BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, another in our series on Faith and Family in America. Today, a special look at African-American families, especially the poorest of them. In recent years, there's been a dramatic growth in the black middle class. But poor black families endure huge problems -- high rates of divorce, single parents, and out-of-wedlock births. At the same time, African-American women are very religious. According to a RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY poll, 81 percent of them say religion is very important in their lives.

Why are so many poor African-American families in trouble, and what are their churches doing to help? Lucky Severson has our special report.

Pastor DARRELL ARMSTRONG (Shiloh Baptist Church, Trenton, New Jersey) (During Sermon): The issue is about what is going on in American families today, in the 21st century in the year our Lord 2005.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Pastor Darrell Armstrong at the podium of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, New Jersey. His sermon is devoted to the status of families in America, especially black families.

Pastor ARMSTRONG (During Sermon): I am tired of seeing families destroyed. I am tired of seeing families ripped apart. I'm tired of seeing families eroded. I'm tired of seeing families kicked to the curb. I'm tired of seeing families ended in divorce. I want to do something about it, y'all.

SEVERSON: It's a constant theme of Pastor Armstrong, maybe because he grew up a physically abused victim of a broken home, but also because he agrees with a recent study which concludes that black families are in "a state of crisis unmatched since the days of slavery."

Pastor ARMSTRONG: I fully agree with it, and I think anyone of African descent who would disagree with that is not living in this world.

Reverend EUGENE RIVERS (Co-Founder, Seymour Institute): Over the past 25 years, I have seen the complete unraveling of what has been understood for all of our history in this society to be the black family.

SEVERSON: The Reverend Eugene Rivers and the Seymour Institute he founded released the alarming report on black families -- one that's similar in tone to a warning from the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan 40 years ago that black families were falling apart.

Rev. RIVERS: There was a great deal of denial. Moynihan was labeled a racist, and the black community just continued to unravel. So here we are 40 years after the Moynihan report, and the black community is in a state of crisis.

SEVERSON: Reverend Rivers's report draws from some distressing facts of life among mostly poor black families. As many as 65 percent of first marriages end up in divorce. Forty-five percent of all black families are headed by single women, and 70 percent of African-American children are being born out of wedlock.

Rev. RIVERS: We have higher pregnancy rates. We have phenomenally high sexually transmitted disease rates. If the statistics that exist for blacks existed for whites, there would be a national summit every week on how to save our children.

SEVERSON: A majority of the kids at this neighborhood center in Boston run by Reverend Rivers don't have fathers at home. Jimmy Dauphine and Derrick Patrick are mentors, trying their best to be substitute fathers.

JIMMY DAUPHINE (Ella J. Baker House): Eighty percent of the kids that work here right now are foster kids. They have no sense of family, and actually we become their family. We look out for their homework, see how they are doing at school, check out the teachers.

DERRICK PATRICK (Ella J. Baker House): These kids here, they really need structure. They want somebody to tell them, you know, that's wrong -- little things like that, you know, the American family would take for granted.

SEVERSON: Other studies conclude there is a huge positive impact on African-American children who are brought up in two-parent families. They are happier, do better in school, and are far less inclined toward delinquency. But it's quite a different story for kids who are brought up by a single parent or in a broken home.

Rev. RIVERS: Father absence is the single most important independent variable affecting or correlated with incarceration rates for young males.

SEVERSON: Consider this. One in three black men, over their lifetime, will spend time in jail or prison. Derrick knows personally the price of not having a dad around.

Mr. PATRICK: If my parents, my father doesn't care enough to be in my life, why should I care about the person walking down the street? I can just go rob you.

SEVERSON: Fatherless families are the single largest cause of poverty in the black community.

LADONNIA WHITTAKER: I need sunflower seeds.

SEVERSON: But Ladonnia Whittaker is determined she is going to beat the odds. She, her two children, nine-month-old Trinity and seven-year-old Makhi, and her mother, Maria Peterson, live with Ladonnia's grandparents. Their story is not unusual. Maria's rocky marriage disintegrated when her abusive husband got hooked on drugs.

MARIA PETERSON: I got on drugs, too. He wound up going to prison and everything.

SEVERSON: Was this tough on your kids?

Ms. PETERSON: It was, it was. It was real tough.

SEVERSON: Maria had two children by two different men. So did her daughter. Researchers say it is increasingly common for African-American women to give birth to children of different fathers.

Pastor ARMSTRONG (During Sermon): Monogamy and fidelity are issues that we must adhere to.

SEVERSON: After Ladonnia delivered Trinity she got sick, unable to work. Neither could Maria, who had to take care of Ladonnia's kids.

Ms. WHITTAKER: So by me being in the hospital and the bills started adding up and the rent wasn't getting paid, so we had to lose it. I mean, we lost it. We got evicted.

SEVERSON: Ladonnia says she's a good mother and will make the best of her circumstances, for which she blames only herself.

Ms. WHITTAKER: I chose not to go to school. I chose to have my son and to raise my son. So that was my choice. I can't blame anybody else for that.

SEVERSON: Wouldn't it be easier if you had a husband?

Ms. WHITTAKER: It may be because of what I saw with my mother and my stepfather -- what they went through. It may be because of that stuff subconsciously. But I just never wanted to get married.