The Institute (協会)

Is that "Jake" referring to me, or another Jake?

I agree wholeheartedly with the quote by Patterson. My dissertation was partly on this subject. The war on drugs has ravaged the Black community via the removal of Black men from the community. It's created imbalanced sex ratios that lower marriage rates for Black women and increase promiscuity among non-imprisoned Black males. It also increases single-parent homes, and insofar as two parents are an input in the production of education by young children, lowers educational attainment among youth. AND insofar as lower educational attainment increases the expected gains from illicit work (combined with the already really bad public schools, caused by how public schools are financed through property taxes combined with sorting of high and low income families into separate parts of a city), you end up with even more criminals being produced in equilibrium. All said, I'm wholly unconvinced that the solution to this problem is to point fingers at the church for failing this community. The problem is a government prohibition of drugs combined with an increase in the incarceration rate (Read Loury's piece for more on this). The church cannot replace the environmental conditions of a two-parent home - they are not subsitutes for one another. James Heckman's research, and more recent work by Levitt and Roland Fryer, suggests that the investments made at very early age have very longterm effects on Black/White divergences.

Also, for evidence of Patteron's claim that "the prison system makes hardened criminals of nonviolent drug offenders and spits out angry men who are unemployable, unreformable and unmarriageable, closing the vicious circle," see the following papers.

1. Hard Time and Recidivism

Jesse Shapiro and Keith Chen Do harsher prison conditions reduce recidivism? A discontinuity-based approach."
American Law and Economics Review, Spring 2007.

2. Prison and Marriage

Kerwin Charles and Ming Luoh, Male Incarceration, the Marriage Market and Female Outcomes, University of Chicago Unpublished Manuscript

Bruce Western, Leonard M. Lopoo and Sara McLanahan Chapter 2 from Imprisoning America, "Incarceration and the Bonds Between Parents in Fragile Families, 2004.

3. Prison and Sexual Health

Rucker Johnson and Steven Raphael, The Effects of Male Incarceration Dynamics on AIDS Infection Rates among African-American Women and Men, June 2006, University of California Berkeley Working Paper.

Christopher Cornwell and Scott Cunningham, Sex Ratios and Risky Sexual Behavior, November 2006, University of Georgia Working Paper.

4. Prisons and Employment

Stephen Raphael, Harry Holzer and Michael Stoll have published extensively on this.

These are just the works by economists and some sociologists that I know of, and really only the most recent work that I'm familiar with. But the general picture from these papers suggests that the very high incarceration rate has causal effects on the Black family, as opposed to being just the effect of those underlying forces.

JB, sorry that was for "Jake Meador"

You want to know why the church isn't doing anything? This just happens to be a soapbox, so watch out.

The Church in this country (the wealthy part with resources) is a part of white upper middle class America. As such our culture has taught us that other people hurt us and living in community is dangerous. we spend the majority of our time driving from our castles into work. We associate on a superficial level with the people we work with. We drive home and seal ourselves into our drive-in Garages and spend the night numbing the pain of our existence with a couple of drinks and television.

We go to bed and we do it all over again, living only to protect ourselves from the pain of living.

Sunday is no different at all for many of us simply performing a ritual while maintaining superficial relationships.

Because life is hard and this world is cruel we horde our resources, (time, energy, money) and make sure we are are secure from the pains of the world. Those who live in poverty in the cities are a danger to the security of white middle class America. They are a tremendous resource to the church of Christ and to the kingdom. Often they understand Community living and risk much better than we do - if we understood this we would work to recruit them to be our teachers.

Instead of first living as believers who long to see the kingdom come, we choose to live as Americans who long to protect ourselves until Jesus comes to "take us away from all of this."

Sorry this turned into a rant, but it seemed blogworthy, so i posted on my blog about this too with a trackback - thanks for giving me a platform.

Jared, so, your point is that if white churches were using their resources and pouring them into urban ministries targeted at Black communities, that these phenomeon would no longer exist? I really, really hope you are right. If so, then I can actually have some shred of hope. At this point, I'm hopelessly of the opinion that until the war on drugs is changed fundamentally, these problems will persist in the Black community. Nothing in my research has made me see it any other way.

Jared, you and any of the other bros, are free to rant here anytime. You don't need to apologize ever for ranting. . .we need more guys ranting about stuff like this. Put your entire blog post (from the other blog) in the comment section here if you want. We're all ears!!

Keep up the good work! Rant away!

The revolution continues. . .

Scott, I truly believe with all my heart that the complacency of the white middle class church in America is a bigger problem (and more difficult to overcome) than all the problems in all the poverty stricken, warring places on earth.

If we got over our complacency and out of our sterile lives, we could begin to work for change. as it is, we are watching the world die around us, while trying to duck and cover.

Anthony asks: "why isn't the church moving in to mentor and surrogate father children trapped in single-parent situations?"

Answer: It's hard, and it's takes too much time - because we are weak and undisciplined.

For the last fifteen years we've come to the same conclusion in every community ministry group I ever been involved with. One of the greatest needs in our neighborhoods stems from the breakdown of the family structure. No dads, no moms = no sense of belonging, poor education, lack of direction and likely a criminal destination. Go figure, abandoned kids turn out messed up?

The struggle is horrible. Many Christians know what the right answer is but cannot act on it because of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear that preconceptions might be true, fear of results. It is far easier to send a check to an international or national ministry than to step forward and act. "God help us" if we actually stepped out into the community with the gospel and there was a response. What would we do? What if they started coming to our church?

To help us with the resulting pain from our sin of omission we busy ourselves; either with a vapid engagement with cultural trappings or equally vapid "church" activities. If a church function does not either engage the world or equip one to engage the world it what is its value?

