Papers

Creating Urban Evangelicalism: Youth Ministry, Moral Boundaries, and Social Diversity
by Rhys H. Williams, University of Cincinnati
& R. Stephen Warner, University of Illinois at Chicago
May 2001

Presented to: “Evangelicals and Political and Civic Engagement Conference,” sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Cape Elizabeth, Maine, June 2001

Part II

ASPECTS OF VIBRANT YOUTH MINISTRIES

The Youth and Religion Project has been visiting and gathering data from Protestant and Catholic Christian, Hindu, and Muslim youth groups. We have sites that work with white, black, Latino, Asian, Arab, and South Asian youth. The data presented here are from the set of evangelical Protestant groups we have observed, in particular those that minister primarily to Latino and white, non-Hispanic youth. Several of our sites are African-American churches and could be classified as “evangelical.” However, as those who are familiar with the black church will recognize, we find a much different dynamic among black churches and black youth than among the other groups (see Williams et al. 2000). In addition, we will report here particularly on several programs that operate in Chicago and have a very “urban” constituency. Some are in churches that serve working-class neighborhoods, often in ethnically diverse neighborhoods. As such, most of the programs we report on here have an “edge” to them, in part due to the sense of danger – both potential and manifest – that exists outside the church walls. We are also doing some visits to two suburban evangelical churches and a youth ministry attached to another suburban church, but our focus here is on urban youth ministries.

From our observations, interviews, and reading, we have come to a number of conclusions about the youth programs we have studied – all programs that we judge successful in attracting and keeping youth. Note here that we have not studied unsuccessful programs, so cannot say for certain that the things we are going to discuss here are the elements that “cause” success. Rather we are just describing some similarities we have seen across several vibrant, active programs, and the implications they have for evangelical “civic engagement” (broadly construed). Our central purpose here is not to describe successful programs or speculate as to what youth want in religion. Those are important topics but tangential to this essay. Rather, we are interested in how these elements of youth programs affect their capacity to generate healthy personal identities for the youth involved, and produce the possibility of public selves that will affect our wider society.

Autonomous space and personal responsibility

First, we will call attention to what is something of a truism among those who study religion and religious congregations in American society. That is, that the youth programs we have observed provide autonomous space for young people and their peer groups, at the same time they foster a culture of personal responsibility. As de Tocqueville noted about religious congregations in the 19th century, they can function as “mini-democracies,” giving people practice in governing themselves, engaging in social actions that require collective cooperation, and taking responsibility for making decisions and performing tasks. Most of the groups we have seen have their own physical space within the church building, their own meeting times (in addition to general worship), and their own designated adult leaders. These leaders are generally younger that the overall church leadership, and many of them are part-time, volunteer, or seminarians. Thus, while the youth are supervised, often reasonably tightly, the monitoring comes from people who are a bit more like peers than parents, and are thus perceived by the kids involved as perhaps having a number of shared experiences with them. The leadership is young enough so that on occasion some girls in the youth group develop crushes (we have reports from some youth leaders about that happening as well as observations at field visits). We do note that the adult leadership cannot be too close in age. There seems to be a minimum of about a six to ten year difference – up to about twenty years.

While this is an unexceptional aspect to many youth programs, we want to call attention to several things we have noticed on our site visits. First, the autonomous space provides a setting for what is often intensely personal disclosure, made with a great deal of candor. In periods of testifying, young adults reveal pasts with drug use, sexual activity, harrowing encounters with gangs or crime, intensely painful relationships with parents. The response to these revelations is a combination of great sympathy and support – and deep assurance that they are not alone in their situation or their feelings – along with an emphasis on the individual getting “right with God,” confronting their own faith, and acting in a manner that is personally morally responsible. In addition, several of the groups we observed had their rooms decorated with inspirational posters and stickers from faith-oriented programs.

