Black Churches and Civic Traditions: Outreach, Activism, and the Politics of Public Funding of Faith-Based Ministries

Religion serves multiple purposes in the civic life of African-Americans.Viewed by a generation of scholars as a form of social control that helped blacks cope with slavery and racial segregation, the variety of Christianity that emerged out of the black American experience contributed to various move-ments for racial reform for much of the twentieth century. What evolved out of Afro-Christianity is a civic tradition that nurtures a sense of charity for the poor and an active engagement in political life. While black religious traditions had different ideas about how to challenge racial inequalities in American life—indeed whether at all churches should challenge inequalities through political agitation—by the post-civil rights era most black religious traditions were at a consensus about the need for churches to be vigorously engaged in community outreach and to be involved, in some way, in political matters. As an institution reflecting the interests of an economically marginal pop-ulation, urban black ministers and churches have been committed to providing social services to the poor. However, that commitment varies, depending on the financial constraints of a congregation as well as on the doctrinal belief