We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The Black Church and the Community: Antebellum Times to the Present, Case Studies in Social Reform.
- Authors
Burris, Judith Crocker; Billingsley, Andrew
- Abstract
Two years of ethnographic research among Black churches in Savannah, Georgia, revealed that the First African Baptist Church has a long history of confronting community crises of a non-religious nature. The concepts of "privativistic and communal functions" are adapted from sociologists C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya to describe a series of encounters between this church and the African American secular community. A specific focus is on the work of the church and its dynamic and forward looking young minister to bring a measure of procedural and substantive due process to a group of Black youth involved with the criminal justice system. Two other churches are cited with outreach programs for Black youth of different ages. These case studies support the concept of a dynamic tension between the spiritual and the social missions of the church and the role of the minister as community leader. It would be difficult to find a church with a longer, more varied, and more distinguished history as an agent of social reform than the First African Baptist Church of Savannah. It is an outstanding example of a church combining both the privatistic orientation and the communal orientation, as set forth by sociologists with changing priorities given to each orientation throughout a long history.
- Subjects
AFRICAN American churches; SOCIAL problems; LINCOLN, C. Eric (Charles Eric), 1924-2000; MAMIYA, Lawrence; SOCIOLOGISTS; AFRICAN Americans
- Publication
National Journal of Sociology, 1994, Vol 8, Issue 1/2, p25
- ISSN
0892-4287
- Publication type
Article