Abstract
This paper describes a developing partnership between a church-based service learning center and a university initiative to build a field station in a low-income community in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. It is a case study of how secular and religious institutions have been collaborating to achieve the shared goal of improving social conditions in specific communities. The theoretical focus of the paper is on how a change from a “glass is half empty” to a “glass is half full” perception of the community opens new possibilities for change. This paper concentrates on the story of one partnership as a case study demonstrating current trends in service learning both within universities and within the Catholic Church in America. Analysis centers on the basic question of why the project had symbolic power for both partners and on the institutional processes within both organizations that helped the partnership grow. We use the framework of Assets-Based Community Development (ABCD), also known as the “strengths perspective”, to conceptualize the contrast.
Highlights
This paper describes a developing partnership between a church-based service learning center and a university initiative to build a field station in a low-income community in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania
The Mother Maria Kaupas Center for Service Learning is a parish ministry of the Divine Redeemer
The local Catholic Church was emerging from a period of crisis related to population decline, the child abuse scandal involving priests, and a perception by local residents that the Diocese office, located in the state capital 75 miles away, was not interested in supporting small, poor, rural communities in the anthracite coal region
Summary
Mount Carmel is a town of about 7000 people situated in a narrow valley that sits astride the anthracite coal deposits in Pennsylvania. 19th century and the social worlds of coal towns grew up around complex mixes of ethnic groups Many of these groups were Catholic and they were forced to develop defensive, self-sustaining institutions built around their language groups and their distinctive styles of faith [5]. Divine Redeemer had the feeling that his primary responsibility was to help congregation members feel that they were part of a single congregation To achieve this unification he removed all of the historical records and icons of the former local churches. This created a lot of anger and the majority of members stopped going to church All of this created a local feeling that the Diocese in Harrisburg was uninterested in the coal region and unwilling to invest in its congregations
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