NorCalUrban

CCDA board member Bob Lupton from FCS Urban Ministries in Atlanta regularly emails and posts an article called Urban Perspectives where Bob share insights from his work in the South. Bob has been very much leading the conversation around 'gentrification with justice' and empowerment. Today he sent out an article that relates very well to the redevelopment conversation going on in East Palo Alto and like communities. The underlying question is, "How do we reconcile redevelopment with the needs of the poor?"  Thanks for your insights, Bob. Here is Bob's thoughts ( emphasis mine ): “This city has a definite anti-church bias,” the pastor declared, leaning forward across his cup of steaming Chinese tea, brow furrowed with frustration. At every turn he had faced city resistance to his church’s plan to build a worship-community center on the five acre site they owned free and clear. Zoning hurdles, city planning department stonewalling, uncooperative building depa...

Came across this today... "Christians pride themselves upon an ethic that exceeds the requirements of law. But it is significant that Jews, schooled in their legalistic tradition and also the inheritors of the prophetic spirit, are on the whole more depth in the field of justice than Christians. They might well say to Christians what Cosimo de'Medici said to Catholics in the Renaissance: "You have built your ladders into the heavens. We will not seek so high or sink so low." Christian businessman are more frequently characterized by a spirit of philanthropy than by a spirit of justice in asserting the claims and counterclaims of economic groups. Love in the form of philanthropy is, in fact, on a lower level than a high form of justice. For philanthropy is given to those who make no claims against us, who do not challenge our goodness or disinterestedness. An act of philanthropy may thus be an expression of both power and moral complacency. An act of justice on the ot...