SAVING GRACE

From Los Angeles to Harlem, African American churches are fast becoming prime engines of community renewal. Their efforts transcend such traditional charitable activities as soup kitchens and clothing drives. Instead, black churches use sophisticated financing as a means to improve real property and attract mainstream businesses. Most black clergy would agree with the Rev. Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, when he says that church-based economic-development initiatives are a way of “taking the sanctuary to the streets.”

Black churches are helping to revitalize neglected neighborhoods, for three reasons. First, they frequently confront urgent needs, since many are located in communities that are financially down on their knees. Despite an improved economy, poverty, homelessness and unemployment remain at crisis levels in these neighborhoods. Faith organizations have joined the growing stream of nonprofit community developers who fill the gap left by government cuts in social spending.

Second, for black churches, economic development is not entirely new. In addition to its role as the spiritual center for the black community, the African American church has historically been the one institution in which black people took care of their own in the face of persecution and neglect. The black church has provided a base for organizing schools, incubating businesses, operating affordable residences and providing social services.

Finally, more and more African American religious leaders recognize that economic parity is essential to the evolution of the black free dom movement.

L.A. black churches’ involvement in economic development is impressive, but it is rela tively recent. They face many challenges, chief among them the development of political power.

The two L.A. powerhouses are First African Methodist Episcopal Church and West Angeles Church of God in Christ. These large parishes are located in multiracial Southwest L.A., an area where some of the county’s highest-income residents live alongside those with the greatest need. First AME, where the Rev. Cecil L. “Chip” Murray is pastor, has more than 17,000 members. West Angeles, pastored by Bishop Charles E. Blake, has 19,000. Both churches are asset-rich, boast celebrities in their congregations and have established a wide array of nonprofit organizations, including privately run schools, as part of their ministries.

The scale of initiatives undertaken by First African and West Angeles is commensurate with their size. First AME’s community development arm, FAME Renaissance, created in 1992, recently received $500,000 from the governor’s budget for what the Rev. Mark Whitlock, executive director of FAME Renaissance, calls a “welfare to wealth” program to provide vocational training. FAME Business Resource Center has provided loans, ranging from $1,000 to $500,000, to more than 100 small African American, Latino and Asian businesses. The center’s new venture-capital fund will make it possible to invest up to $1 million in start-ups.

West Angeles Church of God in Christ began its community-development corporation in 1994 “to show what a healthy community looks like,” according to executive director Lula Bailey Ballton. It has constructed or renovated 300 affordable homes, including 44 housing units for low-income families at West 41st and South Vermont Avenue, across from Manual Arts High School. It is also a nonprofit investor, along with Ward AME, in Chesterfield Square, a 32-acre retail complex under construction.

The problem is, L.A.’s black church leaders are not known as forces for political change, and without political power, economic power can be threatened. From the hushed arbors and secret worship meetings during slavery, the establishment by freedmen of black denominations during the 18th century, to contemporary churches--whether inner-city cathedrals or storefronts--moral protest and resistance have been crucial activities within the African American church.

There are a few examples of L.A. black church leaders following this tradition. Bishop Blake of West Angeles backed the ill-fated school-voucher ballot measure, Proposition 38. The Rev. James Lawson of Holman United Methodist Church has garnered attention for his support of immigrant workers. But these causes pale in comparison with those of the late Rev. Clayton Russell of Peoples’ Independent Church of Christ, the late Rev. Thomas Kilgore of Second Baptist Church and Bishop H. H. Brookins of First AME, who led mass meetings and mobilizations that helped change policy on issues from police brutality to the Vietnam War and the need for affordable housing.

The importance of political power in church-based economic development can be seen in the success of the Congress of National Black Churches. The congress represents 65,000 historically black churches with a membership of 19 million. In addition to its asset-building strategy in 100 churches in 15 cities across the nation, it develops public policies beneficial to African Americans. One thousand community developers, including churches that belong to the National Congress for Community Economic Development, lobby Congress for measures that will help low-income neighborhoods. Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, a coalition of churches in Baltimore affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation, has constructed affordable housing, taken the lead in school reform and helped secure the reallocation of state tax revenues to disadvantaged communities. Abyssinian Baptist Church in Central Harlem organizes tenants in its affordable housing developments. It capitalizes on the political standing of its pastor, the Rev. Calvin Butts III, and the reputation of the 150-year-old church, once the parish of powerful Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., in its dealings with the city of New York.

Developing political clout may become more important than ever when President-elect George W. Bush takes office. It’s possible that Housing and Urban Development budgets, federal incentives for private investment and tax supports currently available to community developers will be curtailed. In their place may emerge Republican-favored programs such as “charitable choice,” an obscure section of welfare reform that allows the federal government to funnel funds directly to houses of worship, rather than their nonsectarian, nonprofit affiliates. It permits religious contractors to discriminate in hiring on grounds of faith, and emphasizes not real-estate development and business creation, but conventional social services such as soup kitchens, detox centers, job training and counseling, all with a religious flavor. During his six years as governor of Texas, Bush aggressively implemented charitable choice.

Church-based economic development has its skeptics, among them Cornel West, who warns against “market Christianity.” The relationship between money and spirit rests on tenuous ethical ground in U.S. culture. It is symbolized in extreme form by the fictional Elmer Gantry and the real-life Rev. Ike, hucksters who preach to those who want to “forget about the pie in the sky, get yours here and now.” The Harvard Divinity School holds a two-week Summer Leadership Institute to guard against such exploitation. It trains African American clergy, lay leaders and community developers to better serve their communities through courses on ethics and “rethinking theological constraints and guide points” so that economic-development work doesn’t undermine the church’s central mission.

These lessons are important as churches expand their economic-development role. For instance, negotiations are underway among the city of Inglewood, the development company Majestic Realty and the 11,000-member Faithful Central Bible Church on the church’s plan to convert the Forum into a sanctuary and the anchor for a hotel and conference venue. The protagonists in this latest example of large-scale church development, along with their peers, may want to emulate the approaches of other black churches that are implementing long-term development strategies to boost the fortunes of poor neighborhoods.

In Houston, Windsor Village’s Pyramid Community Development Corp. converted an abandoned K-Mart store and auto parts dealership into the Power Center. The complex includes a Chase Bank of Texas branch, a health clinic, community college technology center, hair salon, day care, pharmacy, office and banquet facilities, the church’s private Imani School and social services for low-income residents. The Power Center provides about 274 jobs and pumps some $17.5 million into the local economy. It channels federal benefits to 6,000 women and children.

Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church operates a Headstart program that serves more than 600 children, sponsors the Thurgood Marshall Academy at the local middle school, runs a transitional shelter for homeless families, a comprehensive family-services program and has built or renovated hundreds of apartments and single family homes. Its recent efforts include a 290,000-square-foot retail and entertainment center containing a Pathmark Stores Inc. supermarket, Chase Manhattan Bank branch and a Sterling Optical franchise. Abyssinian is renovating the Renaissance Ballroom and Theater and Small’s Paradise, historic cultural properties as part of their overall approach to strengthening community assets.

Catholic orders, Jewish charities, Protestant denominations and mosques are investing in nonprofits that are building homes, retail complexes, factories, running credit unions and minority-owned banks in distressed areas. The 2000 Guide to Religious Community Development Investment Funds reports that, to date, religious organizations alone have invested $900 million in low-income communities around the country. That’s not counting the financing available from community developers. As L.A.’s black churches approach the accomplishments of African American religious organizations around the country, such resources offer the chance to expand not only their economic power but also their political clout. *