Volume I, Number IV, August 2007

In this Newsletter you will find:

* Congregations in a Hot-spot: Advising on Behavior and Interpreting the Place, by Katie DiSalvo

* Studying Innovation: Early Models of Church Emerging in Canarsie, by Elaine M. White

* Upcoming News and Events at New York Theological Seminary and The Ecologies of Learning Project

A Letter from Lowell:

Summer Greetings!
           
         I am pleased to share wonderful news about the Ecologies of Learning staff. Shirvahna Gobin, already a central member of our EOL team in the role Project Coordinator—has been appointed Director of Administration and Development. Secondly, Dr. Max Herman, a noted urban sociologist at Rutgers University-Newark, has been appointed Research Associate Professor in Ecologies of Learning. 

        Shirvahna Gobin is dedicated to public service in New York City, and brings knowledge and experience from a variety of service organizations to her work at EOL.  She has been with EOL for more than two years, overseeing our office, facilitating public programs in the neighborhoods, and developing and launching our website (www.ecologiesoflearning.org), which I hope you will visit regularly.  In her new position, Shirvahna is responsible for managing and executing all the operational dimensions for the project including budgeting, planning (short- and long-term and strategic), internal staff coordination, community and public events, external relations and communication. In addition, she assumes major responsibility for fundraising and for developing the infrastructure that will ensure EOL’s future beyond the Lilly Endowment grant (which extends through 2009).

        Professor Max Herman is an accomplished urban sociologist with a strong interest in the role that religious institutions play in helping to alleviate ethnic/racial conflicts in rapidly changing urban communities. For the past six years at Rutgers University in Newark NJ, he has taught courses on race and ethnicity, urban sociology, civil conflict, and social movements. He is the editor of Fighting in the Streets: Ethnic Succession and Urban Unrest in 20th Century America (Peter Lang Publishers, 2005) and is completing a second book titled Summer of Rage: Newark, Detroit and the Summer of ’67 which utilizes oral history interviews to address the causes and consequences, memory and meaning of urban unrest in those two cities.  In addition to his work on demographic change and ethnic conflict, Dr. Herman continues to do research on the relationship between African American Christians and Jews in the Civil Rights Movement and in present day America.
           
        Professor Herman is now joining in our research on congregations and their neighborhoods – like Harlem, the Lower East Side, Flushing Queens, and Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant and Williamsburg – that are facing rapid change.  He will help us to continue to produce rich research, better understand religion in New York City, and better assist congregations working to serve their neighborhoods.

        We are definitely in a growth mode, and are still looking for research fellows and assistants.  See http://www.ecologiesoflearning.org/work.html for more info.

        EOL continues to display findings and be a resource for the community through forums, workshops, seminars, and the web. Last spring we hosted events on congregations and nightlife in the East Village, congregations and youth, and congregations looking to develop property.  Visit www.ecologiesoflearning.org, and you will find videos of these events, summaries of research, and resources for ministry.  And remember, we always want to know what you think of these projects, and your ideas for what we should do next.  Please write, call, or click into the website so we can all be connected!

                                                                                                                                                                                                      Sincerely,

                                                                                                                                                                                                              Lowell Livezey   
                                                                                                          Director, Ecologies of Learning Project
                                                                                                          Professor of Urban and Religious Studies
                                                                                                          New York Theological Seminary

Congregation in a hot-spot: advising on behavior and interpreting the place
By Katie DiSalvo
EOL Researcher  

        This spring the 14th St. Y sponsored a burlesque performance of the Exodus Story in Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction, bar on Avenue A.  Mary Help of Christians, a Catholic parish on 12th Street (now closed), started monthly nocturnal adoration.  Middle Collegiate hosted cabaret fundraisers for its Katrina relief work in local restaurants, and Iglesia Cristiana Misionera and a host of other congregations continued to hold evening bible studies.                                                                                                                                                         

