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 III

Domesticating and sacralizing youth culture

Thus, as we note in the section above, most of the programs we observed did not shy away from contemporary urban youth culture. While there is a debate among many evangelical Protestants whether certain forms of contemporary culture (such as rock and roll, or rap) can truly be considered “Christian,” no matter what the content of the lyrics or words (e.g., Brown 2001), there does not appear to be this kind of cultural conservatism in the programs we have studied. Culture and religion appear to be separable, at least in some areas; the medium is emphatically not necessarily the message. While the tendency to separate religion and culture is common among American immigrants who are not from dominant religious traditions (see Warner and Martel 1998; Williams and Vashi 2001), the youth programs we studied applied, as a practical matter, this conceptual separation to forms of urban culture that are often considered representative of the very threats the involved youth are trying to escape.

Of course, the leaders of these youth groups in one sense “use” popular cultural forms to attracts kids to their program. This is neither surprising nor new; evangelicals have been adapting popular culture to their own ends since at least the 1740s. But it is not just a cynical, instrumental utilization of hip music and popular clothing styles, a spiritual version of the “bait and switch.” Indeed, we have heard youth pastors discuss among themselves the merits and the dangers of relying too heavily on “entertainment” to draw youth in. One such leader said he had never known a church-sponsored basketball tournament to be successful as a spiritual exercise; the salience of the game takes over and winning and losing, not the Christian message, becomes the thing that sticks with the youth. Another warned that “entertainment-oriented youth ministries” tend to have two outcomes: (1) the group you have this year will be new people from those you had last year; and (2) your kids will fall apart when they go off to college because they haven’t been properly “discipled.” In both cases, there is no staying power in entertainment-oriented youth programs. The “hook” comes to preclude attention to the real reasons for the ministry (which is “discipleship”).

Nonetheless, the programs we observed did not shy away from contemporary cultural forms, provided they were imbued with the right content. In fact, part of the concept of mission that animates these urban evangelical programs understands its purpose at least in part as transforming – or at least reforming – secular culture. These programs work at “domesticating” urban youth culture so it is an ally in their work rather than a threat. In the end, part of their work is “sacralizing” the secular world. These youth groups are trying to create a “counter-culture” to what they perceive as the dominant culture that stresses hedonism, instant gratification, personal license, and secularism. They use adapted elements of that culture in order to try to accomplish their ends. This is a version of Paul’s admonition to be “all things to all men,” approaching the unconverted within a language and culture style that the people have the ears to hear. This form of outreach allows unchurched or disaffected youth to come to their faith and perhaps a new lifestyle gradually. Further, it makes going to the youth group “cool,” a necessary factor in creating the peer group culture for a vibrant gathering.

Connected with the idea of domesticating youth culture is the very definite sense of connecting with the city as a mission field. Rather than shunning the city as a site of corruption and moral decay, the churches we have observed are very deliberate in their choice of it as a place for mission, as a place to reform, as a society in need. They are not merely “stuck” in the city and unable to respond to demographic changes and social mobility. Many of the adult leaders we have encountered have a seminary background that had a specific focus on urban ministry. Also, they meet regularly in a group they call the “Urban and Youth Pastors” (UYP). This group thinks of itself and its work as “urban,” which means that they deal with kids “at risk,” and in poverty, and especially racial minority kids, although in meetings we have observed there was remarkably little talk of “minorities” and “race” per se.(4) We have heard these pastors dismiss the suburbs, and various programs by suburban evangelical churches were assessed in terms of their sensitivity to urban culture. Similarly, help from denominational agencies is often viewed warily as many denominations are perceived as too rural, small-town, or suburban to have much to say to urban youth ministers (one respondent dismissed some denomination literature on youth ministry with a short “[it] may work in Iowa, but not in the city.”).

The youth work these churches do within the communities they serve, and in the neighborhoods in which they are located, is quite intentional and deliberate. In that sense, they are engaging the public sphere directly, and it is a public sphere they think is neglected by both secular society and many Christians. A member of the UYP once commented that the work that youth pastors and youth leaders do in urban ministry is not completely recognized, particularly in less urbanized areas, even though many elements of urban youth culture have reached all parts of the country. Cities, he claimed, is where everything begins: AIDS, homelessness, hip hop music, culture. He went on to cite Acts 19 and claimed that it was in cities where Paul began to spread the Gospel, that Ephesus had been a pagan town before Paul began to preach there and to begin a church. Further, no noted that D. L. Moody said that “water flows downhill” and that therefore you need to convert the cities – that is the place from which the culture flows. Thus, the UYP’s location in the city, and the members’ sense that an urban ministry is different and crucially important, are quite intentional. The adult leaders, and by extension the programs they run, are not just trying to save individual kids. They also have a wider agenda of social and cultural change.

A final note on our observations and interviews with these urban youth ministries and their leaders. Our readings of the various concerns and positions of the people who run these programs lead us to think that their political sympathies must be very mixed. They are conservative, particularly on issues of personal morality. However, they certainly do not worship the free market and have almost a “counter-cultural” critique of the materialist ethos of American society. Further, they have chosen as a mission field places that contain poverty, victims of racism, and other challenges such as gangs and crimes. The “urban evangelicalism” they are creating is not something that would be easily recognized by ideologues on any of the sides of our society’s so-called “culture wars.”

