But St. Sabina’s example opens up the idea that churches all over the nation can have a more meaningful place in the debate. To talk about killings in one’s neighborhood linked to a simple class analysis is a much more compelling way into the conversation about how our nation’s economy should be restructured. Local congregations of color in poor neighborhoods can easily grasp the fact that the perpetrators of gun violence are poor and people of color. They understand intuitively that there are structural contradictions at the core of our capitalist economy. Thus, these communities can understand and begin to participate in the conversation knowing that how we fix a broken economy has as much to do with banks and government as it does about the reduction of young people killing themselves on our very streets.

This is not to suggest that a socialist agenda or a Marxist critique can emanate from some romantic collusion of black and Latino working-class and underclass Christians. It is only to say that St. Sabina’s has inadvertently opened up the conversation about achieving economic democracy in which ordinary people participate because they understand the implication to their communities.

Even if the capitalist structure survives, ordinary people might push harder for the kind of New Deal strategy that proposes major public infrastructure investments, particularly in education, to help reduce gun violence among our youngsters.

Whatever solutions emerge, we need to be in on the conversation. Pfleger and St. Sabina’s have shown us a way in. Our churches must follow their lead.

Andre C. Willis is an assistant professor of the philosophy of religion at Yale Divinity School.