The Power of Place and Making Change Happen: How Hamilton Park United Methodist Church Can Interpret Acts 1-5 for the Transformation of the Hamilton Park Community in Dallas, Texas

Abstract

The Hamilton Park Community in Dallas, Texas, was created as a haven for racially terrorized Black people in 1954. Hamilton Park Methodist Church, now Hamilton Park United Methodist Church, was founded in 1957 to provide a Wesleyan Christian expression to the community. Today, the Hamilton Park Community is threatened by predatory development that has created economic strain for many of its residents, including some original homeowners. The effects of which are continued racial terror as displacement, divestment, and disillusionment. Since 1990, Hamilton Park United Methodist Church has been the only church in the community. Transformation is its theological task, found in Acts 1-5. The Book of Acts, a book of history, tells the story of the formation of the church following Jesus’ ascension and how, through discipleship, leadership, and partnership, it inspired the transformation of marginalized communities despite Roman imperialistic terror. As the only church in the Hamilton Park Community, a church in the tradition of the historic Black church, Hamilton Park United Methodist Church is the most powerful entity to transform the community. This project seeks to define place theologically, analyze the community’s place and the church’s place historically, and situate Hamilton Park United Methodist Church in that place as the only meaningful, powerful tool for social transformation. From the historical, theo-political, and social exploration of place, the church is exhumed as the most powerful place capable of making change happen for the community, because it is the continuation of a movement that began in Acts 1-5. This project helps Hamilton Park United Methodist Church establish and accomplish change through an interpretation of Acts1-5 as a theological imperative. Hamilton Park United Methodist Church is the place that can make change happen and inspire the transformation of the Hamilton Park Community in Dallas, Texas, because it has the power of place; it is the church for Hamilton Park.