Land of Stark Contrasts
Faith-Based Responses to Homelessness in the United States
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An important new volume showcasing a wide range of faith-based responses to one of today’s most pressing social issues, challenging us to expand our ways of understanding.
Land of Stark Contrasts brings together the work of social scientists, ethicists, and theologians exploring the profound role of religion in understanding and responding to homelessness and housing insecurity in all corners of the United States—from Seattle, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley to Dallas and San Antonio to Washington, D.C., and Boston.
Together, the essays of Land of Stark Contrasts chart intriguing ways forward for future initiatives to address the root causes of homelessness. In this way they are essential reading for practical theologians, congregational leaders, and faith-based nonprofit organizers exploring how to combine spiritual and material care for homeless individuals and other vulnerable populations. Social workers, nonprofit managers, and policy specialists seeking to understand how to partner better with faith-based organizations will also find the chapters in this volume an invaluable resource.
Contributors include James V. Spickard, Manuel Mejido Costoya and Margaret Breen, Michael R. Fisher Jr., Laura Stivers, Lauren Valk Lawson, Bruce Granville Miller, Nancy A. Khalil, John A. Coleman, S.J., Jeremy Phillip Brown, Paul Houston Blankenship, María Teresa Dávila, Roberto Mata, and Sathianathan Clarke.
Co-published with Seattle University’s Center for Religious Wisdom and World Affairs
This may well be the very best collection of essays ever assembled treating religious responses to contemporary street homelessness. If we are ever to address adequately the ensemble of social problems that perpetuate homelessness even in affluent societies, the solutions we implement will be rooted in both sound research and genuine religious motivation. This volume sheds abundant light on both of these realities, and deserves the highest recommendation.---Thomas Massaro, SJ, Professor of Moral Theology, Fordham University
Land of Stark Contrasts offers a much-needed inter-disciplinary exploration of the theme of homelessness through the lens of religious studies and theology. Unlike many texts that speak of the poor or marginalized in abstraction, this volume clearly expresses the concrete realities of homelessness in the United States and current efforts to combat it. This is a powerful effort to destigmatize homelessness and decriminalize the homeless population through a study of religious ethics and faith-based communities.---Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado, The University of Scranton
The interfaith, interdisciplinary, and multicultural approach of this volume and the consistently high quality of the essays make it a valuable educational resource.
This is a remarkable book; remarkable for its candour in providing, alongside a recognition of their importance and influence, a frank assessment of the shortcomings and limitations of faith-based organisations that provide homelessness services in the USA.
Introduction
Manuel Mejido Costoya | 1
Part I: Public Religion and Community Revitalization
Talking About Homelessness:
Shifting Discourses and the Appeal to Religion in America’s Seventh-Largest City
James V. Spickard | 49
Becoming More Effective Community Problem Solvers:
Faith-Based Organizations, Civic Capacity, and the Homelessness Crisis in Puget Sound
Manuel Mejido Costoya and Margaret Breen | 72
Disenfranchising the Unhoused: Urban Redevelopment,
the Criminalization of Homelessness, and the Peril of Prosperity Theology in Dallas and Beyond
Michael R. Fisher Jr. | 117
Religious Responses to Homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area:
Addressing White Supremacy and Racism
Laura Stivers | 140
Homelessness and Health in Seattle:
Challenges and Opportunities of Faith-Based Services
Lauren Valk Lawson | 162
Part II: Religious Worldviews and the Common Good Reimagined
Homelessness and Coast Salish Spiritual Traditions:
Cultural Resources for Programmatic Responses in British Columbia
Bruce Granville Miller | 193
In These United States, Homelessness Is Who You Are:
Examining a Socially Constructed Category through the Lens of an Interfaith Encounter in Downtown Boston
Nancy A. Khalil | 214
Religion and Civic Activism Reconsidered:
Situating Faith-Based Responses to Homelessness
John A. Coleman, S.J. | 226
On the Passionality of Exile in Medieval Kabbalah:
An Invitation to Historicize Contemporary Religious and Public Discourses on Homelessness
Jeremy Phillip Brown | 250
Part III: Theological Insights for Homeless Ministries
Wounds of Love: Spiritual Care and Homelessness in the Streets of Seattle
Paul Houston Blankenship | 277
Making Spirits Whole: Homeless Ministries as a Tool for Integral Development
María Teresa Dávila | 297
“And I Saw Googleville Descend from Heaven”:
Reading the New Jerusalem in Gentrified Latinx Communities of Silicon Valley
Roberto Mata | 316
Offensive Wisdom: Homeless Neighbors, Bible Interpretation, and the Abode of God in Washington, D.C.
Sathianathan Clarke | 331
Acknowledgments | 351
List of Contributors | 353
Index | 357
