Printable Version
VOL 1, NO 5
August 1997
A Report on the 1997 Summer Research Effort
by Arthur E. Farnsley II
The summer of 1997 has been a hectic but exciting
time for the Project on Religion and Urban Culture. We employed 33 high school,
college, and graduate school students to help us learn about religion�s role
in shaping Indianapolis.
The students come from throughout central Indiana.
The undergraduate and graduate students represent a wide variety of experiences
and institutions. They come from Indiana University-Bloomington, Purdue University,
Butler University, University of Indianapolis, Martin University, Anderson University,
Depauw University, Wabash College, and Christian Theological Seminary. The majority
of them have spent their summer as part of a research team assigned to a particular
Indianapolis neighborhood. Others have been part of two separate analysis teams:
one dedicated to searching for themes from our neighborhood research, both past
and present, and the other pursuing individual projects on religion�s role in
Indianapolis history. Four students from Park Tudor High School are studying
the role faith plays in Broad Ripple, the neighborhood just south of their school,
in a project they began with The Polis Center last year.
As part of the project, the students have extended
our data-gathering work. They have visited more than 150 congregations and many
other kinds of community organizations and meetings, collecting the specific
bits of information that are the bread-and-butter of all we do at The Polis
Center. They have conducted scores of interviews, both formally and informally.
But data gathering has been only one part of their jobs, as it is only one part
of our mission. In seminars, team meetings, and written assignments, they have
helped us digest and process the data they collect. They know, as we do, that
data becomes information only when it is analyzed and interpreted.
Perhaps most importantly, they also have participated
in our mission to return to each neighborhood with our observations and interpretations
and to solicit the ideas and advice of the residents. Each team held an introductory
open house and a summer-ending review session in their neighborhoods to share
their findings.
Where we've been and what we did
This summer we studied the intersection of faith and community in the neighborhoods
of Broad Ripple, Butler-Tarkington, The Greater Southeastside, Greenwood, Irvington,
and the United Northwest Area (UNWA). As many Research Notes readers know, these
neighborhoods were added to our initial research areas that include Carmel,
Crooked Creek, the Near Eastside (NESCO), Fountain Square, Mapleton-Fall Creek,
Martindale-Brightwood, and the Near Westside (WESCO).
In each of these neighborhoods, thirteen so far,
we have done site observations, interviews, and the sort of statistical analysis
provided by our SAVI database system. In our original four neighborhoods� Fountain
Square, Mapleton-Fall Creek, Martindale-Brightwood, and WESCO�we conducted a
detailed survey of residents earlier this spring. That survey provides unprecedented
insight into the relationship between religious ideas, religious organizations,
and the sense of community in urban neighborhoods. You�ll be hearing much more
about the survey in future Research Notes and other publications of The Polis
Center.
What we are learning
Because we take seriously our responsibility
to collect and manage accurate information, our summer researchers gathered
many numbers and statistics, which we have only begun to process. But even at
this early stage some things are evident: many congregations have fewer than
100 members; on average, about one third of a congregation�s membership live
in the neighborhood where the church is located; most urban congregations have
only one (if even one) full-time staff member.
As we process this summer�s data, we will understand
the details of the story better. But the observations and experiences of our
researchers are important data too. We sent them out with the broad mission
to answer the big questions that drive our research:
Are urban neighborhoods really as similar as
they are often portrayed, or do we find meaningful differences that should inform
both our understanding and our activities in those areas?
- Does religion build social capital in a neighborhood?
Some neighborhoods have a strong sense of themselves
and high levels of communication and cooperation. When they have those assets,
have religious organizations or people of faith helped to create and sustain
them?
- How do congregations fit into a neighborhood�s infrastructure?
Every neighborhood has a particular combination
of government agencies, businesses, schools, non-profit organizations, and congregations;
the organizations through which people act together to shape their lives. What
role do congregations play in this interaction and, as in the first question,
how different is this role from place to place?
The researchers provided a wealth of ideas and
analysis in answer to these questions, not all of which could possibly be recounted
here. But some major themes emerged that are important enough to share.
1. Each urban neighborhood is unique.
At first this observation seems a truism. Of
course each neighborhood is unique. Each has different people, different houses,
and different businesses. But the distinctions go much deeper than that. Each
neighborhood has a history and a culture that has produced specific key individuals
and organizations. What people like about their neighborhood, and what they
would change if they could, varies tremendously from place to place.
Butler-Tarkington and UNWA, for instance, are
separated spatially only by 38th Street. But the two neighborhoods are worlds
apart when they think about their problems and what they expect both from the
city and from their fellow neighbors. The area usually called "the south
side" of Indianapolis is the subject of a prevalent stereotype: Appalachian,
working class, white, perhaps even "simple." Many residents use some
of these terms to describe themselves. But the four neighborhoods that our researchers
studied within the south side were very different. Any planned activity�whether
public policy or social service delivery or mission strategy�is likely to go
astray if it treats even the south side, much less the downtown area, as a whole.
