Boston Miracle as a religious experience
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:date: 2005-06-22T23:09:00
:category: research

It was very interesting comment by Amy Farell—the important part of the
Boston Miracle is that it was described so much with the religious
subtone. City deeply immersed in the desperation, sin, and murder is
saved by the mission of pastors, who redeem poor black teenagers! It’s a
miracle!!!

This comment reminded me also about my thoughts when reading
`Christopher Winship’s article`_. In the latter readings of this article
I saw quite strongly lack of critical attitude towards the object of his
writing, yes the article looks to me like a hagiography_ of
saint-to-be Eugene Rivers, Ray Hammond and police officers who talked
with them. I am not saying that they are not incredibly interesting
people (and maybe even candidates for sainthood; I am not a Catholic, so
I am not knowledgeable in that matter), but that scholarly article is
supposed to go deeper in its understanding. No, that’s too much—Winship
does offer a lot of analysis and it goes certainly further than just to
the description of the story. However, only later I found that there are
many other opinions on the whole preachers’ collaboration with police
and city government—namely that African-American (and I use this term
deliberately, instead of preferred “black”) politicians viewed whole
partnership as something between collaboration with enemy and expression
of the endless naivity `(CommonWealth magazine, Fall 2003, p. 66)`_. I
would love to look in my research to both of this debate. Although, I
have a tendency to believe volunteering minister more than unsuccesful
politican, I do not want to write yet another chapter in Eugene Rivers
hagiology.

.. _`Christopher Winship’s article`:
    http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/soc/faculty/winship/winshipp1.pdf
.. _hagiography:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagiography
.. _`(CommonWealth magazine, Fall 2003, p. 66)`:
    http://www.massinc.org/handler.cfm?type=1&target=2003%2D4/black_power.html