ABSTRACT
Urban violence is high in Chicago. This chapter studies selected congregations, using ethnographic data and other published research, for their impact on violence-prone areas in the city. The chapter reviews the recent history of violence in Chicago and the variety of strategies that address it. The production of violence has interpenetrating structural, cultural, and individual causes that require public health solutions rather than a criminal justice approach. A public health approach potentially mobilizes all social institutions—including congregations—and governing sectors in a comprehensive support system that targets both risk and protective factors. Public health approaches also avoid moralistic judgments and victim-blaming. Most faith groups have been limited by (and limited themselves to) the presumption that they lack the capacity to have a real impact, despite faith communities being especially well-positioned to address violence in its most fundamental form: the absence of peace and lacking the promotion of nonviolence. While all faith traditions abjure violence and promote peace, they do so with different degrees of success. This chapter concludes by challenging urban congregations to examine their beliefs and actions in solving contemporary problems of violence.
