Bridging Christianities: Race, Class, and Community Development in an Urban Neighborhood

This paper presents preliminary findings from a faith-based community development project in one of the most diverse yet impoverished neighborhoods in East Oakland, CA. The project began with the question: Given the decline in church attendance, how can urban churches repurpose vacant church properties for the good of their low-income neighbors? The two churches in this case study—one a largely Asian American and White (categorically multiracial) evangelical church and the other a Black Pentecostal church—have served impoverished groups in Oakland for decades. The project galvanized their existing partnership with Hope Avenue, a newly created nonprofit that uses asset-based community development and community gardening practices to build bridges between congregations and neighborhood institutions. Connecting a year’s worth of fieldnotes with sociological literature on churches and social capital, community activism and mutual aid, and race and class inequalities, I explore the mechanisms that are making organizational partnerships and community building across race and class possible.