B2 eZ re K THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAy, NOVEMbER 9 , 2019
RELIGION
BY PATTON DODDone weekend last spring, s igns
reading “ Stop Low-Income Hous-
ing” started showing up around
my neighborhood in suburban
San Antonio. A developer is plan-
ning a workforce housing devel-
opment near our subdivision,
and the signs invited us to a
purported “community town
hall” that would feature a Q&A
with the developer in question.
But the sign-makers clearly
had in mind something more l ike
a rally, and a rally is what they
got, with 200-plus aggravated
residents packed into a golf club
pavilion. As the developer’s rep-
resentative began to go through
her PowerPoint presentation,
questions sailed across the room:
What will this do to our property
values? What will this do to our
schools? What if felons move in?
What if crime rises? Why should
our taxes help other people live
here, when no one ever helped
us?
As I watched and listened, I
kept thinking of the question I
most wanted to ask — not of the
developer, but of my neighbors:
Where do you go to church?
As an inconsistent churchgoer
myself, I wasn’t being holier than
thou. But I had noticed that
several of the cars in the parking
lot were adorned with the bum-
per stickers of prominent subur-
ban churches. I had to wonder:
What would this conversation
look like if it began at those
churches instead of a town hall
or rally? What would it look like
if churches — given their mission
of supporting families — were
leading the conversation about
the shortage of proper and af-
fordable housing?
To stretch it further: What
would it look like if churches
were helping to make affordable
housing possible?
on my commute to work, I
tend to note the abundance of
churches. Today, I saw more than
a dozen between my house and a
morning breakfast meeting, then
another handful between the
cafe a nd the office. I pass through
a range of neighborhoods along
my way — affluent, working-
class, struggling — and notice
how churches tend to resemble
the neighborhoods they’re in.
Like many large cities, San
Antonio struggles with deep ruts
of economic and social segrega-
tion. In my northern suburb, the
poverty rate is less than 4 per-
cent. In neighborhoods just out-
side o ur downtown, p overty r ates
hover near 40 percent. That gap
represents severe challenges for
many households. While in some
parts of town children have ac-
cess to every imaginable oppor-
tunity — good schools, safe
homes, proper health care, plen-
ty of green space — families in
other areas of town struggle
against decades of neglect.
Churches, like schools and
homes and streets, are features
on this landscape of wealth dis-parity. Churches are in their
neighborhoods, and they are of
their neighborhoods, reflections
of the social, cultural and eco-
nomic conditions of their imme-
diate surroundings.
Whatever the physical condi-
tion of the churches, though,
they tend to be well located. We
tend to think of churches as
backward-looking, but when it
comes to real estate, pastors and
priests have long been pioneers.
Why do steeples define the sky-
lines of town squares and corner
lots across America? How did
large church properties get
tucked away within densely
packed subdivisions? Because
ministers are settlers — they
move into an undeveloped area,
drop anchor and stay put for the
long haul. That’s true whether
you’re talking about P uritans and
Spanish colonists of yesteryear
or megachurch planters of our
era — in many suburban develop-
ments, some of the oldest build-
ings are the large churches, sur-
rounded by their expanses of
parking lots.
Here in San Antonio, religious
real estate is at the center of our
historical geography. Before the
Alamo was a renowned battle
site, it was mision San Antonio
de Valero, one of five local Span-
ish missions, all built well before
the American revolution. Adja-
cent to and towering over our city
hall is the San fernando Cathe-
dral, the oldest functioning ca-
thedral in the United States.San Antonio remains a
churchgoing city, and churches
of all kinds and sizes are situated
in every part of town. They’re in
our gentrifying inner core, with
evangelical start-ups as well as
old mainline Protestant and
Catholic churches hanging on
amid craft breweries and trendy
brunch spots. They’re in our
most economically distressed ar-
eas — aging Catholic churches or
weathered clapboard chapels ad-
jacent to v acant lots. And they’re
all over the suburbs, where the
larger churches can own acres
and acres of land because, again,
they got there first, anchoring
the sprawl. Earlier this year, an
initial study by the city’s faith-
Based Initiative estimated that
there are over 3,000 acres of
underutilized church real estate.
