Yours the Power : Faith-Based Organizing in the USA [1 ed.] 9789004246010, 9789004246003

Citation preview

Yours the Power

Yours the Power Faith-Based Organizing in the USA Edited by

Katie Day, Esther McIntosh and William Storrar

Leiden • boston 2013

Originally published as Volume 6(4) (2012), pp. 377-545, in Brill’s International Journal of Public Theology. Library of Congress Control Number: 2012956004

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 978-90-04-24600-3 (paperback) ISBN 978-90-04-24601-0 (e-book) Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents Preface .................................................................................................................  William Storrar

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Key Research Introduction .............................................................................................................  Katie Day Interfaith Community Organizing: Emerging Theological and Organizational Challenges ...............................................................................  Brad Fulton and Richard L. Wood Receiving from the Other: Theology and Grass-Roots Organizing ............ . Mary McClintock Fulkerson Churches Unusual: Worship and Broad-Based Organizing in Two Brooklyn Congregations ...................................................................................  Aarian Marshall

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Key Voices Leaders in Faith-Based Organizing Networks .................................................  Patti Daley, Ryan J. Bell, Anthony Banout and Jonathan Currie

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Key Challenges Funding and Teaching Challenges Facing Faith-Based Organizing .........  Sheila Greeve Davaney, John Bowlin, Jarrett Kerbel and Elizabeth Valdez

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Key Texts Three Public Cultures ............................................................................................ 107  Michael Gecan

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Pastors and Flocks ................................................................................................... 121  Jeffrey Stout Alinsky and Augustine: Connecting Organizing and Theology ................. 133  Luke Bretherton Notes on Contributors ........................................................................................... 151

Yours the Power: Faith-Based Organizing in the USA This book is a reprint of issue 6:4 of Brill’s International Journal of Public Theology. Public theology is the result of the growing need for theology to interact with public issues of contemporary society, and therefore seeks to engage in dialogue across academic disciplines such as politics, economics, cultural studies, religious studies, as well as with spirituality, globalization and other ‘publics’. The International Journal of Public Theology, affiliated with the Global Network for Public Theology, is a platform for original interdisciplinary research in the field of public theology. All articles submitted to the journal undergo rigorous peer review based on initial editor screening and blind refereeing by two anonymous referees. Submission guidelines, further information and contact details can be found online at www.brill.com/ijpt. Preface What do religious congregations have to do with organizing their local communities to tackle public issues such as the lack of good housing, schools, sanitation, policing or jobs? What can religious leaders learn from ‘organizers’ who mobilize citizens to act? These are the questions at the heart of this volume on the faith-based organizing movement in the United States, with its networks of faith groups and faith leaders who are organizing their communities to address local problems. One further theological question is fundamental: what has faith to do with power? Michael Gecan is one of America’s leading organizers and a distinguished contributor to this volume, but he does not like the term ‘faith-based organizing’. In an interview with Aarian Marshall, one of our other contributors, he said: ‘Faith ignores power. Faith displaces power. The word softens power, so that people are able to co-opt the organizing’. This does not mean that Gecan discounts the contribution of faith leaders and congregations to challenge unjust power relations in their communities, as readers of the extract from his book Going Public, printed in the Key Texts section to this volume will realize. His comment does alert us to the responsibility of people of faith to be

