Contrasts in Religion, Community, and Structure at Three Homeless Shelters

Changing Lives

Ines W. Jindra, Michael Jindra, Sarah DeGenero

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367677114
• eBook ISBN: 9781000469868
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

How do people in poverty and homelessness change their lives and get back on their feet? Homeless shelters across the world play a huge role in this process. Many of them are religious, but there is a lot of diversity in faith-based non-profits that assist people affected by poverty and homelessness. In this timely book, the authors look at three homeless shelters that take more or less intensive approaches to faith, community, and programming.

In one shelter, for instance, residents are required to do a program of classes that includes group Bible study, worship, and self-evaluation. The other two examined are significantly less faith-based, but in different ways and with different structures. The authors show how the three shelters tackle homelessness differently, drawing on narrative biographical interviews and case studies with residents, interviews with staff, and case study research of the three shelters.

Entering into significant debates in social theory over religion, agency, cognitive action, and culture, this book is important reading for scholars and students in religious studies, sociology and social work.

1 Introduction: Homelessness and faith-based organizations

DOI: 10.4324/9781003132486-1

On a beautiful morning at Grace Ministries, Tanya, a young African American mother, takes the center stage in front of about two dozen people in a daily community meeting. She narrates a powerful story of personal transformation. She tells the group about scheduling a visit to the jail to meet the man who raped her (and caused her to be pregnant with a boy she now loves) and expresses her perspectives about talking to him. She shares that she told him about the hurt and the pain and that he, in return, apologized “103 times” and felt truly sorry for what he had done. The meeting—in her view—was a successful attempt by her to deal with her emotions, and she said that after speaking with him, she could now forgive him for what he had done.

After she is done talking, at first there is just one question from the audience. But after Tanya said: “What, just one single question?” and at this encouragement, others ask more. One woman asked Tanya how it felt for her to finally be capable of forgiving that man, and Tanya said it was like a huge weight had left her. She also told the group: “When I came to Grace, I was looking for a place to live. But Grace has opened me to a whole other spectrum of Tanya, which I never thought was possible.”

At another meeting, about a week after this one, she mentioned that though the rape caused her so much hardship, she found her purpose—which is talking and sharing her experience with others and educating them about abuse. However, she also said that even though her heart can heal, the scars can only be mended, and not completely taken away. Her story at the same time reinforced her newfound Christian identity and made the newcomers aware of the prevalence and acceptance of the Christian interpretation of their lives within this group.

These kinds of stories aren’t unusual at Grace. In fact, such introspection and public revelation are definitely encouraged and facilitated by a particular community, structure and ethos, even theology. And even though this is just one community meeting of many that one of us witnessed at Grace Ministries, it provides a vivid picture of what can happen in these meetings.

Three contrasting homeless shelters

How can people in poverty and homelessness change their lives and get back on their feet? In this scenario, the significant role of nonprofits across the world is clearly evident. Many of them are religious, however, there continues to be a lot of diversity in faith-based nonprofits that assist the poor and homeless. In this volume, we look at three homeless shelters that are more or less faith-based in their practices and programs, using a case study approach to explore each shelter. In one, for instance, residents are required to complete a structured program of classes, that includes group bible study, worship, and self-evaluation. The other two are significantly less faith-based and embody different ways and different structures. We highlight these differences and then examine the effects they have on the biographical trajectories of their residents.

To understand the various shelters and how they affect the lives of participants, over the last six years, we engaged in the study of several nonprofits and in volunteer work, participant observations, and interviews in two urban areas-one in the Midwest and one in the Northeast. Some of us did volunteer work and/or observations, at House of Hope, at Grace Ministries, and at Respite Center. Some of the data was also collected through student-centered research projects. Specifically, at Grace, Ines attended the community meetings where self-evaluations are held, as well as substance abuse classes. The third author, Sarah, volunteered at House of Hope and conducted all the interviews with participants there. Both Michael and Ines talked to staff at Respite Center and one of our directed research students at Notre Dame did the interviews at this center.

Nonprofits, and particularly, faith-based organizations, are at the center of debates over our social welfare system. Nonprofits have always been a crucial part of our social welfare system, but since the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, these entities have taken on bigger roles in our broader welfare system, which also indirectly translates into more stress on them to pick up the slack (Bartkowski & Regis, 2003; Cnaan et al., 1999). In recent years, as we will discuss more in detail later on, there has also been a major shift in the ways many non-profits assist the poor and homeless. Instead of dealing solely with needs in the short term, these organizations are adopting a variety of programs that aim to get people out of poverty over the long term, a trend we described as “relational work” (Jindra & Jindra, 2015; Jindra et al., 2020).

