Poverty Piety Charity - Stringfellow

8/13/2019 Poverty Piety Charity - Stringfellow

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Poverty, Piety, Charity and MissionA lawyer reflects on his experience in an area in whichlegal counseling 'is as much a vehicle of pastoral careas it is the practice of law'east Harlem in New York.

WILLIAM STRINGFELLOW

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

(II. Cor. 8:9)

Remember the Poor. It is now five years that Ihave lived and worked as a lawyer in east Harlem. Theexternal appearance of this neighborhood is not onlyradically different from Northampton, Massachusetts,where I was raised, or Cambridge, where I went tolaw school, but also from most other sections of NewYork city. In the city, affluence, inflation, luxury andpower are only a few blocks away. But here, in eastHarlem, there is squalor, depression, poverty and frustration.

East Harlem is a ghetto for the poorlargely neglected by and segregated from the rest of the city.Out there are air purifiers, private toilets, hi-fi, gourmet food, imported cars, and the extra-dry martini;in here are the smells of sweat and waste, bathtubs inthe kitchens, direct current, predatory vermin, secondhand clothes, a million empty beer cans in the gutters. Out there are secure jobs, some chance for education, and even space to play; in here there is chronicunemployment, much illiteracy, and the numbersgame. Out there people have recourse in psychotherapy, positive thinking, Carte Blanche, and dial-a-prayer; in here they have narcotics, voodoo, the pawnshop, and cadres of social workers. In east Harlem,Park avenue is a railroad track.

On the other side of that track is the rest ofHarlem, and while there are residual slums there,both central and west Harlem are now mainly middle-class sections of skilled. industrial and white collarworkers and professional people, plus increasing numbers of nouveaux riches.

East Harlem, in contrast, retains elementary characteristics of a feudal society: those who own the landhere are absentee investors and speculators living offthe rents and profits of slum tenements; credit forfood or clothes or household furnishings is easily procured within the neighborhood, but income is irregular and unpredictable and, consequently, families arein perpetual debt; the bulk of the population is Negro

and Puerto Rican, but the ruling classwith which thepredominant church is notoriously identifiedis aminority of another ethnic group whose continuance

through Negroes or Puerto Ricans who become stoogesfor the rulers.

Priority for housing redevelopment in east Harlemhas been consistently lower than that of less blightedsections of the city, but, apart from that, the projectswhich have been constructed have caused the remaining slum tenements to become more congested thanever. Those whom the housing authorities determine

are " undesirable*' may not be admitted to projecttenancies, and the "undesirables"those with thelargest families, or those who have had trouble withthe law, or those addicted to narcotics, or those frequently unemployedare those who, empirically, mostneed to get out of the slums.

Practicing law in east Harlem has similarities to smalltown practice. For one thing, the differences betweenthis and the outer city induce and enforce an intenselocalism and immobility. Many of my neighbors, especially women and younger children, seldom leave theblock. And the cases which arise here generally areacutely personalized: family squabbles, truancy, desertions, addiction, abandoned children, gang fights, staying evictions, trying to secure repairs or heat or lightfrom a slum landlord, intervening with welfare investigators, legitimizing children, preventing repossession of the furniture, protection from police abuse.Legal counseling is, here, as much a vehicle of pastoralcare as it is the practice of law.

For all the factual differences between east Harlemand the rest of the city, for all that differs betweeneast Harlem and the image of American society,east Harlem nonetheless is not unique. On the contrary, it is plainly representative of the congestionand destitution in which most people in most ofthe world, through most of history and even nowadays, live. East Harlem in its own indigence representsthe outcast and refugee and homeless and hungryand rejected and forgotten everywhere else in theworld.