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realistic about power and its effective use to bring about change; that is what the organizing movement aims to do, inspired by its founder, Saul Alinsky, about whom you will read much in these pages. Talk of power presents particular dilemmas for faith communities dedicated to reconciliation rather than contestation. Yet, as the range of scholars and organizers contributing to this volume show, congregations and religious leaders across the United States are playing a major role in these national, regional and local organizing networks. Religious people are engaging in theological reflection on questions of power and conflict, and developing leadership training in local communities that takes thorny issues seriously in the light of their faith. This is a phenomenon not only of Christian congregations but also of Jewish synagogues and increasingly Muslim mosques as well, along with other religious communities; they are teaching their faith communities that ‘yours is the power’ to bring about grass-roots political change, as part of their confession of divine power. Yours the Power is, therefore, a landmark volume because it brings one of the most significant developments in public theology today—faith-based organizing in the USA—to the attention of a wider readership in the academy and public life. It includes not only an original set of articles by research scholars and practitioners in the organizing movement but also authorized extracts from three key books on organizing and religion by leading thinkers on this subject: Jeffrey Stout’s Blessed Are the Organized, Michael Gecan’s Going Public and Luke Bretherton’s Christianity and Contemporary Politics. Together these original articles and key extracts provide teachers and students with a unique textbook for the increasing number of university, college and seminary courses on organizing. Introducing Faith-Based Organizing This volume provides five distinctive perspectives on faith-based organizing: that of the researcher, the practitioner, the funder, the teacher and the author of a key text. It begins with an introductory piece by my co-editor Katie Day. As a sociologist who has made a major study of the role of African American clergy in community organizing, she is well placed to tell the story and map the landscape of faith-based organizing in the United States, showing how our different contributors highlight key aspects of that history and geography. Day also relates this movement to Barack Obama and contemporary North American politics, before concluding with important reflections on the future of faithbased organizing.



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The Researcher’s Perspective Following Day’s introductory piece, we are proud to publish three further research articles that offer original empirical, ethnographic and theological data and commentary on faith-based organizing in the USA. Brad Fulton and Richard Wood share, for the first time, their quantitative research findings on interfaith organizing. They provide indispensable current survey data that will now serve as the baseline for further enquiry into this social phenomenon in North American religious and public life. Aarian Marshall recently graduated from Princeton University having completed a senior thesis under the supervision of Professor Jeffrey Stout on the ethnography of three congregations in Brooklyn, New York, involved in organizing in their urban communities. She offers here a thick description of the worship of two of these congregations and explores how their religious life and organizing activities interact with one another. Mary McClintock Fulkerson is a leading North American theologian who has written a searching reflection on grass-roots organizing from her engagement with it in her local community, identifying its transformative contribution and critical questions not only for churches but also for theology in the academy. The Practitioner’s Perspective The four research scholars mentioned above are not the only experts on faithbased organizing contributing to this volume. In our next set of contributions, we welcome shorter comments by reflective practitioners in four of the major national organizing networks in the United States: Patti Daley, who has led interfaith organizing work in Boston under the aegis of the Industrial Areas Foundation; Ryan Bell, a Seventh Day Adventist Pastor who is an organizing leader in the Los Angeles area with the PICO network; Anthony Banout, who until recently worked for the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation; and Jonathan Currie, a national organizer with the issue-based Interfaith Worker Justice network founded by Kim Bobo. Together these practitioners represent a new generation of able thinkers and leaders in faith-based organizing networks; they are asking critical theological questions about how they approach their work in motivating and mobilizing congregations and people of faith. Some thinkers even dare to question Alinsky’s organizing principle of self-interest. The Funder’s Perspective From her work as a programme officer with the Ford Foundation, Sheila Greeve Davaney has a unique perspective on the current institutional and

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financial state of faith-based organizing in the United States. In this volume she shares her strategic overview and professional insight into the challenges facing the national organizing networks, as they seek funding from foundations like Ford. With that in mind, I would like to record our gratitude to Sheila and the Ford Foundation for funding two consultations that gathered together the authors in this volume—national organizing network leaders, theologians, sociologists and philosophers—for a common dialogue with two of America’s leading social theorists: Jeffrey Stout of Princeton University on organizing and democracy and Yochai Benkler of Harvard University on organizing and ­cooperation. The Teacher’s Perspective As the editors of this volume, we hope this short book will be widely used in university, college and seminary courses on organizing as a unique teaching resource. With that goal in mind, we are particularly pleased to publish a reflection on the experience of team-teaching such a course by John Bowlin, a theologian at Princeton Theological Seminary, and Jarrett Kerbel, an Episcopal priest with extensive experience of organizing in Chicago and Philadelphia, where he now serves a parish. There could not be a better primer for college or seminary teachers contemplating setting up a course on theology and organizing for future pastors. The Author’s Perspective Finally, as well as these original research articles and practitioner commentaries, Yours the Power includes an extraordinary bonus for its readers, especially teachers and students of faith-based organizing who are discovering the field for the first time. We are grateful to three authors and their publishers for giving us permission to include two whole chapters and an edited chapter extract from their seminal books on organizing: Going Public by Michael Gecan, Blessed Are the Organized by Jeffrey Stout and Christianity and Contemporary Politics by Luke Bretherton. Gecan and Stout have also written original introductions to their chapters exclusively for this special volume. These extracts will introduce students and research scholars to the thinking of the leading philosopher, theologian and practitioner of organizing in the United States today: Stout, Bretherton and Gecan.



