The welfare revolution and charitable choice -- Social welfare and faith based benevolence in historical perspective -- Faith based poverty relief : congregational strategies -- A tale of two churches : United Methodists in black and white -- Debating devolution: Pentecostal and Southern Baptist perspectives -- Invisible minorities : transnational migrants in Mississippi -- Street level benevolence at the march for Jesus -- Charitable choice : promise and peril in the post welfare era
Summary
Congregations and faith-based organizations have become key participants in America's welfare revolution. Recent legislation has expanded the social welfare role of religious communities, thus revealing a pervasive lack of faith in purely economic responses to poverty. Charitable Choices is an ethnographic study of faith-based poverty relief in 30 congregations in the rural south. Drawing on in-depth interviews and fieldwork in Mississippi faith communities, it examines how religious conviction and racial dynamics shape congregational benevolence. Mississippi has long had the nation's highest
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 192-203) and index