One of these programs that is particularly popular now is called “True Love Waits,” in which young people take pledges of sexual abstinence until marriage. One room we visited had dozens of signed “true love waits” pledge cards plastered to the walls, in the shape of a fish and a cross. While on one hand this is a very traditional sense of sexual morality (in that it emphases a complete ban on non-marital sex), and in several cases seems more directed at the young women than the young men (Armitage and Dugan 2001), for a segment of young people particularly threatened by sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy, there is an important form of liberating support in that message.(2)

This is one area in which the African-American churches we have studied are distinctly different from the white and Latino evangelical churches we have seen. The autonomous youth ministry is not practiced in the same way in black churches as it is in the others. While not the place here for a long exposition, we have come to the conclusion that in the black church, religion is inherently intergenerational. We attended several “youth nights” at several different black churches. Each night had a roughly similar format – and was attended by as many adults as young people, particularly in the audience. Youth may be on stage – in essence performing for their elders in a way that demonstrates that they have learned their religious lessons well. But young people do remarkably little in the church that is free from adult involvement. When we queried adults on their attendance at “youth night” they invariably responded that they needed to be there to “support our young people.” Along with support, we note, there is a monitoring function to this attendance. But it makes a certain amount of sense. In a community where the risks of growing up are often very real and very material, and the dangers of lack of supervision and monitoring can be deadly, African Americans may well feel that they do not need church as another autonomous space for youth.

Removal from risk

This leads to our second observation, the extent to which the youth ministries we have observed are safe spaces for young people who are often facing very real risks in the wider society (McLaughlin et al. 1994). Church is there to help them dodge both the real and figurative bullets of life in a major urban center. Adult leaders of the groups we observed could often name off very quickly the young people who had brothers in gangs, or who had family members with drug or alcohol problems. Part of the way religious involvement seems to help remove kids from risk is by the inculcation of values and ideals that urge them away from substance abuse, crime, and so forth. But, more important in our view, is the creation of an “alternative community” for youth who are surrounded by problematic or self-destructive behaviors in other parts of their lives. It is crucially important that young people see, become aware of, and have contact with groups of people not engaging in those behaviors. Wesley Perkins’ research (1994) with college students demonstrates that the single biggest contribution to students refraining from binge drinking is know that not “everybody does it.” Knowing that particular behaviors are not mandatory for social acceptance seems to be pivotally important to young people, given the centrality of peer groups.

Another way in which the urban youth ministries we studied are safe spaces is the extent to which they help relieve some of the pressure of neighborhood and turf that are part of life in a multi-ethnic urban environment. This is in part a “gang” issue, and we have reports of religious involvement helping kids resist gang recruitment (see also Flores-Gonzalez 1998). But even for those youth not involved with formal gangs, there are pressures of community and solidarity that go with neighborhood and ethnic identity. However, several of the programs we studied had participants from several different neighborhoods and often had members from a variety of ethnic groups as well. They crossed neighborhood lines to attend the group, and found in the members of the group a way to transcend the turf-based divisions that existed otherwise. They are crossing boundaries, both material and symbolic, coming out of old networks and forming new ones. This leads to our next point.

Moral boundaries and social diversity.

Many of the programs we have observed offer, as a formal ideology, a conservative theology of biblical literalism and traditional morality (in that it is often focused on personal abstinence from “sins of the flesh”). From one perspective, conservative theology might well be the reason for their success. In a version of economic reasoning, many scholars maintain that people value most that which is costliest (examples are in Iannaccone 1994; Stark and Finke 2000). Therefore, they argue, strict moral controls on behavior, which are more demanding of believers, will be more valued by congregants.

However, a simple economic metaphor does not satisfy us as capturing the variety of things going on in these programs. Young people we saw do indeed seem to be responding most enthusiastically to conservative theology. This may support in part the well-known opinion that adolescents – in a period of intense growth and personal exploration – actually want some limits and constraints. It may be particularly true for urban youth, many of whom come from families that do not offer much supervision, due to the economic demands on their parents, or other familial disruptions. Further, young people are often attracted to something that seems new, different, or alternative, even if that is in fact a more “traditional” behavioral code. And, of course, it may be that youth are really just attracted to the social scene of the youth programs and just put up with the conservative theology and morality “as the price of admission.” No doubt many of these things are true simultaneously.

