Church Culture as a Strategy of Action in the Black Community

Abstract

Culture consists of rhetorical, interactional, and material tools that are organized into strategies of action. Social movement theory is beginning to recognize the role of culture in facilitating or frustrating collective organizing. I use social constructionism as an analytical approach to bridge social movement and cultural theory. Social constructionists ask how social action is constructed, rather than what issues or ideas are being constructed. Using data from more than three years of ethnographic research in Groveland, an African American neighborhood in Chicago, I find that the black church provides a cultural blueprint for civic life in the neighborhood. Prayer, call-and-response interaction, and Christian imagery are important parts of the cultural tool kit of Groveland's black residents, and these cultural practices invigorate activism. Particular theological foundations of black Christianity -especially its collective ethos and the notion of God as active in earthly affairs- support the content of secular activism. Black church culture constitutes the taken-for-granted practices that put civic efforts into action.