SO MUCH FOR THE CHARM OF SMALL-TOWN AMERICANA

Chances are that ninety-eight percent of this readership has not spent much time in the rural South. The Interstate system and its network of pit stops have made poking around Main Street Mayberry all but irrelevant. Hence, for most of us the image of the charm of small-town Americana remains rhapsodically intact.

Well, my life requires meandering in the rural South Carolina Upstate within a fifty-mile radius of Greenville, a relative metropolis. Thus, my observations, however tinged with romanticism, are of a more clinical, critical nature. The most critical among them regards the unsettling nature of rural poverty and homelessness.

Anyone who thinks that homelessness is an exclusively urban, inner-city phenomenon needs to look again. Small-town homelessness is particularly insidious in that – despite the protestations of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly – the resources through which homeless people might transition to independent living are so scarce -- resource like safe, affordable housing, job training, essential medical and social services, employment at a living wage, and most importantly, transportation for homeless people to access the empowering resources.

Sadly, the fifty-mile radius around Greenville is merely emblematic of a national reality that should give even us urban folks cause for concern. This is what you would likely see if you wandered down Main Street of small-town America:

You would notice that “the other side of the tracks” is not simply a euphemism, but a reality that is defined not so much by race as by lack of economic and social empowerment.

Perhaps this is due to my own prejudices, but you would also see that on the more prosperous side of the tracks, there are any number of comfortable, if not affluent, houses of worship. The old tall-steeple churches are meticulously groomed and classically Andy-and-Opie small-town charming. The newer churches are large and imposing, although usually paeans to high-tech functionality more than aesthetics.

More noteworthy, however, is that so many of these congregations have little if any interaction with the festering reality of homelessness in their communities. Yes, perhaps a congregation here and there does. Perhaps through financial contributions at arm’s length. Perhaps an eagerness to address poverty through missions to Jamaica, Haiti and third-world countries. But, woefully little hands-on toward the other side of their charming town’s tracks.

We all remember the long-venerated virtue of small-town Americana. It is so highly regarded that it has by now been mythologized. Friendly Village. Centerville. Mayberry RFD. Now, despite its dogmatic defenders, it is merely a dewy reminiscence. Once upon a time, rural congregations were singularly committed to “taking care of their own.” "Their own” was understood as broad enough to include the poor, the orphan, the widow, the stranger, the handicapped, the alcoholic, the homeless, and most generally, folks in crisis by dint of illness, death, crime, natural disaster, or any reversal of fortune.

The small-town church was the motivator and clearinghouse of compassion, benevolence, and “love thy neighbor as thyself.” This was the epicenter of “share your bread with the hungry, bring the poor into your house, clothe the naked, and not hide from a fellow being.” The words are not mine or those of a contemporary do-gooder, but of the ultimate ol' time do-gooder, God. (Isaiah 58)

Rural congregations, motivated by the spirit of the Divine, could revive their honorable tradition and do all this and more to address the blight of homelessness, rather than avert their eyes from the squalor on the other side of the tracks: What about job training? What about classes in life-skills? What about helping someone navigate the head-spinning bureaucracy and paperwork that comes with assuming responsibility for ones self and family? What about local employment? What about a few local doctors, dentists, and lawyers helping folks with essential medical and social needs? What about some folks offering guarantees to utilities and phone companies for the exorbitant deposits required for moving from homelessness to a new home? What about providing transportation from where poor folks live to the remote places they need to be – clinics, hospitals, social service agencies, jobs?

You should realize by now that the issue is not for rural America alone. Once upon a time, urban churches and synagogues had an equally broad definition of “their own” and addressed their needs accordingly. Now we in the cities have many, but never enough, social service agencies, clinics, soup kitchens, and suicide intervention hotlines. But, we have largely lost the notion that the bottom-line “looking out for our own” squarely belongs with our houses of God. Politics and economics may fail us, but the Divine imperative will forever endure.

Small-town Americana may have lost much of its graciousness to pernicious indifference. Our big cities are no better. Wherever we live, there is always “the other side of the tracks.” Whether we consider its residents as “our own” remains to be seen. But, of this we must be sure: No entity can accomplish the task more capably and devotedly than the places where the good news of Isaiah and Jesus are regularly preached and should be practiced. A house of God is no house of God unless it is also a house of humanity.