Restoring Hope - Pathways to Community Transformation

The following is an excerpt from the upcoming book, My Hope is Built: Essays, Sermons and Prayers on Religion and Race, vol. 2 (C. Anthony Hunt, Ph.D.)

Today, one of the headlines in the Baltimore Sun pointed to a decline in the crime rate in Baltimore despite the continued economic crisis that affects all across the city. While this decrease in crime may, on the surface, appear to be encouraging, the article points out that Baltimore continues to be one of the most violent U.S. cities.

I teach a graduate level course in Urban Ministries to students preparing for ministry and community service in the city of Baltimore. One of the first major assignments in the course is a field assignment where students are to walk for four or five blocks around the neighborhood surrounding their church, and to count the number of broken windows and boarded up buildings that they see. We’ve discovered that the number of broken windows and boarded buildings is a good indicator of the quality of life in the neighborhoods. In a particular way the broken windows and boarded up buildings point to the challenges incumbent in many communities.

Baltimore, in many ways, has become a poster city for urban blight. A number of popular ethnographies have been recently done on Baltimore, including television productions like "Homicide," "The Corner" (Charles Dutton) and "The Wire." The stir about a year ago was around a popular underground DVD series entitled “Stop Snitching” – where in one segment a young teenager is seen smoking a Blunt and shooting off a semi-automatic weapon into the air.

A number of groups of concerned persons from the community, church and city government continue to meet to address violence across the city, and perhaps more importantly to renew our commitments to developing constructive collaborations between the community, police and others to make communities safer in the city. On this coming Wednesday afternoon, several religious and community leaders will join together at St. Mary's Seminary and University to share our commitment to stopping violence in Baltimore, and calling for a "Summer of Peace."

Baltimore is not unique in the challenges that it faces in restoring hope. Perhaps a closer look at what’s going on in this city might offer a glimpse of how cities across this nation might move toward restoring hope. Recent statistical data indicates that Baltimore is the 8th largest metropolitan area in the United States. Statistical data also projects that the population in Baltimore will increase by over 25 percent over the next ten years.

While Baltimore currently has over 635,000 residents, it is a part of the larger Baltimore-Washington region (or Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area) which is comprised of over 5 million people and continues to grow. The current racial composition of Baltimore is 65% African American, 21% white, 2% Latino and 2% Asian.

In Baltimore, 22.3% of the population was at the poverty level in 1999, while 30.6% of the children lived in poverty (Baltimore City Data Collaborative 2004). In 2004, over one-third of Baltimore high school students, 34.6 percent, failed to get diplomas, ranking as the nation’s worst (reported in Education Week). In 2006, only one-third of students who began ninth grade in Baltimore graduated from high school. Recent statistics indicate that Baltimore is near the top in the rates of the incidence of HIV/AIDS and heroine addiction. Baltimore is considered to be the 12th most violent city, and has the second highest murder rate in the nation. in 2007, 282 persons were murdered in the city – at least 27 were under the age of 18. This was the most murders in the city since 1999.

As the church, we who are United Methodists remain committed to restoring hope through collaborating and partnering with community and government entities to (1) Develop comprehensive asset-based community ministry through Communities of Shalom (shalom is Hebrew for peace, well-being, wholeness). Since 2008, we have developed 7 new Communities of Shalom across the city, and are currently in the planning phases of developing 5 more, (2) Offer a free summer camping experience, called "Camp Life," at United Methodist camping facilities for children and youth who have been affected by the death of a loved one as a result of violence in the city. (3) Partner with professional therapists and caregivers across the city, through Hope Counseling, to provide comprehensive counseling services to persons who have experienced the murder or violence of family members, (4) Partner with the Baltimore City Police Department on a gun turn-in program, (5) and Pray for the city, its leaders and every community.

May God bless all who seek to promote peace and stop violence in the city.