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Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 storm on the coast of the Gulf
of Mexico, exposed more than the breach in the levees of the
Gulf region. The disaster also illustrates the wider
abandonment of low-income, black communities around the
nation, including the distancing by the black church.
In memory of the lost lives and destroyed livelihoods by
Hurricane Katrina 10 years ago, I present a reflection by
scholar, political scientist and Baptist preacher R. Drew
Smith. His timely commentary highlights the storm’s
consequences for not only Gulf Coast residents but also
communities of color throughout the United States.
Commentary: Distant Churches and The Isolated Poor: Lessons
from Katrina, 10 Years Later
Written by: R. Drew
Smith, Ph.D.
In 1995, the first of the Left Behind series was published—a
hugely successful franchise that dealt in fictionalized
enactments of Christian end times scenarios. Based upon a
biblical eschatological view that gained popularity by the
mid-20th century, these novels depict a radical
transformation of society that ensues after the Christian
faithful are supernaturally taken out of the world (“raptured”),
clearing the way for the rule of the antichrist and the
inevitable descent toward apocalypse. Within this desolate
context emerges a new cadre of Christian believers, called
to costly Christian witness among a population left behind
and on the brink.
In late-August 2005, an all-too-real variation on this theme of
worldly desolation played out in New Orleans, as tens of
thousands of New Orleanians fled an approaching Category 3
hurricane, leaving behind thousands of their fellow
residents too immobilized by poverty or other factors to
escape the hurricane’s onslaught.
On August 29, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the
Mississippi and Louisiana coast, packing 125 mph winds and
strong waves and producing a storm surge of 10-20 feet. The
winds and flooding left New Orleans without power and
submerged in as much as 20 feet of water in some areas. The
treacherous physical and social circumstances faced by the
10-20 percent of largely black New Orleanians who were
unable to evacuate the city visited horror and death upon
these residents who stayed behind.
Additional consequences of the storm both for residents who
evacuated and for those who remained in the city included
inestimable losses in property and livelihoods as well as
the permanent displacement of tens of thousands of the
city’s black and poor residents.
The
massive pre-storm exodus from New Orleans of the more
resourceful sectors of the population, and the closing or
distancing of most institutional operations, are dynamics
reminiscent of the large scale suburban flight, economic
divestment and governmental indifference experienced within
many American cities—and especially within the poorer
neighborhoods of those cities in the past 100 years.
Former industrial cities with once sizable populations of
blue-collar African-American laborers were among the cities
hit hardest by massive downturns in resources, as businesses
and corporations relocated to better markets in the suburbs
or overseas and as middle-class populations fled urban core
neighborhoods for outer-ring or suburban locales. Both of
these dynamics contributed to vastly diminished property
values, tax revenues, and local urban economies—resulting in
fewer resources for public schools, public services, and
urban infrastructure.
This
exodus of resources from American cities and neighborhoods
occurred against the backdrop of an ideological climate
emphasizing public sphere fiscal austerity and balanced
budgets, which compounded social resource scarcity for those
most in need.
What
this large-scale flight of social resources left in its wake
was not an urban demographic characterized by upward
mobility but by severe poverty and social isolation.
Between 1970 and 1990, the percentage of persons living in
neighborhoods with a poverty rate of 40 percent or higher
grew from 7.8 to 15.8 percent for blacks and from 7.0 to 9.5
percent for Hispanics, and by 2010 the proportion of
Americans (irrespective of race) living in high-poverty
neighborhoods was
15
percent. Further
evidence of the growing social isolation of urban poor
populations has been the resegregation of public schools. A
2014 report by The Economic Policy Institute
states:
“The typical black student now attends a school where only
29 percent of his or her fellow students are white, down
from 36 percent in 1980.”
Moreover, as noted in
a report
by ProPublica, there are a growing number of schools whose white population is
one percent or less (mostly in the Northeast and Midwest),
and roughly 12 percent of black students in the South attend
such schools.
The
tragic plight of impoverished and immobile New Orleanians
forced to ride out Katrina in 2005 also serves as a poignant
metaphor of what has been a much larger problem of urban
poor populations across the U.S. left to weather storms of
resource divestment, ideological hostilities, and social
marginalization. And as was true in New Orleans during
Katrina, where those left behind were almost completely
devoid of institutional support on which to lean, the urban
poor in various contexts have suffered from what has also
been a scarcity of institutional supports—including
churches.