You hit a good (and very shallow) nerve with this post. I wonder though how I'll listen and respond to my own rant.

Peace.

Jared - that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking, do you think that addressing White complacency in the church (assuming it is as bad as you say - I have no data on this at all, only anecdotes) is really the key to addressing the problem in Black communities. Because, like I'm saying, i think the problem is intricately bound up in the prison institution and law enforcement. Put it this way - if the church was doing what you said it needed to do, my prior is that the problems would only be marginally improved.

Scott - maybe that energy could go towards raising awareness of the problems that the prison system is doing to community - I agree that a dad who smokes weed on the weekends is a better dad to have than no dad at all. Too many men are locked up and treated like less than men in places where they fear for their lives, are forced to become tougher just to make it, are exposed to sexual assault, disease, etc. I'm not sure I know what would happen if drugs were made legal (it makes me wonder if that means antibiotics should be street legal) but anything is better than locking a young man up who isn't violent.

Perhaps the reason many "white" churches aren't reaching out to the black community is the same reason they're not reaching out to their own members. Not trying to do a "kinist" argument here, but if a man doesn't reach out to the guy he sits next to each Sunday, how on earth can you expect him to reach out to a man he doesn't know in the inner city?

Anthony- Thanks for posting this. It's a really helpful balance to Carter's riff.

I'm going to read the 9 Marks journal on race later tonight. After that I may write a few posts over at my blog about the gospel and race. Would love to get your thoughts on them once their up :).

Thank you for posting this. I've provided a link back from my blog.

I lead a mercy/mission ministry in our mostly white PCA church on the south side of Atlanta. We're trying to make some inroads into our community by meeting some of the needs raised in this discussion, so it's always good to learn more. Thanks and please keep up the discussion.

Great Jake M.!! Let me know when they´re up!!

First and foremost, great material from all that have took part. I agree completely with the above link. The main reason I see the church straying away as some could see, is due to hope and faith being of a personal relationship with Christ. We cannot expect this problem to be dealt with by throwing love and uneffective compassion at the source. The root of which, I argue, to the black emergence of political power prior to economic power. Ofcourse the bling culture, not only because of it's effect, but how strong it has grasped the black community to be stewards of its cause. That is an example of rooting, if you will, into what holds the culture fabric together. In reality, while faith is important, I have recently been turned off by black pastors in my community that do not portray what I believe to be Christian principles in their public life. Again, you ask why hasn't the church taken a bigger role? I gotta say, money, goods, and love will not solve the downward spiral of cyclical trends,only personal responsibliy and desire will lead those looking for answers to increase the pursuit for change.

Jon - You can't say everything in the comments of a post, so it probably seems like I'm advocating for complete deregulation and I'm not. On the one hand, the higher incarceration rate, which more and more lately researchers are saying is exogeneous to the crime rate (that is, we're expanding the prison population in such a way as to be unrelated to the underlying crime rate), has hurt Black men and Black women in many documented ways. But, at the same time, illicit drugs wreck their own havoc on the community too. Crack cocaine, for instance, itself was responsible for an increase in property crimes by users who used larceny and burglary to fund their addictions. The gigantic spike in gonorrhea and syphilis among Black and Whites is entirely caused by the crack cocaine. I could go on and on. Point is, the war on drugs is a response to a real problem. The more recent meth epidemic is showing that White communities have their own versions of these things, too.

I do think there are solutions besides prohibition, though. Taxation may be a possibility. Taxing alcohol has tremendous social benefits by reducing alcohol consumption (for a review of those benefits, see Phillip Cook's new book, Paying the Tab: The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control. I suspect that more demand-oriented policies meant to discourage consumption would ultimately have far less social costs than our current policy of targetting sellers. I mean, think about the opportunity costs drug prohibition creates for young black high school students. There is a foregone opportunity in the drug trafficking incurred by going to school. I don't see how the cycle of poverty and crime can really be broken without removing these incentives.

I wish I could believe the solution was just to have the church do more, but I can't conceptualize how that really does get to the heart of the problem. I'm actually open to the idea that the American church is currently mitigating the problem, not worsening it.

I don't know if anyone knows this but putting drug sellers behind bars (especailly repeat offenders) is a good idea. To say that there is a non-violent drug seller is a lie. Let me give you an example, you have two pitbulls one was raised to serve and protect the other was raised to kill. Who do you blame the dog or the master? Drug sales produce violence. Some of the most henious crimes are done to get money for drugs so that is a ridiculous statement to me. Yeah the drug dealer may not be violent (which is rare) but he sure generates violence and he knows it. I was involved with drugs for qite some time and I know what Heroin and Crack attics did to get some of the stuff, anywhere from selling their 13 year old daughter for money to breaking into their elderly parents house to steal money or goods. Come on guys we have to get real.

Now you raised the million dollar question Prof Bradley. That is why aren't we moving towards helping single moms and others. I guess out of site out of mind. Someone talked about safety and it is the truth. We commute for hours (I do about 3hrs per day) by the time I get home I am exhausted, then I have my sons and wife to take care of and sleep. Once you throw in a bible study and accountablity group, I am pretty much done for. However, right up the street from my church are some of the most hood apartments in the area, the problem is everyone in my church is in Seminary, College or trying to pay for the mortgage, car notes, and student loans we wrapped up in church. The saddest thing is we are raising our kids to keep this cycle going.

"and student loans we wrapped up in church"

I meant racked up in college, typing too fast. Sorry

Okay, everything is spiritual...I'll grant it for the sake of argument. That means "how" one talks and carries themselves has moral implications. Should I care that he is seemingly effeminate and is the spiritual or unspiritual? I am being serious, how do we work out what he is saying in daily practice?

Does he define what he means be "spiritual" in his talk? I would be curious.