Amid and around all these
churches is a city with all sorts of
social needs, including those that
many churches use their space to
meet, including food pantries
and after-school care. But among
the largest and most pressing
needs are housing options that
people can afford in all areas of
town. As w ith most b ig cities, San
Antonio’s limited stock of afford-
able housing is mostly contained
in the parts of town that generate
the least economic mobility for
workers. for people to be able to
live and work productively, for
families to flourish, they need far
more housing opportunities in
every part of town.
I’m not about to propose thatchurch real estate is a silver
bullet in the affordable housing
crisis. But it is absolutely the case
that many churches are holding
underutilized real estate — park-
ing lots (and the airspace above
them), vacant lots and empty or
mostly empty buildings.
It’s a lso the c ase t hat in this era
of declining religious affiliation,
churches across the nation are
getting creative about what to do
with their underutilized real es-
tate.
In downtown Denver, a Catho-
lic cathedral leased its parking
lot for $1 to a nonprofit develop-
er, which built a 50-unit afford-
able housing complex on the site.
That inspired other faith com-
munities to take similar action,
including an evangelical church
that is also building a 50-unit
complex in the lot behind its
building. The local Interfaith Al-
liance studied county data t o find
about 5,000 acres of underdevel-
oped church properties with po-
tential for housing solutions.
Last year, reuters reported on
similar church-driven affordable
housing efforts underway in Ar-
lington, Va., and the greater
Washington area.
Here in San Antonio, a couple
of aging and underutilized
church properties are being rede-
veloped for affordable housing —
on the site of a former Catholic
seminary, and on the parking lot
of a historic Lutheran church. In
both cases, though, the move
toward affordable housing wasdriven not b y the churches but by
developers who knew how to
take advantage of state tax cred-
its to subsidize the cost of re-
duced rents.
What would it look like for
churches to lead this conversa-
tion? How would the conversa-
tion about affordable housing be
changed if churches across the
city were openly examining their
properties for ways they could be
utilized on behalf of families in
need?
San Antonio was the fastest-
growing metro area in the nation
in 2018. We’re growing out, an-
nexing developments outside
city limits. And we’re growing up,
with our downtown and the his-
toric neighborhoods that ring it
quickly transforming after de-
cades of stagnation. Cranes dot
the skyline; pink survey flags dot
the sidewalks.
meanwhile, according to the
latest census data, we’re also the
poorest large urban region in the
nation. Last year, median in-
comes in the city declined as
housing prices continued to
climb. We’re thousands of units
of affordable housing shy of what
families need.
Churches can’t provide solu-
tions to this problem at s cale. But
they can provide leadership, spir-
itually and practically, by getting
creative about how their real
estate can help make space.Pa tton Dodd is a writer in San
Antonio.PERSPECTIVE
Cities need housing. Churches have property. Can they work out a plan?
if it affects his excellent work as
an Arlington County Board mem-
ber.”
Sandy Newton, president of
the Arlington County Civic feder-
ation, a nonpartisan collection of
neighborhood associations, said
she was sad for Dorsey.
“I don’t think it would have
made much of a difference in the
election anyway,” she said. “I
think he’s a capable person. But
he’s bouncing a lot of balls in the
air.”
Dorsey said the few members
of the Arlington County commu-
nity who know about his financial
situation have been supportive
and expressed concern for his
family. His wife, rachel feldman,
is a homemaker, according to the
petition, and has been dealing
with health problems. Dorsey de-
clined to elaborate.
feldman served as his cam-
paign manager this year and de-
signed his election literature, for
which he paid her $8,000, accord-
ing to his campaign finance dis-
closure reports.
Their three-bedroom brick
home is listed as worth $790,
on the bankruptcy petition. They
bought it for $625,000 on Aug. 14,
2008, county land records say.
[email protected]tie Cristol, to easily defeat two
independent candidates for one
of the two seats on the ballot.
other county board members
reached Thursday expressed sup-
port for Dorsey and declined to
discuss details of the bankruptcy
petition.