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Faith-Based Organizing: A Global Theological Flow It is our hope that our new textbook will deepen the theological dialogue on organizing not only within the United States but also among interested colleagues around the world. To that end, I close this editorial with three brief reflections to stimulate wider discussion on the global future of faith-based organizing. First, there are new opportunities for an international exchange of ideas and experience on organizing. For example, the global financial crisis is causing some thoughtful members of political parties, trade unions, churches and civic movements in Europe to look to the North American experience of community organizing as a locally led and participatory democratic alternative to the declining appeal of mass membership institutions, with their central bureaucracies and hierarchical cultures. Experienced organizing leaders in the United States, like the IAF’s Michael Gecan, are now getting regular invitations ‘to come over to Europe to help us’: such invitations are to be welcomed. The leaders respond with deep humility and an attentive sensitivity to the very different contexts they are visiting in the United Kingdom or Denmark, but also with a generous willingness to share their hard-gained organizing wisdom in a genuine dialogue of equals on both sides of the Atlantic and across different parts of the world. Secondly, there are clear signs of a new academic interest in faith-based organizing and its theological roots. Some of the finest minds in philosophy and theology today see organizing as a key to the renewal of a vibrant democracy and a vibrant church. It is very significant that one of America’s leading scholars of religion, Princeton University philosopher Jeffrey Stout, has recently published Blessed Are the Organized, his ethnographically grounded study of broad-based organizing in the south west of the United States, as a means of deepening and broadening his long-term public intellectual enquiry into democracy. Stout sees the Pentecostal pastors, Catholic sisters and local congregations and parishes of this movement, from Los Angeles to the Texas border and post-Katrina New Orleans, as key actors in the renewal of grass-roots democracy in North America. For theologians like John Bowlin in Princeton or Mary Fulkerson and Luke Bretherton at Duke, the challenge is a theological one to bring the organizing insights of Saul Alinsky into critical conversation with the thought of Augustine, Aquinas and the conflict-averse academy. This growing intellectual interest in and public commitment to faith-based organizing by leading scholars in the USA is having an impact around the world, not through any North American academic imperialism but because this local

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way of doing public theology in the United States is now one of Robert Schreiter’s global theological flows. Again, this is to be welcomed. It takes intellectual muscle to be a community leader in a local organizing network, as Stout’s study of ‘pastors and flocks’ in this issue reminds us: asking the right questions, gathering relevant evidence, showing wise judgement, making sound decisions and arguing your case persuasively in your faith community and in the public sphere. To understand and interpret such movements sociologically, ethically, philosophically and theologically requires intellectual effort. It is exciting to see in these pages outstanding scholars rising to that challenge in the careful empirical analysis of Fulton and Wood, the rigorous institutional critiques of Fulkerson and Davaney, the vulnerable pedagogical experimenting of Bowlin and Kerbel, and the sheer range of scholarship in Stout and Bretherton. Our hope is that this groundbreaking and unique introductory volume on organizing in the United States will spur such academic interest and comparative research in other parts of the world, and we hope it will do more, changing hearts as well as minds. Finally, the stories of ordinary people achieving extraordinary things for the common good are the underlying substance and enduring significance of all these articles, extracts and reflections on organizing in the United States. Some years ago, after the end of apartheid in South Africa, I had the privilege of interviewing Desmond Tutu and asking what gave him hope for the future of his beloved country, now that it was a non-racial democracy. The Archbishop replied that it was the extraordinary resilience of ordinary people under the most trying of circumstances that gave him hope for South Africa. It is such resilience that gives organizers around the world hope for their communities as well; it is a frail hope and it must not be romanticized or turned into a false hope. Yet, it is a real hope, when people of faith at the global grass-roots discover that the power is theirs to bring about change. William Storrar

