Sometimes multi-tasking just doesn’t work.

The rising tide of gun violence in Boston’s outer neighborhoods has sparked a new burst of grassroots outreach by the City’s black clergy along with a steady stream of sermons condemning the violence and spurring neighborhood residents to greater courage, commitment, cooperation, and community.

A recurring theme of these sermons is complacency. In today’s Metro, the Reverend Bruce Wall, pastor of Dorchester’s Global Ministries Christian Church, argued that following the Boston Miracle of the 1990s, there was widespread complacency among the black clergy and community leaders who had played such a vital role in the faith-based campaign that helped law enforcement sharply reduce urban violence. As a result, the amount of grassroots work being done in the community dropped, leading to the new wave of street violence that Boston is now experiencing. “There was a lot of neglect of the Boston Miracle,” Wall explained, “because it was so successful.” Wall has also claimed that Boston’s black clergy were so busy fundraising for their outreach programs and competing with one another for grants, that the unity that produced the Boston Miracle broke down:

“When money came to Boston, all of us went after those resources...but what happened was that ministers who loved each other and trusted each other all had to go after the same pot of gold…Everyone stopped trusting each other because no one knew what the other was saying to get the resources. The money coming in helped to create the division…What has to happen now is that we have to push—united—for those resources and be careful not to trash each other.”

Could it also be that Boston’s black clergy were too busy attacking same-sex marriage? When one hears Wall’s stinging critique of his fellow pastors for dropping the ball and growing complacent to the battle waging in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that at least part of the problem was that Boston’s black clergy moved on to another battle: the same-sex marriage debate. In the grassroots campaign to mobilize their parishioners against marriage equality for same-sex couples, how much time and resources were wasted by The Black Ministerial Alliance and the Boston Ten Point Coalition, the very same organizations that played such a crucial role in the success of the Boston Miracle, all while a brutal war continued to wage in some of Boston’s poorest neighborhoods?

However, it’s not simply a matter of coming together and refocusing their attention on the killings that have shattered the Boston Miracle. The problem is that at least some of Boston’s black clergy feel that the solution to the problem of gun violence is a return to a more traditional morality, including sexual morality. Many black pastors blame urban violence among black youth on what they see as the breakdown of traditional values in the black community, and they respond, in part, with a conservative emphasis on traditional marriage, a disdain for single-parent households, and contempt for what they deem irresponsible sexual behavior.

The problem is that by taking sides in the Culture Wars (as a way of winning the street wars waging in places like Roxbury and Dorchester), it seems to me that the black clergy and the larger black community are playing into the hands of conservative politicians whose fiscal policies ultimately undermine black families and hurt the inner city. Morality is not the problem. Racism and economic inequality are; as are tax cuts for the wealthy and budget cuts that eliminate much needed social programs. Black clergy are doing exactly what the Republicans want them to do. They are placing a greater emphasis on the so-called moral issues than they are on the larger socio-economic issues that are the root cause of violence among urban black youth.

Boston’s black clergy are not going to solve this problem alone. They will, however, be part of the larger solution by continuing to play an important role in grassroots community organizing IF, that is, they can stay focused and remember who the real villains are and what are the real social ills plaguing our society: namely, racism, poverty, unemployment, inequality in the public school system, drug addiction, and easy access to guns, not same-sex couples seeking the freedom to marry.

Pictured above is the Reverend Gregory Groover, pastor of Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church, who has been amongst the most vocal black pastors urging the black community to come together to end gun violence. However, back in February 2004, Groover was more concerned about ending same-sex marriage. He argued that “the voice of God” told him that same-sex marriage is wrong. Groover forgets that it was also the “voice of God” that told ante-bellum Southern slaveowners that slavery was right.