"Something there is that doesn't love a wall." Tim Ritchie, a founding elder of New City Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was quoting poetry. "I'm not sure what Robert Frost meant," Ritchie continued, "but I know that Something is Jesus!" He reminds his listeners that New City Church doesn't love walls either. The church must "tear down walls that separate people in all walks of life," he says, and "build bridges between people separated by social, economic, racial and generational differences."
Before Ritchie could settle back into his seat after delivering this message, Birmingham police officers appeared at the back of the sanctuary and spoke quietly to some deacons. There was a bomb threat; everyone was told to leave the church immediately.
I took the threat seriously. Besides thinking about the Oklahoma City bombing, I remembered the history of Birmingham, where preachers' homes were bombed and torched by white racists in the '50s and '60s. This was the city that civil rights historian Taylor Branch called "the Bastille of segregation." This was the home of the 16th Street Baptist Church, where four little girls died when segregationists bombed the church on a Sunday morning in September 1963.
Gerald Austin, pastor of New City, hasn't forgotten such facts. Standing on a curb, Austin surveyed the members of his flock as they stood in the parking lot hedged in by office buildings. He reminded his interracial congregation that there are those who hate the sort of racial reconciliation New City Church is trying to achieve. Later, we learned that the bomb threat was an adolescent prank, not a racist's attack.
Austin knows the sting of racial prejudice. He attended Phillips High School, one of white Birmingham's finest and most intellectually progressive schools, when it was integrated over the violent and vocal opposition of segregationists. Austin endured spiteful notes and verbal and physical abuse from his white classmates. Despite painful memories of these incidents, he is committed to racial reconciliation.
Austin's close friendship with Ritchie, who is white, demonstrates the message of reconciliation he preaches at New City Church and propounds in public. In a joint op-ed piece for the Birmingham News, Austin and Ritchie argued that "racial reconciliation is a matter of the heart" that takes place "only in the context of a real relationship between people who need to be reconciled." For the two of them, that relationship is marked by candor, conflict and commitment. A central principle of their friendship – and for the New City Church and its outreach ministries – is that a "kingdom divided against itself will not stand." American society, they worry, will "come apart at the seams unless we find a way to bring about harmony across racial and ethnic lines."
They argue that Christians must lead the way toward reconciliation by forming face-to-face friendships with individuals of different races. "Don’t try to take on the giant problem of 'racial reconciliation,'" Austin and Ritchie counsel. "Just become committed to a specific person."
The two share responsibilities at the church's Center for Urban Missions (CUM), a community-development ministry. Austin founded CUM nine years ago; Ritchie joined the staff as program director in 1992.
CUM focuses its efforts on the families living in the Metropolitan Gardens, Birmingham's largest public housing project. The ills of the inner city, Austin says, are not "black" problems but "our" problems. The whites Austin has attracted to his ministry agree. White staff members at CUM make the racial balance there nearly even. (At New City Church about 20 percent of the congregation is white.)
Some inner-city residents dislike the fact that whites have visible and active roles within CUM, and argue that black problems should be resolved by blacks alone. Because the local elementary school principal voices this opinion, CUM has been unable to collaborate within the school.
Austin runs interference when this issue arises, and he is candid with the white workers:
I always encourage [whites] not to come in basically pretending that nothing's ever happened in our past, but [rather] to assume some sense of corporate responsibility and admit there's been some ugly problems in the past. If you don't deal with the problems of the past, you tend to come in patronizing.
CUM works to break down barriers of class as well as race. New City Church is predominantly middle class, but it welcomes newcomers who learn of the congregation through CUM's ministry in the projects. The ghetto ministry grew out of Austin's personal experience. He and his eight siblings grew up in the projects in a single-parent family. He knows that it is possible to get out of the ghetto. Austin's mother escaped the projects because she refused to "make peace with poverty." Austin challenges the residents of Metropolitan Gardens to imitate her example.
"Welfare dependency acts like a community narcotic," Austin argues. "What families need is not a handout to make them comfortable in their poverty; rather, they need to be challenged, equipped and inspired to become everything God created them to be."
To help families escape the underclass, CUM operates a Family Care Center near Phillips High in the Metropolitan Gardens area. CUM offers after-school academic and recreational programs for children, as well as Bible studies, parenting classes and job-hunting help. CUM encourages leadership in the community by hiring local residents to run these programs.
Austin and Ritchie emphasize, however, that CUM's programs are far less important than the friendships staff develop with local families, and the biblical discipleship and moral challenge that occur within the context of those friendships. Staff help residents regain self-confidence by teaching them about their identity and value in God's eyes. With this and CUM's practical help, 50 families have started on the road out of the ghetto. Eight families have gotten off public assistance and moved out of Metropolitan Gardens; 20 adults have found new jobs in recent months through CUM's JobMatch program. Others are enrolled in GED programs or plan to enter junior college this fall.
On an average day, 60 kids find refuge from the street inside the mint green and lavender walls of the center. Last summer, as part of a CUM camp, 11-year-old Omedia Walker helped public a 23-page newspaper filled with student-authored accounts of life in the projects. Omedia wrote, "Almost every night I hear gunshots coming from the back and sometimes the front of the house, and I just pray, hope and think that the Lord will hear my prayers. If it wasn't for God, I don't know how anyone would survive." In addition to spending afternoons and evenings at the center, Omedia attends a private Christian school outside the ghetto on a CUM scholarship.
Omedia's mother, Deloise Walker, is relieved that her daughter has a safe place to study and play. Walker has been on welfare for two years but it studying for her GED and improving her typing and computer skills at the Family Care Center. She plans to attend a business college and major in computers, then find a job that will take Omedia and her other children out of the projects for good. CUM staff applaud these aspirations and rejoice in the spiritual growth they have seen in Walker.
Austin and Ritchie believe that the spiritual component of CUM's work at Metropolitan Gardens not only helps residents recover a sense of their own self-worth, but also helps them change their thinking. In the current welfare system, Ritchie explains, it makes little sense for a single mother of two or three children to give up welfare and get a job. The kinds of jobs available to poorly trained, poorly educated welfare recipients pay far less than the combined welfare benefits of food stamps, subsidized rent, free medical care and AFDC. "If you see it in economic terms only," Ritchie says, "there is no point in working." That's why CUM offers biblical teaching. "You have to convince people that it is good to work, whether or not it makes economic sense. It's important for their soul; it's important for their children; it's important for the community."
Dorothy Wills, a former Metropolitan Gardens resident who oversees CUM's JobMatch program, agrees. "The jobs program can't be just a jobs program. People need spiritual help."
Other community leaders favor traditional liberal political strategies such as advocacy efforts and massive voter registration campaigns. CUM staff tend to be enthusiastic about school choice vouchers and welfare reform. They quickly add, however, that reforms must include a system of support for families trying to make the leap from welfare to work.
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