Introduction Katie Day

Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, USA

Abstract This chapter serves as an introduction to faith-based community organizing and to this book. First, an overview of the history of community organizing in the US includes introductions to the key figures (Saul Alinsky and Ed Chambers), organizing networks and methods currently employed. Then current challenges to community organizing are explored, such as technology, gender and race. Further, the rigid distinction between broad-based and issue organizing is challenged. Finally, the chapter notes that the impact of Barack Obama’s background as a community organizer on political discourse has raised the profile of this form of social mobilization, and it is reframing the questions raised for public theologians as community organizing moves into the future. Keywords community organizing, faith-based organizing, Saul Alinsky, Barack Obama, public theology

One can only imagine what Saul Alinsky might have to say about the proliferation of community organizing in the US and around the globe that is his legacy. The notoriously curmudgeonly Alinsky, widely recognized as the founder of community organizing, was iconoclastic enough that he would, no doubt, critique the invocation of his name as a sacred figure who inspires mass movements for social change. Celebrity was never his goal; in fact the focus on an individual leader undermines mass mobilization. Yet his work was like the proverbial pebble thrown into the middle of a still pond: the ripple effect is still being felt as citizens across the US and throughout the world are mobilizing through democratically organized efforts to address the dehumanizing effects of economic injustice. Indeed, this book, dedicated to faith-based community organizing (FBCO) in the USA, is one of those ripples.

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Community organizing is not a new phenomenon, but is currently having a resurgence as the vice of poverty tightens and the thirst for democracy grows globally, as well as in the US. It is profoundly theological in its foundations and can be politically effective. Still, questions arise as global contexts change. Therefore, this book interrogates faith-based organizing in both the theological and political dimensions and invites a larger conversation. The format is like community organizing itself—crossing boundaries between people, bringing new voices to the table and trusting the social process, that out of an inclusive dialogue the truth about the common good can emerge. This book brings together scholars and practitioners—teachers, clergy and organizers. The book includes longer, academic articles as well as excerpts from influential publications, and shorter reflections by a variety of practitioners. Alinsky’s Legacy For those new to the topic, some historic background will be helpful, beginning with Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was born in 1909 in Chicago, Illinois to Orthodox Jewish parents, who had emigrated from Russia. He was born into a time in which the rise of the industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century had spawned the organization of labour unions. These organizations of workers—many of whom were immigrants drawn to the US by work opportunities—realized the power they held. The ‘captains of industry’ who had made fortunes through industrialization (namely the Rockefeller, Ford, DuPont and Carnegie) were absolutely dependent on the supply of wage-labourers. Hence, particularly through confrontational tactics and strikes, the workers were able to realize significant successes. In addition, corporate practices and laws changed to protect workers’ wages, health and safety; employers could no longer exploit child labour, demand long hours or pay unliveable wages. These were heady times for the rank-and-file employees. This was also a period in American religious history in which the theological ground was shifting. A young German-American Reformed Protestant pastor named Reinhold Niebuhr began his ministry in Henry Ford’s Detroit, and he began reflecting on the exploitation of workers, which evolved into a full critique of capitalism. Similarly, Catholic moral theologian, John A. Ryan was theologically engaging the issues being raised by workers. Ryan grounded his thorough critique of capitalism, including his 1906 advocacy for a ‘living wage’, in Aquinas’ natural law theology. These two early public theologians provided a theological infrastructure for the later involvement of faith-based, grass-roots organizing.



