United call to help fight city crime

In the early 1990s, the ministers issued a ''Ten-Point Proposal For Citywide Church Mobilization To Combat The Material and Spiritual Sources of Black-on-Black Violence." It became a national model.

We call upon churches, church agencies, and the academic theological community throughout the city to consider, discuss, debate and implement, singly or in collaboration, any one or more of the following proposals:

1. To establish four to five church cluster-collaborations which sponsor ''Adopt a Gang" programs to organize and evangelize youth in gangs. Inner-city churches would serve as drop-in centers providing sanctuary for troubled youth.

2. To commission missionaries to serve as advocates and ombudsmen for black and Latino juveniles in the Dorchester and Roxbury courts. Such missionaries would work closely with probation officers, law enforcement officials, and youth streetworkers to assist at-risk youth and their families.

3. To commission youth evangelists to do street-level, one-on-one evangelism with youth involved in drug trafficking. These evangelists would also work to prepare these youth for participation in the economic life of the nation. Such work might include preparation for college, the development of legal revenue-generating enterprises, and the acquisition of trade skills and union membership.

4. To convene a summit meeting between Superintendent Lois Harrison-Jones, the headmasters of the Boston public middle and high schools, and Black and Latino pastors to develop partnerships which will focus on the youth most at risk. We propose to do pastoral work with the most violent and troubled young people and their families. In our judgment this is a rational alternative to ill-conceived proposals to suspend the principle of due process.

5. To establish links between downtown churches and front-line ministries to provide spiritual, human resource, and material support.

6. To initiate neighborhood crime watch programs within local church neighborhoods. If 200 churches covered the four corners surrounding their sites, 800 blocks would be safer.

7. To establish working relationships between local churches and community- based health centers to provide pastoral counseling for families during times of crisis. We also propose the initiation of abstinence-oriented educational programs focusing on the prevention of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases.

8. To convene a working summit meeting for Christian black and Latino men in order to discuss the development of Christian brotherhoods, which would provide rational alternatives to violent gang life. Such brotherhoods would also be charged with the responsibility of defending our women, children, and houses of worship.

9. To establish rape crisis drop-in centers and services for battered women in churches. Counseling programs must be established for abusive men, particularly teenagers and young adults.

10. To develop an aggressive black and Latino history curriculum, with an additional focus on the struggles of women and poor people. Such a curriculum could be taught in churches as a means of helping our youth to understand that the God of history has been and remains active in the lives of all peoples.

With no excuses, we as a Christian community, and especially as men, shall stand up and take responsibility for all of our youth.