s drains away resources that might have been used for the needs of people right nest door to the church (Ellison 67). To misunderstand the culture of poverty is much like driving blindfolded. You may get a few feet but eventually you’ll hit something. Many Protestants have historically felt, as Durkhiem put it, "if individuals do not engage in their occupations, but rather remain idle, poverty will befall them. Riches are the result of industry, and poverty is the result of laziness" (Hurst 303). This idea of self sufficiency forms a gap between those who desire to save the lost from hell and those who are forced to listen to the gospel by someone who won’t back social policy designed to get them out of the only hell they can comprehend. The simplest way to ensure an unsuccessful urban ministry is to buy into the feeling that "those who are poor should expect no help from others since it is their own behavior that has resulted in their dismal situation" (Hurst 303). As if the class struggle is not enough to overcome, race is still a major factor in the evangelizing of the urban community. William Julius Wilson has said that "the social problems of urban life in the United States are, in large measure, the problems of racial inequality" (Hurst 62). With a high minority population living in the cities, understanding race difficulties and differences is essential. There is a basis fallacy in the W.A.S.P. (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) going into urban areas and preaching a Caucasian Christ who, to them, knows nothing of being a minority who feel frustration with the current political system when in actuality Christ can more easily be identified with those minority outcasts than with mainstream religion. As. Ellison put it "The Christian church has tended to maintain society’s fantasies by presenting a false picture of Christ of the Bible. It has tended to portray Jesus as Anglo-Saxon, blue-eyed, blond, Protesta...