Creating a diverse urban evangelicalism

We found the social diversity, coupled with rigorous moral boundaries, to be perhaps the most striking aspect of the urban evangelical youth programs we observed. We did not find this type of diversity in most mainline Protestant or Catholic youth programs. We had to wonder how these evangelical ministries managed this diversity and social incorporation, when it is such a challenge for every other institution in American society. We offer here a tentative two-part answer, one part based in the dynamics of theology and outreach, the other part drawn from our understanding of the sociological dimensions of symbolic boundaries and collective identities.

First, we do think that ideology matters, and these youth ministries take the shape they do in part as an expression of theology. Evangelical Protestantism, along with its mandate for outreach, has a theology with elements of universal perfectionism. That is, no people, or even individual person, lie beyond the power of redemption. And the power of true faith can transcend the divisions among people, creating a new person that in Paul’s words is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female. Thus, evangelicals have a calling to bring their faith to all populations, regardless of their social status, their societal location, or their cultural differences. And they have a theology to offer that promises people that their societal status is ultimately inconsequential, and earthly trials will fall away, in the face of faith.

In our view, this form of missionary theology is particularly Protestant, at least in the U.S. Evangelical Protestantism has never been as organized either ethnically or geographically in the same way that Catholicism has. Evangelicalism’s organizational form of the congregation, as opposed to the parish, has made it adaptable, mobile, and potentially available to a variety of people and purposes. Evangelicalism embodies – and perhaps is the epitome – of what Warner calls the “de facto congregationalism” of American religion (Warner 1994).

Sociologically, however, we know that crossing emotionally-laden and socially-significant boundaries is a difficult process, and often does not happen. Divisions of race, ethnicity, and neighborhood can be daunting to even the best-intentioned attempts to bring people together. And historically, U.S. evangelical Protestantism was often not hospitable to social diversity. We speculate, consistent with much recent theorizing about the importance of symbolic boundaries for ordering social life (e.g., Lamont and Fournier 1992), that one way to facilitate and enable the crossing of such significant boundaries is to offer another, perhaps equally emotionally-laden, boundary as a rival organizing scheme. Perhaps these urban ministries are offering just such a replacement boundary in their rigorous codes of personal morality. Moral rigor, and a strict interpretation of the categories that go with such distinctions, separates people into good/bad, saved/unsaved, or righteous/fallen. This may offer the kind of cognitive moral order and a set of emotionally satisfying distinctions that can replace the ethnoracial divisions as a salient way for people to identify themselves and others.

Thus, young people in these groups may learn that Latino or Anglo is a less important marker of distinction than sexual chastity or abstinence with alcohol. This kind of re-ordering of the social world allows youth to cross ethnic or neighborhood lines, and to forsake the old ways of thinking (as well as old social networks) that held potential peril for them. With this shift in organizing the social world, there can be an accompanying shift in personal identity. “I” statements begin to revolve around actions connected with personal morality – “I am not a person who has premarital sex” – rather than around ascribed characteristics. Further, the moral code also makes concrete and specific the more abstract dimensions of a developing religious identity. That is, it gives practical, daily meaning to the idea that “I am a Christian,” bracketing more difficult issues of theology and belief until behavioral dimensions of the identity are more secure. In sum, we think that these more traditional and stricter moral codes may indeed be one of the reasons the youth groups we studied functioned so well. This is not necessarily because of some economic calculus of rationality by young people, but rather because it gives them an immediate and practical way to demonstrate their commitments, and it gives them the beginnings of a personal and collective identity that can help them move beyond the life circumstances in which they find themselves.

CONCLUSIONS

While the health of the American public sphere is a matter for debate among pundits, scholars, and citizens, few doubt its importance. Further, there is general agreement that any path toward ameliorating whatever problems there are in American civil society involves tending to the health of our normative organizations. Healthy organizations need consistent renewal in their membership; we take it as axiomatic that for religious organizations to survive and prosper they must attract and keep young people. Thus, our concern with institutions leads us to focus on the ways in which religious institutions shape personal and collective identity for youth.

Institutions shape personal identity by providing answers to the question "who am I?" They locate the individual in her or his social contexts. However, this is not just a matter of cognitive beliefs and attitudes – it also involves the crucial "reference groups" through which people see themselves and make decisions. That is, identity often involves the question "Does the type of person that I think that I am, engage in such-and-such a behavior?" There is a reflexive and fundamentally social dimension to personal identity.

In this essay we have described a number of urban youth ministries run by evangelical Protestant churches. While far from assigning them a salvatory role in American society, we do see aspects of their work that we think are hopeful. We have highlighted the role these groups often play in helping young people, as individuals, develop into healthy, self-sufficient adults. In addition, we have called attention to one dimension of them – their social diversity across racial and ethnic lines – that could provide some hope for American civil society more generally. If congregations are in fact, anything close to the “first institutions of American politics,” in de Tocqueville’s words, then seeing the voluntary diversity exhibited in these mini-public spheres may bode well for our national public life.(5) This will not happen without work and perseverance, it is not a “natural” by-product of conservative religion or traditional morality. But within the dynamics of a number of evangelical churches, we may have seen possible models for a more inclusive public sphere.

4.We note that the members of the UYP themselves are ethnoracially diverse, with members who are white, black, Latino, and Asian.
5.For considerations of aspects of religion in public life and as a public sphere itself, see Swatos and Wellman (1999).

References: Part IV
Go back: Part I
Go back: Part II

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