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Turning the Tide
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Street
pastor Rev Les Isaac
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Action needed
Aroused
by press and television accounts of gun violence in Black communities,
trained "street pastors", wearing distinctive blue jackets
and baseball caps, will take to London streets this year, says Rev Les
Isaac, of the Ascension Trust and the "Guns Off Our Streets"
campaign. Projects in big-city Birmingham and Manchester will follow.
Areas blighted by drugs, gangs and, increasingly, by guns will be targeted. Pubs, clubs and parties will be on the list, too. The spirit of pastors will be buoyed up by positive reports of colleagues working in similar projects in poverty-stricken neighbourhoods of Kingston, Jamaica.
The volunteers
Ordinary churchmen and women are heeding Rev Isaac's call. Gun violence
is not inevitable or intractable, they say. Some are bible-thumping
born again Christians; others are sanctified Pentecostalists. All are
committed to campaigning with the "hallelujah army".
Street evangelists are in the vanguard. June Coldwell, of the Feed the Lambs Ministry in East Dulwich, south London, shares the gospel and religious tracts on street corners. She told the Voice the new scheme "will give me a chance to relate to people where I find them."
Arlington Farrell a street preacher in Harlesden, north west London, for three years, knows his way around problem-ridden neighbourhoods and housing estates. Working with the Alpha and Omega Ministry in Kingsbury, Middlesex, he urges young people to return to school or work and take up positive lifestyles.
The emphasis is on preventing crime by building bridges between offenders and the community from which they have become detached.
Church leader, Bishop Eric Brown, the senior administrator of the New Testament Church of God, is another dedicated youth advocate. Meeting the spiritual and social needs of Black youth is the first priority, says the bishop. The power of his words is backed up by his church - said to be the largest Black Pentecostal denomination in Britain with an estimated 20,000 parishioners attending its 108 church branches.
(His words call to mind the earnest band of Victorian "Christian soldiers" led by the fiery William Booth, who took the Bible into the same shabby areas of London in the 1860s and founded The Christian Mission – A Volunteer Army, later to become the Salvation Army).
The tasks ahead
It is up to the Black community to salvage its own youth, say leaders
of the street pastors scheme.
Two deaths in Aston, Birmingham, have made this a serious worry. Girlfriends Letisha Shakespeare, 17, and Charlene Ellis, 18, died in a hail of bullets as rival gangs collided in a turf war outside a New Year's Eve party.
Calvin Young, head pastor at the Aston Christian Centre, Birmingham, is deeply involved in finding solutions. The slain girlfriends belonged to his youth club run by affiliated churches in the area, one of the most deprived in Britain. Young, a member of the Council of Black-led Churches, promotes mentoring sessions and twice weekly educational programmes for youth expelled from school.
Inevitably, gun crime is linked with social behaviour, say street pastor members. Indiscipline, rootlessness and low self esteem as well as poverty are at fault, reports the BBC News Online. Trainee Herlene Williams, of the New Life Assembly church in Camberwell, south east London, aims to help turn around troubled lives of baby-mothers. "I've spent a lot of my childhood growing up on these streets, and I've girls of 12 or 13 who are not even capable of being mothers. There's no respect in the home. No-one is surprised anymore by anything. No-one is shocked."
Pastor Les Isaac says: "There are those who say we have lost two generations of young men and the only thing we can do is lock them up. I disagree. There has always got to be hope." He adds with conviction: "The guys in the streets know they are in a mess. Their communities know they are in a mess·if we can intercept them, then they have a chance."
The doubters
Getting youth off the streets is one thing, Rev Isaac told the Voice,
"But, the church must help deal with the underlying causes".
Critics are doubtful that the well-intentioned street pastors can be much more than a poultice on an open wound that requires serious surgery. What, then, do they propose? Civil rights groups say that political action for a decent national minimum wage and laws against discrimination and institutional racism, particularly in schools, the police and justice system, are the answer.
Black nationalists, like liberation theologians, argue in favour of Caribbean and African American "gods of the metropolis". Radical thinkers like Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are, they say, the real models of militant Black-led, social changing ideas in western society.
Social reformers target the criminalisation of Black people. They point out that stereotypes of work-shy "druggies, whores and criminals" serve as tools of racism and economic exploitation, and constitute especially an unfair war on vulnerable Black youth.
Fruits of their
labour
But the Afro-British preachers' efforts do have clear advantages, even
if they were to be only moderately successful.
Saving youth whose talents are squandered in "gangsta-style" street life can lead to lower crime rates, better school attendance and educational performance. Enhanced parenting skills and participation in civic life may follow. In the longer term a modicum of peace and safety can be enjoyed by all.
Today, the best minds talking about everyday culture and the future of Black people in Britain are probably in the church (not in race relations think-tanks, in academia or in the halls of government). "If any group can bring together the Black community," says Rev Young, "it's the organized Black church."
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