How to Develop Good Men in Bad Neighborhoods

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I’ve lived in two “bad” neighborhoods. I grew up in a rough inner city black neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles. While my family and I, who are white, lived there, our home was set on fire, my sister’s car was stolen out of our garage, my father was robbed and assaulted at gunpoint, and – not to be outdone – someone else carjacked my father and mother at gunpoint in broad daylight. Oh, and then there was the time someone stuck a hose through the mail slot in the wall in our living room while we were gone, turned it on, and transformed our home into an indoor swimming pool.

The second rough neighborhood I’ve lived in was in inner city Dallas. That neighborhood was white. During my five years in Dallas, I was threatened at gunpoint three times…each time by whites. Ironically, I came far closer to dying at the hands of white men than at the hands of black men. So I guess you can say I’m an equal opportunity victim.

I tell you this because when I write about men in inner cities, I speak from experience. All of the examples above were perpetrated on me and my family by inner city men.

So the question I’m posing is simple: why are there so many bad men in inner cities and how can we turn that around? The solution I’m proposing is also simple: put a church on every inner city corner.

The reason I’m proposing that we essentially normalize religion in our inner cities is because the real issues with inner city men aren’t economic and social, but spiritual and moral. Yes, economic and social issues play an important role in inner city male dysfunction. But underlying them are deeper and often unaddressed spiritual and moral issues.

It’s clear that the “change-the-environment-and-you’ll-change-the-individual” social paradigm that has prevailed in apparatchick circles for the past seventy years has failed inner city men. Witness Cabrini Green, AFDC, fatherless households, and the school-to-prison career track way too many inner city men experience.

Scoff all you want about the need for more churches in inner cities, but here are the sociological facts on the effects of church membership on these communities:

“Based on the nation’s major cities, the following generalizations not only are supported by recent data, but also by data going as far back as the 1920s.

• The higher a city’s church membership rate, the lower its burglary rate.
• The higher a city’s church membership rate, the lower its larceny rate.
• The higher a city’s church membership rate, the lower its robbery rate.
• The higher a city’s church membership rate, the lower its assault rate.
• The higher a city’s church membership rate, the lower it’s homicide rate.”¹

America has been waiting in vain for decades to see the benefits of secularizing the poor, and especially inner city men. Maybe it’s time for us to see inner city men as the true victims of a materialistic ideology. What America’s inner cities really need is God-fearing men with a clear moral compass. And to date, the only institution I know of that has succeeded in producing them is the church.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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1. America’s Blessings, How Religion Benefits Everyone, Including Atheists, by Rodney Stark, Kindle location: 716