“What I’ve felt from him is
complete integrity,” said board
member matt de ferranti.
Cristol said: “A t this point,
based on what I know about it, it
affects him and his family. I doubtgest issues — [someone who will]
make sure we have a real housing
plan, who has the capacity to
come up with a storm-water man-
agement plan that is fiscally re-
sponsible and will work.”
on Thursday, h e said he did not
consider telling voters of his per-
sonal financial travails during the
campaign because “the public’s
interest is to see that I’m able to
do the public’s business.”
He received 37,972 votes Tues-
day, b ehind fellow incumbent Ka-metro does not directly do busi-
ness with that union, that dona-
tion was not a matter of concern
for the transit agency.
As c hair of the Arlington Coun-
ty Board, Dorsey is being paid
$60,662 this year. That job ro-
tates between members annually,
and when he relinquishes it in
January, he will make the regular
member’s w age of $55,147. H e also
works as a communications and
policy consultant, earning
$60,000 annually, the bankrupt-
cy petition said.
Before being elected, Dorsey
worked as a senior executive at
the Economic Policy Institute and
as a consultant. He s aid he earned
significantly more then, but he
did not specify what his salary
was.
Bankruptcy “is embarrassing,”
Dorsey said. “I’d rather it not be
the case.”
The bankruptcy petition shows
Dorsey has mortgage and auto
loan debt of $484,807, as well as
credit card or unsecured debt of
$86,733. He also faces an Internal
revenue Service tax lien of
$27,595.
Dorsey told The Post last
month that Arlingtonians should
vote for him because he has “the
fitness to solve Arlington’s big-planned privatization of some op-
erations of the Silver Line’s
Phase 2.
Dorsey raised $38,606 for his
reelection campaign this year,
and had $1,892 left in his cam-
paign coffers as of oct. 24. The
$10,000 ATU donation repre-
sents about 26 percent of his
donations.
He had another $10,000 dona-
tion, from the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Work-
ers. Smedberg said that becausequired him to disclose the dona-
tion within 10 days.
Dorsey told The Washington
Post on Tuesday that the delay
was an oversight. At the request
of the board’s chairman, Paul
Smedberg, he agreed to return
the donation from Amalgamated
Transit Union Local 689, which
represents most of metro’s work-
force and is preparing to square
off with management over the
dorsey from B
Bankruptcy petition by Arlington board chair reveals mortgage, tax and credit card debt
ASTrID rIeCKeN FOr THe WASHINgTON POST
Christian dorsey, who represents Northern Virginia on the Metro
board, speaks during a board meeting in 201 6 in Washington.BY JULIE ZAUZMERA sweeping theory published
Thursday in the journal “Science”
posits a new explanation for the
divergent c ourse of Western civili-
zation from the rest of the world:
The early Catholic Church re-
shaped family structures, and by
doing so, changed human psy-
chology forever after.
The researchers claim that they
can trace all sorts of modern-day
differences among cultures —
from donating blood to strangers
to paying parking tickets — to the
influence of medieval Catholi-
cism.
“The longer the duration under
the church will predict greater
individualism, less conformity
and o bedience, and more coopera-
tion and trust with strangers. our
findings have big implications,”
said Joseph Henrich, one of the
researchers.
The research, conducted by
George mason University econo-
mists Jonathan Schulz and Jona-
than Beauchamp and Harvard
University evolutionary biologists
Henrich and Duman Bahrami-
rad, tells a new story about how
human cultures turned out so dif-
ferent from one a nother.
That story begins with kinship
networks — the t ribes and c lans o f
densely connected, insular groups
of relatives who formed most hu-
man societies before medieval
times. Catholic Church teachings
disrupted those networks, in large
part by vehemently prohibiting
marriage between relatives
(which had been de rigeur), and
eventually provoked a wholesale
transformation of communities,
changing the norm from large
clans into small, monogamous n u-
clear families.
That cultural overhaul, the re-
searchers argue, prompted tre-
mendous changes to human psy-
chology.
