportions than even the most hyperbolic demographer had ever imagined. A vast amount of national and state demographic data released last week revealed more nuances – more Spanish speakers, more college-educated people, more black suburbanites.
The portrait of the region changed more
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Snapshots of Urban Diversity
Paradox by the Bay: Kids Aren't Welcome
By Shawn Hubler, LA Times Staff Writer
June 7, 2001, San Francisco -- To raise children in this city is to need a kids' sweatshirt on short notice and to find yourself surrounded by stores that only sell play clothes for dogs. It is to look for a house, only to have the real estate agents for one seller after another tell you that, gee, they don't really know much about schools in the city. It is to walk into the neighborhood pizza joint, only to see, "We welcome well-behaved children" posted next to the "please-wait-to-be-seated" sign.
It is to hear advice like this well-meaning counsel, from a real estate agent in Silicon Valley: "Don't do it! Don't buy in San Francisco! For God's sake, don't do that to your kids! Trust me. I grew up there. The weather alone. . . ."
Here, she shuddered and took a long, calming pull on her latte. Actually, she had a point. This was back in December--in the midst of a family move involving two parents, three kids, a dog, a cat, a sitter and the sitter's daughter--and even as she spoke, ice-cold rain was pelting the most yearned-for, romanticized--and adult-centric--city in California. Not that you could actually see the ice-cold rain--the ice-cold fog obscured it--but it was there. Pelting. It felt like December in Nova Scotia. Meanwhile, 20 minutes to the south, on "the peninsula," as people here call the stretch of upscale suburbia between the city and Palo Alto, the sun was so yellow, you could have painted a Happy Face on it.
Tidy neighborhoods of tech workers unfurled seamlessly into each other, neighborhoods that were closer to the new jobs that had prompted this disruptive, midlife relocation. Neighborhoods with good schools and huge supermarkets and mighty SUV carpools. Neighborhoods like any suburban neighborhood, except that, whatever homes cost in your old suburb, here they cost that . . . plus $1 million.
To raise children on the peninsula, it became clear on that day, was to become the poorest po' folk in Silicon Valley. And to commute there from some farther-flung suburb was to spend so much time in gridlocked Bay Area bridge-and-tunnel traffic that those kids might as well be orphans.
"If you move to San Francisco, your children will never forgive you," the Realtor promised.
"If we move to San Francisco, will they have Cartoon Network?" the children asked.
* * *
According to the 2000 Census, San Francisco's populace lost more than 4,000 kids during the past decade, the result of high housing costs and the influx of child-free yuppie hordes. Actually, the former feels less to blame than the latter. Prices are breathtaking everywhere in the Bay Area; there are places far more expensive than this storied city of gingerbread Victorians and tourist attractions--places that, for all the financial obstacles, teem nonetheless with children. To the people who live here, San Francisco's dearth of children seems to stem from something more cultural.
The kid-unfriendly attitude shows up not only in the serious, large-scale matters--the delayed park bond issues, the barely functional public school system--but in the small, everyday ways, which are more telling. In one neighborhood, the maitre d' at a checked-tablecloth bistro has managed, strangely, to have a table every time my husband and I stop by as a couple--and to be suddenly booked until 9 p.m. every time we stop by with kids. At a swimming club near the Embarcadero, the attendant felt it was just fine to pine aloud for "the golden years" before the club launched a drive to attract more families. In a furnished home where we rented briefly, the landlords allowed a corporation to hold an annual, wine-soaked party for scores of adults, but worried--sincerely--that our fourth-grader's Razor scooter might ruin the brickwork on the patio.
People here curse aloud, a lot, the way people do when they're young and self-centered, or old and it's been years since they've had to watch their language. In cafes, every pause seems to bubble up with the plaints of 20-somethings who still "hate" their moms and dads. Dog owners snatch up their animals when children come near, not because they fear for the child's safety but because they're afraid the kid might scare the pet.
* * *
It's comical and paranoid, and occasionally irritating in this city that spends so much energy on the parallel play of adults--and so much time confusing mass self-absorption with social tolerance. And yet, there is also an unintentional upside to the way children are treated in San Francisco, which may explain why it still hasn't been written off entirely by families: For good or for ill, the city is so small that people have to engage here. The kids who stick it out get to learn to be a part--rather than the center--of something. Their life is not a kids-only theme park.
Nobody is going to hover over them (a fact that drew suburban kids here during the '60s by the parentally repressed thousands). San Francisco children understand, in a way some people never will, that they were neither born to be waited on nor put on Earth to make somebody else's life perfect. They're simply one worthy constituency among many. The big downtown arcade, the Metreon, is aimed at youngsters, but also hosts corporate retreats and cocktail parties. When we moved into our new neighborhood, the neighbors dropped by with brownies and cookies--and so did their kids.
