Prelude to Struggle: African American Clergy and Community Organizing for Economic Development in the 1990s - Book Review

Prelude to Struggle: African American Clergy and Community Organizing for Economic Development in the 1990s, KATIE DAY. New York: University Press of America, 2002, 228 pp.; $38 (paper).

In her recently published book, Prelude to Struggle: African American Clergy and Community Organizing for Economic Development in the 1990s, Katie Day offers an insightful analysis of African American activist congregations using empirically rich data. This study utilizes both quantitative and qualitative methods to build a strong descriptive image of selected African American congregations in North Philadelphia. The investigation of the phenomenon of church involvement in community economic development highlights a new wrinkle in an historically familiar role for the Black Church and its clergy - that of advocate and proponent for the people of its congregations and communities.

The strengths of Day's work lie in rich ethnographic descriptions of the clergy who lead the congregations under investigation. The context specific empirical evidence combined with a well-grounded history of African American clergy found in the literature that the author mines with precision, blend to produce both a current and a historically grounded picture of African American clergy. This study follows the best of the ethnographic tradition, bringing the reader into the setting and providing insights into both individuals and the social environment.

While the overt emphasis on community economic development is interesting, it takes a back seat to the rich interpretative and explanatory excavation of the role of the pastor in the church and community. At times the work gets lost in the personalities of the pastors and loses focus on their relationship to the economic development of their communities, but the descriptions are interesting enough to have value in themselves. Anyone who shares an interest and experience in the African American Church, will find patterns and models here that resonate with other geographies and congregations. For those outside the African American community, the work would be most useful in combination with other works in the field, adding to the blend a current analysis of one area of the African American Church.

The descriptions of and variables included in the relationships to the community organization in the study seem unilateral and possibly oversimplified. In fairness, however, the study is specifically about the relationship of the church to the community organization, not the inverse. The comparison between the two distinct styles of economic development Day defines based on involvement or noninvolvement with a metropolitan coalitional, Alinsky-type organization, is based on clear, measurable characteristics of congregations, their members and the communities in which they exist. The descriptive measures of means and percentages, while authoritative and necessary as groundwork, added less to the depth of the volume than do the ethnographic descriptions and the linkages to classical literature about Black Church and clergy. The findings of the surveys provided building blocks for the construct of community economic development as a continuum of coabtional to congregational. While presented as a dichotomy, the a uthor avoids oversimplification by noting congregations that fail to fit comfortably in one camp or another. This imperfect fit lends credence to the model as more than a forced fit or overly simplistic model.

Given the cross denominational character of the research, it is curious, at the very least in this day and age, to hear no voices of women pastors. While strong female voices come through in the members of the congregation, the lack of female voices and charisma from the pastor's pulpit raises questions. This may be simply a reflection of the lived reality of the community, but the question remains. Where are the women clergy? Do women in leadership act differently than their male counterparts? Especially give the model of coalitional organization as compared to individual congregational action (often focused in the person of the pastor), gender variations would have added an interesting dimension to this discussion.

I had some concerns about the beginning of the book in the preface, where uncritical support of the Bush administration's faith-based initiatives appeared overly enthusiastic and even naive. While a cursory mention of criticisms from the liberal and conservative perspectives were suggested, the enthusiasm appeared academically lacking in critical depth and the criticism shallow. This really quite minor concern put me on guard at the beginning and possibly lead to a more careful and critical reading than might otherwise have been the case. Fortunately, my fears were unfounded and the book turned out to be a delightful exercise entering a familiar world, enriched with insights and connections that provided an increased understanding and perception.

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