ABSTRACT
This chapter describes societal forces that limit local congregations' involvement in issues related to inequality. It discusses some conditions within the sphere of religion that have the same effect. People are free to choose whether they will belong to any church, which congregation they will attend, and the conditions under which they will stay or leave. Most local congregations are headed by pastors with considerable training in theological and pastoral skills, but little or no training in skills pertaining to ways of incorporating social concerns into the life of the local church. Gibson Winter has suggested that churches are captives of historical and forces that limit their involvement in social concerns. At the national level at least, Protestant churches became more heavily involved in the social concerns of the 1960s: civil rights, poverty, and the war in Vietnam.
