This time, it's about hope
From the helm of Charles Street AME Church near Grove Hall, the Rev. Gregory G. Groover has a front-row view of the forces that drive violence in the city.
What he has seen recently disturbs him.
''It's getting worse," Groover said yesterday. ''The economy is not getting better in our community. I really think there is an overall unspoken state of despair among our youth. So it's all about survival."
Groover is not alone in being worried. On Monday, Mayor Thomas M. Menino convened a group of clergy, police, and other officials at the Parkman House to talk about how to stem youth-related violent crime.
The meeting was unusual, in that it was not called in haste, in reaction to a heinous shooting that had seized headlines. It was, instead, preemptive, an acknowledgement of what has clearly become a standing problem.
Still, turning to the clergy to deal with violence has become a predictable strategy, and some would say it has become steadily less successful.
The role the clergy played in helping to deal with the violence of the early 1990s has proved hard to duplicate, for reasons no one has been able to do much about.
To begin with, many churches are ill-equipped to take to the streets to deal with delinquents; they just don't have the bodies they once did.
The Ten Point Coalition, the organization that famously arose in the wake of shootings during a wake at Morningstar Baptist Church, is not as cohesive as it once was. Many of the activists of a decade ago are, well, 10 years older and less energetic.
The churches have become institutions wrestling with their role, which is not to say that people should not meet.
Menino came in for praise for trying to get in front of what is obviously a growing problem, not just a spike or some kind of aberration.
Many churches are already at work on some of the causes of rising crime, such as the problem of how to help men who were recently released from prison reintegrate in the community. Others have maintained a presence on the streets, hoping to turn some young people around before they get too deeply immersed in crime.
But for Groover and others, even these efforts aren't getting at the deeper causes of crime, the sense of hopelessness that leaves potential criminals feeling that they have nothing to lose.
Groover described a visit he received the other day from two young people in the neighborhood. They had come in search of money, which he didn't give them.
''It's beyond a shame," he said. ''One was 19. He had gone one year to a historically black college, which he said he left because of money. One is 17 and can't get through ninth grade.
''I wanted to know how they see their future, not a bunch of dream stuff," he said. ''I asked them, 'What do you want to do with the next two years of your life?' It was obvious they hadn't even thought about it.
''They're just living day to day on the street. That leads straight to despair."
One common elixir for a rash of violence is summer jobs.
But what many young people really need is hope for the longer term, which is a much harder commodity to produce, especially if the local economy remains rocky.
''That's where the church has a role," Groover said. ''If we're not agents of hope, it's all lost."
Bishop Gilbert Thompson of Jubilee Christian Church in Mattapan puts it even more bluntly.
''Our kids are trying to build a life on hopelessness," he said. ''That's why they can kill another kid and not think twice about it."
Boston's black clergy once won heaping praise for helping to slow down violent crime.
Taking on hopelessness and despair will be an infinitely more complicated task. But it's today's real mission.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.