However, focusing only on the conservative teachings in theology and personal morality misses some of the most remarkable features of these programs. While these youth ministries may be ideologically conservative, they are generally socially liberal. They may have a traditional theology, but the social divisions and boundaries that have historically marked white evangelical Protestantism are noticeably absent. That is, the programs we observed are informal in dress and demeanor, stress a certain amount of egalitarianism among congregants and between laity and leaders (and often make a point of noting that God is “no respecter of persons” a phrase from Romans I), are generally comfortable with many aspects of contemporary culture, especially youth music, and overcome a number of racial-ethnic-class boundaries. The programs we observed were full of teenagers with baggy hip-hop clothing styles, multiple body piercings, tattoos, heavy jewelry, and so forth. The heavy moral boundaries that come with conservative theology do not seem to be replicated by heavy social boundaries among people within the church.

In addition, we were most struck by this pattern of social inclusion and diversity at youth programs that had, as their base, a Latino population. The most integrated youth ministries we have seen are Latino-based. They may have Hispanics, Anglos, and African Americans all in one ministry, but it is more common to have African-American and Latino, or Anglo-American and Latino, than it is to have black and white. As a side note, we think this type of integration is more common among Puerto Rican populations than among other Latino groups. That may be because Puerto Rican culture is more racially mixed historically, or perhaps related to the fact that Puerto Rico has been more Protestant than Mexico or much of Central America. Or it may just be a feature of Chicago, where the Mexican population is so large they can have their own churches and need not intermingle with other groups. In any case, while we saw some African Americans in some white churches, and some Euro-Americans in black churches (although this was less common), the truly integrated programs were Latino based.(3)

Significantly, given Chicago’s residential patterns, such mixing means that in all probability these young people were crossing neighborhood boundaries, as well as ethnic differences, in order to participate in the same church. The music they play tends to reflect that diversity, featuring a variety of styles as long as they were up-to-date, contemporary, and funky. It reflects the gospel, although to our middle-aged ears it was often difficult to pick up the words that would reflect that. We had no trouble discerning that the music had a beat that makes kids want to move and dance. One adult leader said of the music simply, “it just has to be cool.”

On the other hand, at our observations, and by the admission of the song leader of one program, much of the music at this particular youth group is “white middle-class” music. That is, it is the three-chord, acoustic guitar based praise songs that are so common in white evangelical Protestant churches. One leader said that the kids in his program did not seem to tire of it, and always sang along enthusiastically. Several of the other programs, however, relied more on more “urban” styles of music – meaning basically rap or hip-hop based. The key to its appeal to youth may be the ability for them to participate fully, whatever the music style.

Several of the adult leaders we spoke to did not make much of this ethnic integration, saying that youth tend to be “blended” before arriving at the church via growing up in diverse neighborhoods. We note, however, that ethnically integrated youth programs were not always connected to ethnically integrated churches at the adult level. One of the leaders of perhaps the most diverse group we observed believed that most of the kids in her program came to the church on their own; that is, they were not members of church families and had made independent decisions to attend that program. And there was at least one report that some of these youth ended up bringing their parents to the church (and we note that another leader thought most of the kids were indeed from church families). Whatever the actual ratio, the important point for us was that the youth program was self-consciously reaching out to the neighborhood and beyond, and attracting a variety of people.

2.Some sociological scholarship is beginning to explore the effects of these “virginity pledges.” Bearman and Bruckner (2001) report that pledge signers (e.g., those participating in the “True Love Waits” campaign) are significantly more likely to delay intercourse than nonpledgers. Interestingly, and in keeping with our idea that the urban ministry programs we have observed work in part because they seem “edgy” and somewhat counter-cultural, Bearman and Bruckner report that the “pledge effect” on delaying sexual activity is much more likely if there are some, but not too many other pledgers around. It must seem nonnormative and mark the young people off with a special collective identity. Significantly, when those who do pledge do in fact engage in first intercourse, they are much less likely than nonpledgers to use contraception.
3.Latinos have higher rates of cross-cultural or cross-ethnic marriage than either blacks or whites. In particular, rates of black-white intermarriage are much lower than either black-Hispanic or Hispanic-Anglo.

Continue: Part III
References: Part IV
Go back: Part I

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