The
social storms that have ravaged vulnerable urban contexts
have also impacted church life.
In
neighborhoods where populations have become poorer and less
connected to mainstream social institutions and social
procedures in-general, churches have grown distant
themselves from these populations and from the
neighborhood’s cultural environment. Often unable to close
the social and cultural distance, churches have become less
centrally a part of their neighborhoods, sometimes
experiencing significant attrition in their membership
numbers and finances, and sometimes choosing to relocate
altogether. Even institutionally resourceful congregations
that remain in high-poverty neighborhoods have increasingly
faced great difficulties in their efforts to connect
culturally, interpersonally, and programmatically to their
immediate neighborhoods.
In
a 2003
study
of interactions between churches and impoverished
populations in Camden, Denver, Hartford, and Indianapolis, I
surveyed 136 churches in eight high-poverty neighborhoods
and surveyed 1,206 residents of low-income housing complexes
adjacent to these congregations.
Many
of the congregations had small or moderate-sized
memberships, with 17 percent of the congregations reporting
memberships of less than 100 and 49 percent reporting
memberships between 100 and 499. The membership of these
congregations came mainly from outside the neighborhoods,
with 60 percent of the congregations in the study indicating
that less than a quarter of their members lived within a
mile of the church facility.
With
respect to church outreach, roughly 20 percent or less of
the congregations offered job training programs, primary or
secondary school opportunities, or day care or pre-school
services. And roughly five percent or less offered emergency
shelters or gang interventionary programs—all of which
represent urgent needs within the desolate circumstances of
many high-poverty neighborhoods.
Evidence of the distance between congregations and urban
poor residents also came from the residents themselves, 45
percent of whom indicated they had attended religious
services only once or twice—or not at all—during the
previous year, and 60 percent indicating they had no
particular place where they attend religious services.
These
findings suggest that the worlds inhabited respectively by
churches and the urban poor are indeed distinct,
intersecting rarely and sometimes not at all. Although
churches are physically present in high-poverty
neighborhoods, often viewing themselves as an intentional
presence, institutional presence alone does not translate
necessarily into mutuality or solidarity. It may not even
translate into interaction or relationship.
Undue
emphasis on mere presence also skirts another significant
dynamic that distinguishes churches from impoverished
neighborhood residents—mainly, the issue of mobility.
Churches and their members are present in high-poverty
neighborhoods at their own volition, entering and leaving as
part of a weekly Sunday commute, and capable of opting
(individually or institutionally) for quite different
locations and demographic and social environments if deemed
necessary. Impoverished residents are less able to relocate
at will, but even when they do they may change their
location but likely not their social and demographic
environment.
For
contemporary churches to meaningfully respond to urban
desperation and desolation, (certainly in any way
prefiguring the strategic role envisioned within oft-noted
endtimes scenarios), it will necessitate a willingness on
the part of churches to be present, engaged, and steadfast
in contexts where the poor have been left to struggle.
Historian Randy Sparks
recounts
a range of ways New Orleans’ clergy and congregations
mobilized on behalf of New Orleans residents during and
immediately after Hurricane Katrina—including the several
Catholic priests who remained in the city throughout the
storm providing ministerial support to persons stranded at
the Superdome and at the airport. He also draws attention to
the large number of congregations from New Orleans and
elsewhere that rushed in to the city after the storm (ahead
of and in spite of opposition from governmental agencies)
“to serve as first responders . . . as relief centers and
islands of stability and reconstruction for neighborhoods in
crisis.”
Ten
years after Katrina, the poor continue to struggle in New
Orleans, and in urban contexts across the U.S., and they
deserve no less urgent a response from churches and other
sectors than that which was mobilized ten years ago in the
wake of Katrina. The storms are gathering force—can our
churches, and our nation, mobilize accordingly?
R. Drew
Smith, a political scientist and Baptist minister, serves as
Professor of Urban Ministry at Pittsburgh Theological
Seminary. He also holds an honorary professorial appointment
at the University of South Africa and is Co-Convener of the
Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race.
Source: Religion Dispatches http://religiondispatches.org/distant-churches-and-the-isolated-poor-lessons-from-katrina-ten-years-later/
Reprinted with permission of R. Drew Smith, PhD
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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