CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Worldly or Otherworldly?
“Activism” in an Urban Religious District
Omar M. McRoberts
INTRODUCTION
Colloquially, the term “faith-based activism” refers to extroverted forms of social action
originating in religious institutions. Churches with food pantries and shelters for bat-
tered women, or that build homes and run welfare-to-work programs, or whose leaders
organize marches and protests, are considered “activist.” It is assumed that religious be-
liefs and practices are no obstacle for these churches – there is no contradiction between
faith and activism. By contrast, churches that do apparently little for nonmembers are
called “insular,” and it is assumed that these institutions face religious ideological bar-
riers to activity in the secular world. It is tempting to call one group “worldly” and the
other “otherworldly,” or one “church” and the other “sect” as have so many scholarly
observers (Weber 1922/1963; Troeltsch 1931; Iannaccone 1988; Johnson 1963).
Indeed, among those ideas at the heart of the sociology of religion is the distinction
between worldly and otherworldly modes of religious presence. Beneath most typolo-
gies of religious organizations is the notion that some churches are oriented toward
earthly matters, while others completely turn their backs to secular human affairs,
seeking solace in the promise of a better world to come. The worldly/otherworldly di-
chotomy is implicit especially in works attempting to sort African-American churches.
Scholars of black religion have, for instance, divided black churches into “expres-
sive” and “instrumental.” Expressive congregations are highly insular religious enclaves
whose members avoid all involvement in political and secular social matters. They value
emotional catharsis above all else. Instead of confronting in secular terms the societal
roots of black suffering, these churches use worship to scrape off the psychic barnacles
accumulated “out there” in the world. Church is therefore a way to escape the world,
or discard the world, if only temporarily. Commentators usually associate expressive
forms with the myriad Pentecostal and other “sect” congregations that occupied (and
continue to occupy) countless commercial storefronts in depressed black neighbor-
hoods. By contrast, instrumental congregations are inherently political. The pastors of
these typically Baptist and Methodist churches preach politics from the pulpit and run
for public office. Here, most religious activities are geared toward “uplifting the race.”
Instead of escaping the world, these churches plunge headlong into it in order to alter
it (Drake 1940; Frazier 1963/1974).
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