         Amidst this diversity, we have identified two trends.  First, East Village religious leaders advocate for - or implicitly endorse - ways their congregations and members should position themselves vis-à-vis area nightlife. Positions congregational leaders promote can be divided into four categories: rejecting popular culture broadly; rejecting aspects of popular culture, with strong prohibitions against some nightlife behavior; embracing nightlife while promoting some Parameters on behavior; and embracing nightlife, emphasizing spirituality and values, and rarely, if ever, discussing sex and substances morality.  Most of the sixty-nine congregations we have identified in the East Village fall in the two middle categories.  The ten congregations we know prohibit alcohol consumption  include nine Hispanic protestant churches and the local mosque.  Leaders embracing nightlife while promoting some parameters on behavior, include Protestants that condemn drunkenness and congregations (including Protestants, Catholics, and others) whose leadership actively teach sexual morality.                                                                                                                                                                                In some of these congregations leaders are rethinking and reworking ways their traditions relate to popular culture and sex, sexuality and alcohol.  Leaders of Citylight Church, for example, come from churches where drinking is strongly prohibited. They have broken with this tradition, and see themselves as forging a new path.  They reject the mandate to “be in this world but not of it,” and habits of church people separating themselves from others.  Instead they seek to be inclusive and to integrate themselves and their church in its neighborhood.  They go out together and sometimes talk about Christ while in bars.                                                                                                                                           
        Second, we have found congregations of all religious and political stripes to discuss and refer to the identity of the East Village.  Some congregations reference and/or align themselves with widespread notions of the area.  Middle Collegiate, for example, advertises itself as “Old time religion with an East Village Twist.”  Some try to challenge or modify popular images of the East Village.  Sermons at Graffiti Church and other congregations consistently characterize the area as a community, not just an entertainment destination, and call on congregants to invest in local relationships and to serve local needs.  In coffee hour conversations, our questions about neighborhood change received energetic answers, full of analysis of the area’s racial, artistic and social identity – then and now.                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
        Recent scholarship has argued what many East Villagers know: ideas of neighborhoods matter, and affect flows of people and money coming into – and out of – an area.  Developers have demonstrated great power to shape the image of the East Village, helping them achieve recent widespread development.  Their power dwarfs the power of congregations – through signs, sermons and conversation - to shape the identity of the area in the eyes of the larger city public.  However, ideas about neighborhoods in congregations can conflict with ideas developers and officials promote and can provide a basis for community organizing.  We hope to see more research done on how local groups and institutions develop senses of neighborhood identity.  Researchers should look closely at congregations.                                              

We presented on these topics at the Association for the Sociology of Religion  conference and will post related materials at www.ecologiesoflearning.org soon.

Studying Innovation: Early Models of church Emerging in Canarsie                 By Elaine M. White, Student, Church & Community Analysis Course
with Katie DiSalvo, EOL Researcher

         It has been a blessing to study the Church For All People in Canarsie, Brooklyn as a student researcher in NYTS’s Church and Community Analysis Course, part of the Ecologies of Learning Project. 

         The Church For All People is a family of 56, diverse in age, race, ethnicity, culture and life history.  We gather as a community with the Rev. Dr. Joseph Diele on the first floor what was once his grandmother’s house, next door to the house where he grew up.  The church members are mostly professionals who commute to Canarsie and the services are African American-centric.  The church is one year old and growing.

         I studied this church because the pastor, like me, stepped away from the Roman Catholic Church for reasons of conscience. I am one of the resident clergy persons.  The Church For All emphasizes models of the early Christian church before Constantine: We welcome everyone and emphasize spirituality and lay leadership. During the consecration of the Eucharist, the entire church stands around the Lord’s Table, as a priestly people.  I believe the Church For All People is re-imagining liturgy, theology, and what it means to be a church community, and that it is spirit-driven and justice-making.

        In this course, students learn to examine a congregation with a systematic methodology.  Preparing a Neighborhood Profile opened my eyes to Canarsie’s history of racial conflict and oppression.  When I interviewed Joe’s (the pastor) mother, she spoke about a nearby real estate office that was burned to the ground when it sold a house to a black family in the 80’s.  I analyzed census data and learned the demographics of the area, particularly noting that 31.1 % of people within one mile of the church live on less than $25,000 annually.  As I mapped businesses and resources surrounding the church, I began to establish relationships with shopkeepers and social service providers. Through observations and meaningful in-depth interviews with members, I documented and analyzed the church’s daily life and theology. 

       In my final paper, I synthesize my research of the area and church, and recommend ways the church can improve its ministry and interaction with the larger community.  As a May ’07 graduate looking back at my time at NYTS, I see this course as the capstone of my seminary education. It integrated NYTS’s biblically based education, my experiences in ministry, and a strong call to serve the community in today’s diversified, interfaith city.  It has made me more compassionate, determined and prayerful.  This class and research has given me a better understanding of the connection between the church and community and of the dynamics of God’s presence in the city.

                                                      
                                                           Church For All For All People
                                             1002 East 98 St.(Farragut Rd.) Canarsie, Brooklyn
                

WHAT’S HAPPENING

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See www.ecologiesoflearning.org/work.html for details.