The team analyzed Vatican re-
cords to document the extent of a
country’s or region’s exposure to
Catholicism before the year 1500,
and found that longer e xposure to
Catholicism correlated with low
measures of kinship intensity in
the modern era, including low
rates of cousins marrying each
other. Both measures correlated
with psychology, the researchers
found by looking at 24 different
psychological traits of people in
different cultures: Countries ex-
posed to Catholicism early have
citizens today who exhibit quali-
ties such as being m ore individual-
istic and independent, and being
more trusting of s trangers.
“This is the only theory that I
am aware of that attempts to ex-
plain broad patterns of human
psychology on a global scale,” Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania psycholo-
gy professor Coren Apicella wrote
in an email. Apicella, who was not
associated with this research but
has studied the evolution of reli-
gion, called the new paper “phe-
nomenal.”
marrying a cousin was common
practice in the large, close-knit
networks of kin that dominated
societies before Catholicism, the
researchers s aid, and r emains nor-
mal in many parts of the worldtoday. Bahmari-rad, one of the
researchers, said that he was
raised in Iran, where 3 0 percent of
marriages are to first or second
cousins, and that he was surprised
when he moved to the United
States: “I thought it’s weird that
Westerners don’t fall in love with
their cousins.”
By contrast, the early Catholic
Church was obsessed with pre-
venting incest, even between dis-
tant relatives, Schulz said: “Thir-
teen out of 17 church councils in
the sixth century were talking
about incest and incest regula-
tion.”
He a rgued that while s ome p eo-ple, including white nationalists,
tend to interpret any scientific
study about concrete differences
between cultures as evidence of
Western superiority, this study
should instead point to the ran-
domness of differences between
peoples. “There’s really nothing
special, to start with, about Eu-
rope, except that the church cre-
ates this obsession,” Schulz said.
“This could have happened with
other places around the world. It’s
just more or less coincidence this
happened in E urope.”
Because their analysis exam-
ined a country’s exposure to the
church before 1500, the research-ers noted, they did not study the
effects of the Protestant reforma-
tion, which b egan in 1 517.
As t hey studied places that w ere
colonized by Christian nations in
the years after 1500, they came up
with a Catholicism-exposure s core
for them, based on the proportion
of migrants to native population,
and the length of exposure of the
colonizing country before coloni-
zation. That led to some striking
differences.
much of Spain was under mus-
lim rule, not Christian, before
1492, s o Spain’s C atholicism-expo-
sure score is much lower than
England’s — m eaning mexico, col-onized by Spain, is m uch less i nflu-
enced eventually than New Eng-
land, c olonized by Britain.
Scientists describe a select set
of cultures as WEIrD: Western,
educated, industrialized, rich and
democratic. researchers have
known that these WEIrD coun-
tries — a concept introduced by
Henrich and other researchers in
2010 — share a slate of odd psycho-
logical t raits, i ncluding high levels
of individualism and trust in
strangers. This paper claims to
explain w hy.
The scientists say that the find-
ings explain cultural differences
on a strikingly precise level: “Just
to give an example,” Schulz said,
“we find that in the south of Italy
where medieval church exposure
was shorter, the rate of cousin
marriage is also higher [in mod-
ern times] and voluntary blood
donations are lower compared to
the n orth o f Italy.”
University of Chicago b ehavior-
al science professor Thomas Ta l-
helm, who w as not involved in t his
work and w ho has p reviously t ried
to explain cultural differences in
his own work by looking at which
regions grew wheat and which
regions grew rice, c alled t he paper
“interesting and i mportant.”
“I think this is really trying to
get at w here h uman c ulture comes
from,” he said. But he wondered
whether preexisting differences
between Europeans and others
laid the groundwork for the t rans-
formative church to take root:
“Where did the church come from
then? What caused the church?”
jul [email protected]Medieval Catholicism led to modern cultural di≠erences, researchers argue
AleSSANDrA TArANTINO/ASSOCIATeD PreSS
Faithful gather in st. Peter’s square at the Vatican on oct. 13, when Pope Francis canonized five saints.
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