2. Community means different things to different people.
Another possible truism, this finding is more
of a warning than a conclusion. Anyone who wants to stimulate community, perhaps
by increasing communication with the police or organizing neighbors for some
civic purpose, should understand that the meaning of place varies tremendously,
even within similar areas of the city. Place is not always easy to define. The
term "Broad Ripple" probably means something to everyone who reads
this. But it means something very different depending on whether you own a business
there, patronize the local entertainment venues, or live in the quiet residential
area just south of the strip.
Whether residents of UNWA think of their neighborhood
as a place with meaning and value may depend a great deal on their ages and
their status. There is a substantial separation between young and old, just
as there is between homeowners and renters (and the two lines often intersect).
Any religious or governmental activity meant to enhance community must consider
what community means to the people involved.
Is that community created and nurtured through
the congregations? It is, but in genuinely different ways. Congregations are
located in some place, but they are not always part of the neighborhood community
where they are located. We know from our survey that the kinds of social networks
people build through their congregations vary both by type of congregation and,
to many people�s surprise, by the neighborhood in which they are located.
3. Neighborhoods have different combinations of congregations.
When most people think of congregations, they
define them in terms of beliefs. What it means to be Catholic or Baptist is
usually defined by theology and styles of worship. But what a congregation means
to do, and certainly what it can do, is significantly shaped by its social environment.
One very important, and frequently overlooked, component of that environment
is the other congregations that exist in the neighborhood.
UNWA is a neighborhood with more than seventy
congregations, many of which are small. Butler-Tarkington and Irvington each
have fewer than twenty congregations. It�s hard to find a church in the area
most people define as Broad Ripple unless you know where to look.
The range of community needs and the range of
resources available to meet those needs are both determined to some degree by
the kind of congregations. A neighborhood full of big congregations with many
resources is different than a neighborhood full of small, often storefront,
congregations. A neighborhood full of congregations dedicated to social ministry
is different from one full of churches committed to evangelism and "soul-winning."
A neighborhood with congregations whose members live nearby is different than
a neighborhood with congregations whose members commute from elsewhere.
4. Neighborhoods have different infrastructures.
This observation is related to but more complicated
than the one above. Each neighborhood, each place, has a combination of organizations
through which people live their lives together. The role played by congregations
as a whole and by any particular congregation is shaped by the other pieces
of that infrastructure.
For instance, a neighborhood with thriving local
schools has an outlet for youth activities and a catalyst for community spirit.
But when those schools close or change character drastically, congregations
are often called upon to pick up the slack on both counts. In Irvington, for
instance, the congregations feel an even greater urgency to promote the neighborhood�s
sense of itself. Moreover, Our Lady of Lourdes parochial school has become even
more of a community organization since the closing of Howe High School.
Other elements of the neighborhood�s infrastructure
shape the congregational landscape. In Garfield Park, one of the southeast side
neighborhoods, the park itself serves as a rallying point for the community
and shapes the role of the congregations that sit on its perimeter by creating
a sense of community pride and identification that other neighborhoods often
lack. In University Heights and in Butler-Tarkington, the presence of the University
of Indianapolis and Butler University, respectively, influence what kind of
neighbors move nearby and what kind of congregations choose to locate there.
In both instances, we know of congregations that chose their sites specifically
to be near the campus. The same is true of residents who chose, and can afford,
to live there.
These are merely examples of a much larger point:
what is needed by a neighborhood and what is possible for a congregation to
do is shaped by what else exists. A neighborhood with a successful YMCA may
need something different than a neighborhood with strong housing development
but no youth programs.
5. Place Matters: Congregations must be understood in social context.
Too often congregations are treated as solitary
organizations that can be defined by what they believe and by the socio-economic
character of their membership. Those variables are important, but so too is
the social and cultural context in which the congregation acts.
This insight probably ranks somewhere below E=mc2
in the grand scheme of things, but it is too often missing from public thinking�both
political and theological�about the role of congregations in the urban environment.
The point is not that people do not know that context matters; they do. But
what they often do not realize is that context matters at a very local level,
that it is not enough to separate the inner city from the suburbs or the older
suburbs from the new edge cities.
Understanding religion�s role in a complex urban
environment requires complex (but not necessarily complicated) thinking. When
considering an interpretation of or an action in the urban environment, we must
take the time to reflect on which variables�which component pieces of the world�are
crucial to what we want to know or do. We must then try to understand how those
pieces work in the context of the other significant pieces with which they interact.
It is possible to think so long about something
that nothing ever gets done, but it is also possible to do too much too quickly
and without sufficient thought. The Polis Center is working hard to ensure that
the essential information about the social context of congregations and other
organizations exists. With your help, and with the help of young scholars like
those who joined us this summer, we hope to use that information to improve
understanding about and activity in the urban arena.
Arthur E. Farnsley II directs the Faith and Community
component of The Polis Center�s Project on Religion and Urban Culture.