Despite being a key concept in social work practice, community empowerment has been largely overlooked in the Christian social work literature. One potential explanation for the paucity of publication is arguably a lack of theoretical guidance from scholars who embrace both Christianity and social work. This paper sought to expand the literature by proposing, among other things, the Community Empowerment Framework (CEF) to guide practice within the Christian social work realm. The CEF contains the following nine principles: unit, purpose, power dynamics, needs assessment, inductive reasoning, solidarity, legacy, accountability, democracy, and identity. From these principles arise nine corresponding assumptions. This paper holds major implications for theory, research, and community practice.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.