And if raising a family in San Francisco is sometimes like trying to entertain a pack of toddlers in a maiden aunt's parlor, it is also, to stretch the metaphor, like stumbling with your child into that maiden aunt's magical attic. San Francisco is a city in which, for example, children can ride vintage streetcars out to a Pacific beach that is as pristine now as it was when the city was born. A kindergartener's birthday party here is as likely to be held at a landmark bowling alley as at Chuck E. Cheese's. The city has soccer leagues and summer camp, just like the suburbs, but it also has museums and aquariums and zoos and Chinese New Year parades a kid can walk to and Irish step-dancing contests and Italian grandpas playing bocce ball.
It is a city that--so far at least--has hung onto a critical mass of its natives, many of whom turn out to be the parents of the city's remaining 112,802 or so kids. When they ask each other "Where'dja go to school?" they mean high school. They look out for each other's families. The other night, at a school function in the Sunset District, the children suddenly disappeared. "Oh, they're out in the church yard," one of the parents said--and indeed they were, playing tag in the twilight around a statue of a saint at the Catholic church next door, as if it were 1950 instead of the 21st century in a metropolis.
This, in fact is the paradox about the kid thing in San Francisco: For grownups, it's a big city, a sophisticated and charming playground. But for the children growing up here, it's a village--their village. And without them, San Francisco may be a gem of a destination, but it will be less and less a hometown.
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For a related news story about San Francisco's dwindling population of children, please see A-1. No Welcome Mat for Kids
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
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Worth Reading!
Faith & Finances: Helping People Manage Their Money, Gary Nederveld and Erica Chung, CRC Publications, Grand Rapids, 2000. An intensely practical and valuable resource for any city pastor or personal development worker. Nederveld and Chung succeed in answering nearly all the embarrassing money questions that most of us are two afraid to ask out loud. While expensive, this workbook is filled with all sorts of true-to-life monetary situations that teach in a no-nonsense way. Get this book for your church! $29.95, call Faith Alive Christian Resources, (616) 224-0793, www.FaithAliveResources.org.
Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass, Theodore Dalrymple, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2001. An interesting and timely collection of essays originally written by Dr. Dalrymple for publication in City Journal. In his studies, which only a physician / psychiatrist to London’s poor and indigent could really observe, Dalrymple makes the case that "most of the social pathology exhibited by the underclass has its origin in ideas that have filtered down from the intelligentsia." Just published in October, "Life at the Bottom" is available for $19.25 at www.amazon.com.
Stories from Below the Poverty Line: Urban Lessons for Today’s Mission, George Beukema, Herald Press, Scottdale, PA, 2001. George Beukema succeeds in telling us the real life stories of ministry as he, his wife and family have lived them in some of the rather anti-glamorous and non-photogenic places of urban America. At least that’s how most people would see it as Beukema carries out themes like "Evangelism, Sin, Righteous Anger and Common Grace" while moving between missional homes in Cleveland and a housing project on Chicago’s northwest side. Beukema’s stories are not just true-to-life, they are true. His gospel is anchored. And that is what makes the "Poverty Line" so important to all in ministry today. Now available for $7.99 at www.christianbook.com.
Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City & the People of God, Harvie Conn and Manuel Ortiz, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2001. Manny Ortiz, professor of ministry and urban mission at Westminster Seminary, together with the now deceased Harvie Conn, have produced what looks to be a definitive text for urban mission for some years to come. Focuses on history, a conceptual and biblical understanding of the city, as well as a true urban understanding of the church’s people, leadership and mission. Retail price: $29.99, available at www.christianbook.com.
Up Close and Personal: Embracing the Poor, Harold Shank, Anthony Wood and Ron Bergeron, College Press Publishing Company, Joplin, Missouri, 2000. "Up Close and Personal" deals with the stories of people, some poor, some well-to-do, all who are struggling – most of them seeking God, waiting to be his people. All of the stories collected in this fine little volume come out of the faithful struggling of God’s people to desire to truly be the church in Memphis, Tennessee. Read and learn what the travel brochures won’t tell you about the important things happening in people’s lives in the urban mid-South. Available from CityVoices, $10.00, (773) 477-8163, roger@city.com.
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2000, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Department of the Treasury, 2001. This is complete reproduction of the contents of the latest official U.S. Census Bureau Statistical Abstract CD-ROM - and at only $25.00, it is half of the price charged by the government! This amazing disc contains over 1600 tables and charts, making it the best known and most popular single source of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of our great nation. The Abstract has been published since 1878 and serves as a convenient, easy-to-use reference source. It provides an extensive selection of statistics for the United States, with selected data for States, metropolitan areas, cities, and foreign countries from reports and records of government and private agencies. The Census Bureau declares that the Statistical Abstract is "the government's most important statistical factbook - great for students, libraries, research organizations, or home reference." It is truly an incredible resource for any curious mind! CD-ROM available for $25.00,
Hardcover print edition -- $45.00. Both available at: www.amazon.com.
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