Durham’s “gang reduction strategy manager” (yes, there is one, but you’d never know it from the “gang increasement” that’s going on) James Stuit wants to set up a blue-ribbon panel to try to figure out why “troubled youth” quit going to church:
There are a lot of churches in North-East Central Durham, he said, and yet the youths are not in the pews. Stuit proposed holding a listening summit for churches to hear from the youth themselves why they dropped out of church and what would make them come back.
Stuit said he’ll provide a facilitator and youths who are in the juvenile justice system. He needs members of the faith community to help organize the event to be held in a neutral location. Churches are also needed to provide a meal for the event. …
Stuit, who works at the Durham County Criminal Justice Resource Center, said there’s a four-legged stool of family, school, church and neighborhood that results in a sense of belonging.
The problem, though, is that the first leg of the stool doesn’t exist for these kids. With 70 percent illegitimacy among the black community, with teenagers having babies, and with teen boys seeing it as a badge of honor to father numerous children they will never raise, the other three stools (school, church, and neighborhood) have no chance of solving the problems created by this irresponsible behavior.
Kids don’t suddenly look up from their X-Boxes and decide to go to church. It takes parents, whose job it has been for millennia to socialize their children, to do that. But that’s not happening anymore, and the effects are disastrous. For too long we have waited for the village to raise the children, but the village can’t do it.
This panel would do better to investigate ways to reduce illegitimacy and promote families among Durham’s urban poor. And it shouldn’t take a free meal to get people to address this important problem.