II

Poverty and Piety. Those who are not poor need toremember the poor not just because there are so manypoor people, nor merely because the poor are usuallyforgotten. Those who are not poor need to rememberthe poor for their very own sake, not for the sake of

the poor. They need to remember the poor because,curiously enough, the poor represent them, too.It should be obvious that the poor represent exactly


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586 T H E C H R I S T I A N C E N T U R Y May 10, 19

him out about three years ago, when he first wasarrested. He has contrived so many stories to induceclergy and social workers to give him money to supporthis habit that he is no longer believed when he asksfor help. His addiction is heavy enough and has beenprolonged enough so that he begins to show symptoms of other troublehis health is broken by years

of undernourishment and insufficient sleep. He isdirty, ignorant, arrogant, dishonest, unemployable,broken, unreliable, ugly, rejected, alone. And heknows it. He knows at last that he has nothing tocommend himself to another human being. He hasnothing to offer. There is nothing about him whichpermits the love of another person for him. He isunlovable. But it is exactly in his own confession thathe does not deserve the love of another that he represents all the rest of us. For none of us is differentfrom him in this regard. We are all unlovable. Butmore than that, the action of this boy's life pointsbeyond itself, it points to the gospel: to God wholoves us though we hate him, who loves us thoughwe do not satisfy his love, who loves us though wedo not please him, who loves us not for our sake butfor his own sake, who loves us freely, who accepts usthough we have nothing acceptable to offer him. Hidden in the obnoxious existence of this boy is thescandalous secret of the Word of God.

It is, after all, in hellin that estate where the presence of death is pervasivethat the triumph of Godover death in Jesus Christ is decisive and manifest.

IV

Poverty, Charity, and the Mission of the Church.The Word of God is secretly present in the life ofthe poor, as in the life of the whole world, but mostof the poor do not know the Word of God. Thesetwo facts constitute the dialectic of the church's mission among the poor. All that is required for the mission of the church here is here already, save one thing:the presence of the community which has and exercises the power to discern the presence of the Wordof God in the ordinary life of the poor as it is livedevery day. What is requisite to mission, to the exposureof God's Word within the precarious and perishingexistence created by poverty, is the congregation which

relies on and celebrates the resurrection. That whichis essential for mission is confession of the faith, immediately, notoriously, and in whatever terms orsymbols or actions are indigenous to the momentand place.

The characteristic of the life of God the churchneeds most to recall nowadays, I think, is how absurdly simple his action in the world already makesour witness to him in the world.

It grieves me to look at east Harlem from this vantage. Herein less than a square mile of crowded,stinking, steaming tenementslive maybe 300,000 people. Counting not only the traditional churches represented in the neighborhood, but even the religiousand pseudo-religious societiesthe storefronts thatmarket e otic mi t res of freemasonr and oodoo

tellingthere are no more than seven or eight thousand people actually related to some church or sector "religion." While gross numbers do not alone reflect the vitality or integrity of the church's mission,it remains clear in the history of the church from theearliest days that where mission is practiced, the churchincreases.

Essentially, east Harlem remains unchurched, and,with a few remarkable exceptions like the ChambersMemorial Baptist Church and the Church of St. Edward the Martyr, the mission opportunity and taskare ignored by the churches and by the ecclesiastics.

One reason for this default, I am persuaded, is thatin viewing east Harlemand other inner city neighborhoodsthe churches have been beset by a false notion of charity. They have supposed that the innercity must become much more like the outer city beforethe gospel can be heard. They have thought that mission follows charity. They have favored crusades andabandoned mission. I am all for changing the face ofeast Harlem, but the mission of the church depends notupon social reformation in the neighborhood, as desperately as that is needed, but upon the presence ofthe Word of God in the society of the poor as it is rightnow. If the mere gospel is not a whole salvation forthe most afflicted man, it is no comfort to other menin less affliction. Mission does not follow charityfaithdoes not follow works either for donor or recipient;on the contrary, mission is itself the only charity whichChristians have to offer the poor, the only work whichChristians have to do.

The premise of most urban church work, it seems,

is that in order for the church to minister amongthe poor, the church has to be rich, that is, to havespecially trained personnel, huge funds and manyfacilities, rummage to distribute, and a whole batteryof social services. Just the opposite is the case. Thechurch must be free to be poor in order to ministeramong the poor. The church must trust the gospelenough to come among the poor with nothing to offerthe poor except the gospel, except the power to discernand the courage to expose the gospel as it is alreadymediated in the life of the poor.

When the church has the freedom itself to be pooramong the poor, it will know how to use what richesit has. When the church has that freedom, it will be amissionary people again in all the world.

Commuters

+ DAILY they runTo the tomb in the wall.The guards are awake,The stone does not fall.

The flowers arc fading,The spice loses scent,And faith goes the wayAll th i t


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Poverty Piety Charity - Stringfellow