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Early holistic ministry leaders include Perkins, who had community ministries in Mendenhall, Mississippi; Ron and Wyn Potter of Voice of Calvary Ministries in Jackson, Mississippi; Bill Leslie, the white pastor of LaSalle Street Church in Chicago; and Clarence Hilliard, pastor of Chicago's interracial Circle Church. Such ministries fostered hundreds of programs that offered the poor housing, education, youth ministry, family counseling, legal aid, healthcare, thrift and food stores, shelter for the homeless, credit unions, banks, job training, and even manufacturing jobs.

Out of these networks arose the Christian Community Development Association, founded by Perkins and other urban ministry leaders in 1992, and currently serving more than 500 institutional members nationwide. Today there are thousands of neighborhood renewal ministries, enlisting millions of Americans. Community-based economic development and social renewal is one of those rare regions in public affairs where political conservatives, liberals, and radicals can find common ground, and both the Clinton and the Bush administrations have recognized its political value.

The causes of evangelicals' renewed passion for social justice are of course broader and more complex than outlined here. But it is clear that the weekend in Chicago 30 years ago, and the Declaration that came out of it, played no small role.

Joel A. Carpenter is provost and professor of history at Calvin College. To read the Chicago Declaration, go to www.esa-online.org/conference/chicago.html.

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Evangelicals for Social Action has more information on its web site.

Our Social Justice page for more on Evangelical compassion, including a recent story on slavery.

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December 2003, Vol. 47, No. 12