Social scientists have an abundance of information about congregations to inform religion and social welfare policy discussions in the United States. But their data tend to come from congregations located outside low-income neighborhoods, not congregations inside them. This may limit their ability to make definitive claims, especially to policy makers, about social welfare practices and the potential of congregations located in lowincome neighborhoods to aid in poverty reduction initiatives. Are the literature's findings about social service provisions by congregations applicable to congregations located in poor places? Using a data set of congregations located in the vicinity of public housing complexes in four cities, the authors explore this question. In the process, they discern factors that influence social service provisions by congregations located in low-income neighborhoods, identifying congregation income, clergy education, and congregation residency as the most significant predictors of social service activity. The authors conclude by identifying future research directions.

Morehouse Co//egeAlthough the social isolation of the urban poor has been weU docurnented, the analysis has only a!luded to, and rarely &tai/ed, the isolation of the urban poor /roto churches and other reli~ous institutions. This article outlines findings from survey research conducted in three Iow.income housing complexes in Indianapolis, focusing on the extent to which the housing complex residents had be.en contacted by churches, had attended churches, and had become members of churches. The surve'y data confirms both a scarcity of clirect church-initiated contact with low.income neighbors; anda sigm'ficantly smalle.r percentage of church attendance and membership among the housing complex sample than among Americans in general. A number of socio-cultural factors ate proposed as explanation for low levels of interaction between churches and low.income populations, including cultural predispositions by churches and the urban poor toward one another.

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Black public activism has been guided largely by black affinities toward the U.S. Constitution, including its core democratic liberalist premises. This range of constitutionally defined political possibilities has both animated (and confined) a sense of public imagination and agency for many black Christians. Divergences and convergences between black religion-based public confidence and dissent are examined here, with reference to three paradigmatic approaches: (1) civil religious patriotism; (2) religious counter-publics; and (3) socio-religious liminality and semi-publics. Contrasts and continuities between these approaches are examined with attention to the impact of these approaches on a beleaguered and diminished American public realm and their relative affirmations or negations of broad understandings and undertakings of public purposes.

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