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Alinsky was raised in a secular environment, outside of this robust theological discourse that was very much a part of this time of social unrest and change. Yet as part of a Jewish immigrant community, he was immersed in social and intellectual contexts in which the economic success of the few at the expense of the many was continually being analysed, critiqued and politically contested on moral, if not overtly theological grounds. After studying archaeology and criminology, he started working as a union organizer. By the late 1930s, however, Alinsky began to see communities and neighbourhoods as social networks where there are more common concerns than in the workplace; yet there were no strong social processes in place whereby neighbours could band together to challenge and change the quality of their life together. Drawing on his training in organizing workers, Alinsky started organizing communities in Chicago to address the obstacles that prevented their neighbourhoods from being the kind of places where residents could flourish rather than be stifled. As the ‘Back of the Yards’ movement was developed in Chicago, eventually becoming the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), citizens learned how to identify their common frustrations and then to confront the principalities and powers to demand the change they needed. The IAF grew during the 1950s and 1960s, which was another halcyon period of social mobilization in the US. In particular, the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-(Viet Nam) War movement organized around particular issues, rather than organizing people bound by geography to identify their own agenda for change. Still, the social energy generated by the efforts of everyday citizens in these movements, challenging the formidable power of the US government and an entrenched racist culture, was contagious and provided fuel for other forms of mobilization, such as the IAF. Alinsky was a humanist in the truest sense of the word: he believed in universal human rights and in the inherent capacity of human communities for self-determination. In an interview several months before his sudden death in 1972 at age 63, Alinsky described the commitment at the core of his philosophy: ‘My only fixed truth is a belief in people, a conviction that if people have the opportunity to act freely and the power to control their own destinies, they’ll generally reach the right decisions’.1 Alinsky’s passion led him to organize particularly those in poor, urban communities, those he called the ‘have-nots, have-a-little, want-mores’. As the IAF 1) Saul Alinsky interview with Eric Nordon, ‘Empowering People, Not Elites’, Playboy Magazine (March 1972).

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grew under his leadership, ordinary citizens were using often-controversial tactics to make demands of leaders in the public and private sector for changes, such as affordable housing, fair hiring practices, improved public services and just distribution of public monies to benefit poor schools, rather than large cultural institutions serving local elites. Mass actions were designed to increase public pressure on officials by grabbing the attention of the media and sometimes shaming the officials through symbolic tactics. It is hard to overstate the importance of Alinsky as the architect of modern community organizing. Not only was he called to different cities across the US to teach organizing techniques, he also influenced the people’s movements in the Philippines and South Africa, and through his publications his impact was expanded. Reveille for Radicals (1946) and Rules for Radicals (1971) continue to be considered sacred texts within the organizing community. Although Alinsky was a secular Jew, the IAF has always enjoyed strong support and participation from the Roman Catholic Church, which had a large presence in urban areas. Alinsky’s bottom-up approach to social change resonated with the Catholic social teaching of subsidiarity—that public matters are best addressed by the smallest social units possible. From this perspective, governments should be considered subsidiary to the public, performing only those functions beyond the capacities of individuals and smaller groupings (such as national defence). This theological paradigm worked well for urban Catholics, who were largely settled in ethnic enclaves in the US in the early twentieth century. Immigrants coming from Europe defined neighbourhoods in American cities by the parish boundaries around a tall-steeple church that conducted worship in their native language and served as a cultural centre. Such enclaves valued their cohesive ethnic identities organized spatially around church and factory. The seeming autonomy of each neighbourhood/ parish provided a context in which subsidiarity made sense; it was also an ideal context for Alinsky to organize residents. Alinsky was not a political ideologue and was critical of those who were, both on the right and the left. A central tenet of community organizing, that there are ‘no permanent allies and no permanent enemies’, prevents the community organizations in the Alinsky tradition from becoming beholden to a particular political party. Such independence is appealing to the Catholic church, as well as resonating with other faith traditions concerned with maintaining a separation of church and state. Finally, Alinsky was a pragmatist, not an idealist. Religious groups can articulate utopic visions, but Alinsky showed them how to implement those visions on the ground; he helped them to realize their own agency in pursuing an improved quality of life in their neighbour-



