Anti-Poverty Policy and Practice: Ethnographic Case Study of Churches In Appalachia, Kentucky and South-Central, Los Angeles: A Preliminary Report

The best way to learn about church-based anti-poverty initiatives is to talk with, observe and document activist congregations in the most impoverished regions in the country. The Southern and Western regions of the country contribute disproportionately large shares to the nation's total poverty population so this study focuses on churches in poor areas in California and Kentucky. First A.M.E. of South Central Los Angeles is a 16,500-member African-American Protestant congregation located within the impoverished epicenter of the urban eruptions and fires sparked by the Rodney King police brutality issue of 1992. It currently stewards more than $40 million in community resources and operates on an annual budget of more than $7 million. In contrast, St. James Episcopal is a congregation of thirty-seven Caucasian, confirmed adult communicants in the Central Appalachian region of eastern Kentucky. It is located in Floyd County among coal mines, mountain hollows and tobacco patches characteristic of the most impoverished rural region in the country. Its annual average operating budget of $45,000 puts it among the more financially healthy churches in its area. It would be difficult to find two more culturally dissimilar groups. These congregations differ in terms of race, region, size, denomination and community composition. Yet, the lay leaders and ordained ministers of both groups agree more often than not, about key features of the new welfare legislation. The reasons they give for their attitudes and activities are grounded in similar theologies which seem to overcome their cultural differences. Welfare policy makers can learn from these people who strongly believe that "the poor will be with us always" and who also dedicate their lives to fighting poverty. As a lay leader and minister indicate, serving others in need assumes existence or creation of a relationship. This study examines the nature of these kinds of community-building relationships.