Doctoral Dissertation Research: Faith-Based Organizations, Race and Community Development

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This research project studies the role of faith-based organizations in responding to poverty in contemporary cities. Specifically, the researchers seek to understand how and to what extent the community development work of faith-based organizations reinforces or challenges the racial inequalities that underlie urban poverty. Through a case study of one faith-based organization's work in Atlanta, Georgia, researchers will investigate the manner in which faith-based community development organizations understand the connection of race to the Christian community development framework and the impact of their activities on neighborhood development and the alleviation of racial inequality. The study will provide the historically significant African American neighborhood of South Atlanta with an Oral Histories and Futures in Atlanta Neighborhoods online audio and video archive that will include recordings of residents from a range of Atlanta neighborhoods. The research will also be used to engage in constructive conversations with faith-based organizations and nonprofits or policymaking bodies that seek to make cities better places for all people to live, particularly those marginalized along racial lines. To fulfill this goal, the researchers will disseminate research findings at a wide range of conferences and meetings.Scholarship on race, the literature on the resurgence of religious faith in cities, and cultural geographies of religion form the theoretical cornerstones of the project. Using this conceptual framework, the research examines the processes by which participants in faith-based organizational networks interpret the significance of race and create racial meanings through their work. Specifically, the researchers will examine what such understandings imply for faith-based organizations' roles in shaping cities, and how these meanings are reinforced, in conflict, or contested. To address these questions, the researchers will engage in direct and participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and document collection with members of faith-based organizations. The Christian Community Development Association (CCDA), a national network of evangelical Christian groups working in cities, is the project's primary case study subject. Data will be analyzed using critical discourse analysis techniques and an interpretive method that is attentive to on-the-ground complexities and contradictions.