Faith and race: how African American pastors navigate dialectical tensions in collaboration

The African American church (AAC) is an anchor institution in disinvested communities. Retrenchment of government support has increased the need for AAC collaborative activity. Given this need, we interviewed 10 African American pastors (AAP) in Little Rock, Arkansas, a city with a long history of racial division. This purposeful sample is embedded in a longitudinal community-engaged research project that began in 2012 in order to understand and improve collaboration across congregations. This goal of this analysis was to understand the power dynamics of AAP communication in collaborative contexts. Using a critical race approach to dialectical tensions, we identified four tension framing practices: (a) dependency-independency through selection and paradox; (b) spiritual-physical through authoritative texts; (c) collaboration-non-collaboration through inclusion-exclusion; and (d) the past-present through Civil Rights icons. These findings extend theory and research by illustrating how race and faith shape collaborative processes that contribute and constrain community development praxis.