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hoods. The piece by Luke Bretherton explores aspects of Alinsky’s thought in more depth and brings it into dialogue with Augustine and contemporary theological thinking on the politics of the common good. The Prefix of ‘Faith-Based’ on Community Organizing After the untimely death of Alinsky, his colleague Ed Chambers became the head of the IAF. A former seminarian, Chambers shifted the focus of the IAF to become a faith-based organization. By 1972, urban neighbourhoods were less coherent than they had once been. Through the out-migration of white people from urban areas (‘white flight’) and increasing mobility within American society, neighbourhoods were becoming more difficult to organize. Chambers wisely realized that religious congregations offered stable social groups of likeminded people, who shared values about human dignity. Further, congregations represent social and physical capital—buildings, money, networks and so on—and they have some moral standing and credibility in society, two important manifestations of cultural capital. The reorientation of the IAF has spawned growth both internally and beyond its organization. Currently there are fifty-nine local organizations (‘affiliates’) in the IAF network in twenty-three states in the US; there are also affiliates in Canada, Germany, Australia and the UK. As you will read in these pages, their successes in organizing people and resources to pressure the principalities and powers to act in the interest of the poor have been impressive: through their efforts thousands of affordable homes for the working and non-working poor have been created. They have transformed ailing school systems, and brought creative strategies to beleaguered urban public schools. Moreover, because so many social problems are traced to the lack of good jobs, IAF groups have focused on the development of jobs, job training and insuring a liveable wage, while some affiliates have focused their efforts on the environment and accessibility to health care. The mortgage crisis was devastating for millions of families in the US; thus, many of the local groups educated themselves around this complex issue and advocated for changes in banking practices as well as developing creative alternatives to enable home ownership. Furthermore, the growth of IAF generated a synergy which contributed to the growth of other faith-based organizing networks. Also organized in Chicago in 1972 was the PICO National Network, which now has fifty-three affiliates in seventeen states. In addition, the Gamaliel Foundation is well known as the organization that Barack Obama worked with in Chicago; it now

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has sixty affiliates in twenty-one states. DART (Direct Action and Research Training Center) is the only one of the ‘Big Four’ networks which does not trace its origins to Chicago, but is based in Miami, Florida. It was founded by the United Church of Christ and now has eighteen affiliates in five states. We are privileged to publish the most recent research on the current state of faith-based community organizing in the chapter by Brad Fulton and Richard Wood, two scholars who have closely followed its development over the past twenty years. Their data reflects the growth of organizing, especially beyond its Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant bases, as well as other shifts. The findings have implications not only for practitioners on the ground, but also for public theologians considering the questions raised by emerging organizing groups. Processes and Strategies Despite some difference in emphasis, the major faith-based organizing networks share common moral visions, commitments and even strategies: all have a pragmatic and materialist view of power. While faith traditions bring their own theological understandings of divine power, they come together to ‘put their faith on their feet’, as Rabbi Abraham Heschel puts it. The abuse of power in lived reality has devastating consequences for the poor, producing conditions for life that are not the intentions of the creator. In community organizing, power is understood as the capacity to act for change, that is, human agency, and that requires ‘organized people and organized money’. By demythologizing power and translating it into everyday language, it becomes accessible. An operating belief in faith-based organizing is that power should, in fact, be accessible to all in a democratic society and not harboured by an elite. Reflective of that, leadership is shared and rotated in these organizations. As such, they live out a critique of consolidated power and singular charismatic leadership. (It is noteworthy that when Ed Chambers retired as the Director of the IAF, he was replaced by four co-directors. One of these co-directors, Michael Gecan, has an excerpt from his book on organizing included in this volume; with a new introduction written for this book, the excerpt explores the three public cultures organizers must understand and engage with in their work.) The development of leaders is a central focus for organizing networks; all have intensive training programmes for emerging leaders, identified as those with the most to gain and the least to lose. Such training not only benefits the organizations themselves but also local congregations, since lay leaders



