Pulling Together : Black Clergy Say Church May Have Answers to Communities’ Social Ills

There was once a time in black America when the church, with its early morning sermons and Sunday school afternoons, was the central force in the inner city--an institution that stirred spiritual inspiration and moral obligation within those who crowded its pews.

Nowadays, it often seems that drugs and gangs have more influence on the lives of those in urban America than old-time religion. But many black ministers say it is still possible to combat contemporary problems with an age-old solution--the church.

Seeking Mutual Answers

To prove that point, 200 ministers from throughout the nation have gathered in Los Angeles this weekend for the Harambee Pastors Summit, a three-day conference in which members of the black clergy will seek mutual answers to problems plaguing urban communities.

“We believe the healing of this hurting generation has to start someplace, and the best place, we believe, is the church. It is the one thing that bonds urban America together,” said Gail Hughes, administrator of the 14-year-old Pasadena-based church group, Harambee Corp. The national coalition of black churches organized the multidenominational conference being held at the Westin Bonaventure.

Harambee means “let’s pull together” in Swahili. And pulling together is what black America has to do, said ministers gathered for the summit, if problems such as drug abuse, teen pregnancy and unemployment are ever going to be properly addressed and controlled within inner-city communities.

‘Spiritually on Welfare’

“We don’t want to be spiritually on welfare or physically on welfare,” said Harambee President Chuck Singleton, a Fontana minister who added that the church could succeed where governmental programs have failed. “We believe solutions to problems in black America lie in black America.”

Pinpointing those solutions is the purpose of the meeting, which began Thursday and will end this afternoon. Ministers representing more than 300,000 parishioners from Detroit to Los Angeles shared with one another programs that have proven successful in combatting problems ranging from illiteracy to urban development.

For example, a Los Angeles minister whose church rides the border of turf claimed by the Rolling 60s and Hoover Street Crips learned tips from a Detroit pastor on counseling gang members. Other members of the clergy told one another of programs within their sanctuaries that found jobs for the unemployed, homes for the homeless and help for drug addicts.

Among the many programs discussed was a loan program initiated by a Dallas congregation and Operation New Genesis, which enrolls San Diego children who have been subjected to gang violence and drug abuse in a private church school where they can learn behavior different from what they have seen.

The ultimate goal is to sort out the best of the programs, write them down and distribute these working models next year at Harambee ‘90, a conference organizers hope will draw 2,000 ministers and community activists to Los Angeles where they will be able to set an agenda for the 1990s.

“Los Angeles has the spotlight for most of what we’re challenged by,” said Frank Wilson, director of next year’s conference who explained what organizers hope will come out of the event. “Let’s say there is a pastor in Brooklyn who has pulled together a coalition of pastors and government subsidies and they’ve built low-income housing. . . . We’re going to mount it (his model) in such a way that a minister from Topeka, Kan., can in 1990 literally pick that project up and take it back.”

Kenneth Ulmer, chairman of Harambee, conceded that in the past the church has often concentrated more on problems of the spirit than those of survival. And Singleton added that not even the church can make social ills fade entirely away.

“They’ll never go away,” Singleton said. “But we can change their intensity.”

The process, Ulmer said, is just beginning. “Prior to the 1950s there was a spiritual focus on solving these problems only. In the ‘60s and ‘70s there was a social focus only. But now, we realize it’s not either/or, but both/and. We have to synthesize rather than polarize.”