414 Omar McRoberts
I pose this challenge using ethnographic data collected during a five-year study of
religious congregations in an economically depressed Boston neighborhood.
THE SETTING
Four Corners is a .6 square mile, largely poor, predominantly African-American neigh-
borhood containing at least twenty-nine congregations in 1999. Fifteen of these con-
gregations were majority African American. Of these, ten belonged to the Pentecostal-
Apostolic constellation of faiths. The remaining five congregations were Jehovah’s
Witness (three), Baptist (one), and Catholic (one). Nearly all of the churches in Four
Corners convene in storefronts. Fifty years ago, when the neighborhood was entirely
white and Jewish, these storefronts housed actual stores. The expansion of the black
population into the area sparked “white flight,” which in turn initiated the downward
spiral of systematic economic disinvestment. This process left in its wake a glut of
vacant commercial spaces. The result is what I call a “religious district,” where religious
communities exist in high density not because residents are “overchurched” (Frazier
1963/1974; Myrdal 1944) but because the neighborhood contains an abundance of
cheap, vacant commercial spaces on major thoroughfares.
Early in my study of religion in Four Corners, I thought it might be sufficient to
classify churches dichotomously and explain why so many fell into the otherworldly,
insular, nonactivist category. As I looked more closely, though, it became clear that
binary understandings of church work did not capture what most churches in this
religious districtthoughtthey were doing in and for society. Nearly all of the clergy,
including those who preached fiercely against “the world,” felt their churches needed to
leave an indelibly positive imprintonthe world. As such, these churches could be called
not only “worldly” but at least rhetorically “activist.” In short, the question for me
became not whether, buthowchurches saw themselves as agents for world betterment.
In the following, I discuss two empirical phenomena that proved highly salient
in this regard. Both phenomena challenge binary and dialectical modes of thinking
by illustrating how religious organizations blur the distinction between world and
otherworld so that the latter implies the former. One is the presence of churches
that use ideas from stereotypically otherworldly theologies not to shirk, but to justify
worldly activities. Second, churches ordinarily use transcendence-oriented practices,
such as “shouting” or “getting the holy ghost,” not as an existential escape hatch, but
to inspire and energize the faithful that they might be powerful agents for change in
a twisted, but unavoidable secular world.
Theological Conservatism and Activism
A host of sociological studies have found conservative theology – with its biblical literal-
ism and individualist, conversionist views of salvation – to inhibit ecumenism (Boldon
1985; Myers and Davidson 1984; Kanagy 1992) and social activism (Guest and Lee
1987; Hoge and Faue 1973; Kanagy 1992; Stark and Glock 1965; Hoge et al. 1978: 122).
Ethnographic studies of black Pentecostal congregations also reveal a tendency for con-
servative theology to suppress social activism (Paris 1982; Williams 1974). Meanwhile,
studies of ecumenical activist coalitions and recent dispatches from major sponsors of
such coalitions report that few, if any, participating churches represent theologically