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Many suburban evangelical churches are failing to respond to urban poverty in America, The relationship between these churches and the urban poor may be described in terms of detachment. Biblical passages such as Deuterononvy 15 propose a theological agenda in which a community's relationship to God turns on its ability to relate to its individual parts. People in the ideal community bridge gaps between the "haves" and the "have nots" since God has already bridged the gap between divinity arul humanity. Implications of this perspective include the example of life skills training and other progjrams as a means to implement the theological framework, thereby forming practical partnerships with the urban poor to help lift them out of poverty.

This paper argues that Brown's sleepwalkers in Edgar Huntly offer us an early figuration for the problems inherent in the phenomenon we now refer to as “populism.” Both populism and sleepwalking function through paradoxical and incongruent forms of expression that appear incoherent. The most prominent explanations that account for this paradoxical form of expression rely on an analysis of the breakdown of discourse. However, this paper argues that the incongruous form of expression is rooted in the reconfiguration of the social arrangements that enable Clithero and Edgar to advance socially but also places them in proximity to social crises. The contradictions of this position of social mobility are the source of the contradictions of the expression of sleepwalking. In depicting a world that makes social identity precarious, Brown offers us an explanation for how such paradoxical modes of expression are rooted in unstable resolutions of post-revolutionary society.

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