We examine how the three contrasting homeless shelters rely on religion and religious tools in their approaches to help the homeless. The three shelters are “faith-permeated,” “faith-affiliated,” and “faith background” (Sider & Unruh, 2004), reflecting differences in faith intensity in the programs and structure. How do these different kinds of shelters tackle homelessness? The variation in religious intensity corresponds to the variation in the role of community and the overall structure of the experience, such as the programs and classes. We’ll also show how all of these factors affect the trajectories of the residents and highlight specific case studies to illustrate both successful and unsuccessful outcomes. While other books focus either mostly on the institutions (e.g., Bartkowski & Grettenberger, 2018), or on people’s stories (e.g., Rife & Burnes, 2020), we address the topic from the viewpoints and experiences of both—the residents as well as the institution.

The differences between these shelters—in religion, community, and structure—influence the narratives of the residents. Residents at a faith-permeated shelter are more likely to incorporate religion into their narratives and make use of these tools to grasp their trajectories compared to the other shelters. However, at each shelter, some residents successfully use the tools that the shelter provides, and others do not (and sometimes leave on their own or are asked to leave in some cases). It has been observed that residents who use these tools demonstrate better outcomes.

Our study employs theoretical tools such as Swidler’s (2001) toolkit theory and further developments of it (Lizardo & Strand, 2010) to study this topic. We make use of research (e.g., Sremac & Ganzevoort, 2013) and approaches in the sociology and psychology of religion, specifically the concept of lived religion (Ammerman, 2016, 2006; McGuire, 2008), the discussion of religion and spirituality in the field of social work (e.g., Hodge, 2018a; 2018b) and the field of religious conversion (Jindra, 2014; Rambo, 1993; Snow & Machalek, 1984; Stromberg, 2008).

Through the case studies of these shelters, we analyze how these establishments help people overcome homelessness, and especially how they initiate the first steps. This topic deserves significant scholarly attention, which, in fact, it has only received during the last twenty years. The focus of existing studies until then had largely been on how structural factors such as discrimination or poverty undermine people’s sense of self-efficacy and of collective efficacy (e.g., Sampson et al., 1997; Wilson, 1996; see also Jindra & Jindra, 2018). At the same time, researchers have neglected the process of achieving upward mobility (Horowitz, 2011; Lovell et al., 2015; Streib, 2017). What is involved in the process of change from the perspectives of those who struggle with homelessness themselves? How can these homeless shelters help people return to stable housing and lives? Rather than simply providing a place to stay, it has been observed that establishments that engage in more intense relational work seem to have stronger effects (e.g., see Williamson & Hood, 2016; see also Jindra et al., 2020). Indeed, the findings of our study match with what other research on relational work also discovered, in a variety of contexts, from poverty to financial education to addiction and prison rehabilitation. In all these places, religion often has been noted to play a particularly strong role.

In general, we think that homeless shelters perform essential roles in assisting the homeless, who would experience harm without these efforts. Many scholars decry the increasing “neoliberal” orientation of organizations that stress responsibility and effort on the part of the poor in general. However, we argue that this process is—among other things—an essential part of the ongoing struggle against homelessness and poverty especially in the oft-illustrated context of neoliberalism and “retrenchment” of the welfare state (Bartkowski & Grettenberger, 2018; Fairbanks, 2009) observed in many Western countries.

The extent and picture of homelessness in the United States

Economic inequality in general and poverty and homelessness in the United States are resilient, despite numerous national and local efforts over the past decades to make a dent in them. Several factors have contributed to this trend, including rising housing costs, a more complex society, and family instability and substance abuse issues such as the opioid crisis. Economic inequality has risen significantly since the 1970s (Barusch, 2018; Putnam, 2015). In addition, beginning in the 1960s, many state-run residential mental health facilities were closed and people with severe mental illnesses were released as regular community inhabitants due to the improved availability of more medications to treat mental illness. This brought a clear uptick in the numbers of homeless on the street, and nonprofit homeless shelters were founded to meet the need.

Homelessness is a protra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Homelessness and faith-based organizations
• 2 Theoretical concepts and methods
• 3 Religion and spirituality, community, and program structure at Grace Ministries, a faith-permeated organization
• 4 Self-sufficiency and program structure at House of Hope, a faith-affiliated organization
• 5 Respite Center: Optional participation and divergent responses in a largely secular nonprofit
• 6 What we found and why it matters
• Methodological appendix
• Index