Related articles and links |  1 of 7

Fresno is a sprawling metropolis that other Californians know as one of the least glamorous spots in the state. The climate is awful: smoking hot and smoggy in the summer, damp and foggy in the winter. Located in the flat, richly agricultural Central Valley, host to large numbers of immigrant Hispanic and Asian people, Fresno offers no scenery—just high unemployment, high crime, and unnumbered chain restaurants strung out along endless strips of asphalt.

This is America's new kind of city, created by the automobile and without a center. (Invisible from those main strips are some gracious shaded neighborhoods, but what visitor would know it?) Despite its awful reputation, Fresno is one of the fastest-growing cities in America (population nearing half a million), mainly because housing is cheap, and perhaps also because Fresno is a friendly, unpretentious place where families easily find a niche. Outsiders scorn it and Fresnans are humble about it, but people who come to live in Fresno often stay.

One odd feature of Fresno is that it has been creeping steadily north, and only north, for decades. The neighborhoods that 30 years ago perched on the north edge of town now sit smack in the middle of the city. Meanwhile the south side grows steadily shabbier, abandoned by those who can move up. "In Fresno we spell success n-o-r-t-h," says H. Spees of the Fresno Leadership Foundation (FLF), which builds partnerships between churches and other civic organizations. The "go north" mentality was a way of responding to problems by moving away from them. With plenty of cheap land available, a laissez-faire civic culture grew around tract houses and strip malls. People commonly believed that developers owned the town—churches certainly didn't. Though Fresno is a conservative place, comfortable with religion, pastors generally took no responsibility for the city's problems other than, perhaps, to comment on them or pray for them.

Then crime went off the charts. Fresno made headlines for its rate of violent crime, among the highest in the nation. Gangs, drugs, crime and poverty became the reigning forces in the south half of town, while pockets of intense poverty and crime developed in apartment complexes near some of the swankest homes in the north.

Police were overwhelmed; schools declined. Centrally located churches suffered from car thefts and graffiti. As members left Sunday-morning services at First Baptist—which had moved north in the 1960s to escape a decaying neighborhood—prostitutes solicited them. The 1994 riots in Los Angeles, occurring just a few hours away, made people fear they were losing all control. Had they allowed their city to become uninhabitable? But Fresnans have turned back the frightening tide. Crime rates have dropped 40 percent since 1994. (Unemployment, however, remains stubbornly in double digits.) Just as notable, though harder to prove, is a change in civic culture. The city seems determined to deal with its problems. Here's something most unusual: Christian churches are near the heart of Fresno's changed ways.

If anybody saw this coming, it would be Alan Doswald. He's a slender, sandy-haired, middle-aged man who grew up in Fresno. (Full journalistic disclosure: I grew up with Doswald. We went to the same high school and church youth group. I left and he stayed.) In 1982 Doswald resigned from the staff of Youth for Christ (YFC), a youth evangelism organization, to start Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), which at the time sounded like an oxymoron. Doswald's ESA had little interest in politics or public policy, although it did affiliate with the national ESA for about four years.

next page... |  1 of 7

share this page

March 6 2000, Vol. 44, No. 3