ABSTRACT
In Boston, the key community group working with the police has been a set of black churches known as the Ten Point Coalition. Rival gangs turned to firearms to protect and defend their turf and gang identity. Boston's faith-based organizations did not begin working together as a group until 1992. The ministers' message to the youths, nevertheless, is quite different. Public awareness of such "moral realities" translates into a special variety of political capital that allows clergy to transcend stale partisan political debates, even while injecting their political views into those debates. In traditional political discourse, emphases on structural determinacy and individual responsibility are at odds. The New Testament demands action on behalf of others. Hundreds of organizations around the country, including the Ten Point Coalition, have taken this mandate seriously, developing a plethora of "faith-based" responses to human suffering in urban cores. Ministers may possibly be ideal partners.
