In God and the Government in the Ghetto, Michael Owens explores the politics of African American churches partnering with local governments to provide affordable housing in impoverished New York City neighborhoods. Although collaborative efforts between government agencies and faith-based organizations to provide social services have increased in recent years, few studies have addressed the considerable political ramifications of these relationships. How are traditional forms of representation affected by these arrangements? Do they lead to greater political incorporation of the poor and their interests? Do they increase public participation in municipal policy initiatives? Do they represent church-state collaboration or the cooptation of religious influence? In the book, Owens addresses each of these questions, and in the process contributes significantly to the literature by extending our understanding of how religion affects post-civil rights politics in both the African American community and in urban environments. In studying church-state collaborations, Owens demonstrates an appreciation for the fact that the relationships between religion and politics encompass much more than the electoral and political mobilization most commonly associated with African American churches. He observes: “the literature is silent about the political engagement of African American churches (or other civil society institutions) after the shouts cease, signs are dropped, and marches disband” (6).

In Part I of the book, Owens provide a theoretical foundation for his analysis by examining the reasons why some African American churches decide to collaborate with the government. He characterizes this decision as a rational political choice by pastors of activist churches who desire specific ways of bringing social welfare to the community — and in the process increase their own stature within it. Owens identifies collaboration with government as a form of political engagement that is conditioned by the motives, means, and opportunities that exist in a political space. Collaboration offers a way for activist churches to broker the interests of their communities and to influence how public policies that affect those communities are formulated and implemented.

Part II of the book details the nature of the local context in which decisions to enter collaborative partnerships are made. Although “all politics is local,” much of the research on African American religious influence has had a decidedly national focus. This orientation is limiting when examining the religious influence of churches, which are quintessentially local institutions. Grounded in New York City, Owens' research is informed by an urban politics perspective that usefully examines how African American churches (as community-based organizations) interact with governing coalitions to produce positive changes in their communities. Specifically, Owens documents that since the 1960s, the issues of the urban poor in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, South Jamaica, and Morrisania have not adequately been represented by Democratic or Republican administrations, and how few substantive policy changes resulted even when David Dinkins served as the first African American mayor of the city. These inadequate street-level results of electoral participation — and the losses of legitimacy that activist ministers suffered by supporting such participation — led to the recognition of the limits of the electoral process. Owens explains that some activist pastors, still seeking community development, adjusted their political calculi to include the option of partnering with the government in a way that made churches not just advocates for, but intermediaries in, the delivery of public services to neighborhoods. Many set up or joined church-associated community development corporations in an effort to increase their institutional capacity to meet the requirements of these new objectives.

The final section of the book provides an account of the circumstances of church-state collaboration in affordable housing production in the poor black neighborhoods of New York City. The City was motivated to collaborate with churches due to the magnitude of its housing problem and its need for partners in impoverished neighborhoods that contained city-owned properties desired for redevelopment. Owens makes an especially fine contribution in helping to explain the political motivations of African American churches that enter such partnerships. Although understudied, these relationships are counter-intuitive. Why would African American churches, many of which have a history of confrontation with government, enlist in a project to “partner with Caesar”? The simple answer that Owens offers is that collaboration provides an additional way for activist churches to continue their tradition of helping to resolve racial inequities in cities. It provides a way for them to become bureaucratically enfranchised, to deliver material resources for neighborhood development, and to influence how public policy is administered in their communities. This collaboration is not cooptation. Instead, it represents a means for political engagement rather than a retreat from it. Still, as Owens observes, this form of political brokerage has both benefits and costs. Precisely because churches are able to deliver benefits, people may conclude that change “is possible without their political participation to push for and sustain public policies directed at neighborhood improvement and the creation of new programs to make it happen” (205).

One criticism that may arise after reading the text is that it does not more productively engage some of the compelling issues it raises about what collaboration means for low-income neighborhoods and their residents — not only whether collaboration produces “community mobilization for political demobilization,” but also the partisan implications of these relationships. In part, this is a criticism leveled at any good book: the reader is left wishing it did even more. Still, the issues Owens raises for future research in his conclusion lie at the heart of the political consequences of church state-collaboration in cities. Examining them more thoroughly in the context of this research project would have been insightful.

To some degree this is true because God and the Government in the Ghetto addresses a lacuna in the scholarship on the politics of black churches. Until Owens's effort, few studies had looked at how these churches can influence the political process outside of political mobilization. Owens significantly enhances our understanding of both African American politics and urban politics by documenting the intersection of religion and politics in an urban context. It is an example of the kind of relevant scholarly work that is beneficial to both academics and practitioners.