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bring new skills back to their communities of faith. An excerpt from Jeffrey Stout’s recent book, Blessed are the Organized, with a new introduction written for this book, presents the experience of local clergy who have been through the training and describes why and how they become involved in the transformation of their local communities. It is accompanied by two ethnographic studies by one of Stout’s students, Aarian Marshall, which offer a rich account of the relationship between worship and organizing in the life of two AfricanAmerican congregations in Brooklyn, New York. Ryan Bell and Patricia Daley voice the motivation, theological questions and empowerment of local clergy, reflecting on their experiences with PICO in California and IAF in Boston and New Jersey. In the four major organizing networks, as well as many other organizing efforts in the Alinsky tradition, one hears about the importance of building relationships through ‘one-on-ones’, essentially conversations about the dreams and struggles of individual existence (identified as ‘self-interest’). As the outcomes of these conversations, as well as those held amongst small groups (‘house meetings’), are pooled, a political agenda emerges. Groups then go into a phase of researching issues, prioritizing them and deciding on a strategy to bring about change. The identified goals might be to find affordable housing, make communities safer, bring jobs to the unemployed or similar. Strategies focus on how to ‘hold accountable’ those in public or private sector positions, who have power to allocate resources. In a democratic society the poor have the power to vote, and the prospect of harnessing that power to support particular politicians has strong currency in electoral politics. In mass ‘actions,’ or large assemblies, faith-based community organizations are able to flex their political muscle, showing their strength to elected officials as they give voice to their demands. For those who desperately need electoral support, such pressure can be hard to resist. Due to the commitment not to forge permanent alliances (‘no permanent allies and no permanent enemies’), FBCOs remain militantly non-partisan, cultivating an organizational discipline to stay focused on the goal and a capacity to reward or punish public officials. In this political negotiation the tactics can become confrontational. More often in the past, FBCOs used symbolic mass actions to shame or humiliate officials. (Alinsky famously used humour and ‘trickery’ to highlight the needs of the poor, as described in Bretherton’s piece). FBCOs struggle with the ethics of tactics to pressure public officials. Biblical language can be used, particularly the prophetic language condemning those rulers who ignore the poor, but it can be problematic when it comes to tactics; for instance, people of faith might not be entirely comfortable

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‘­smiting’ their enemies, if only in reputation. Still, biblical language proves useful in connecting with shared moral values that can mobilize people. For example, PICO is currently waging an initiative through many of its local affiliates located in the states which are requiring new forms of personal identification in order to vote. This is seen as an attempt to disenfranchise poor voters who might not have a photographic identification card, such as a driver’s licence. The name of the non-violent campaign is ‘Let My People Vote’; pointed and familiar language for people of the Abrahamic faiths. We have to ask, then, how those within the academy contribute to the moral discourse around the goals and strategies of organizing. Theologian Mary Fulkerson embodies the dialogue between the academy and organizing. As an academic also involved in a local IAF affiliate, she allows the two sectors to interrogate each other around the meaning of conflict, and she challenges the socially-constructed distance between the academy and grass-roots, faith-based organizing, seeing it as an obstacle to a deepening and robust praxis. New Challenges The new dimensions and challenges of organizing in the early twenty-first century might surprise Alinsky. ‘New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth’, writes James Russell Lowell in the Protestant hymn ‘Once to Every Man and Nation’. Public theologians must consider the organizing networks and the ‘the new occasions’ in the current context and the ‘new duties’ they might be teaching us. For example, the revolutionary movements of the Arab Spring shared many of the same goals of self-determination and empowerment, yet relied heavily on technologies of social networks, twitter and texting in their mobilization. Such technological mobilization challenges FBCO orthodoxies of building relationships through face-to-face interaction. The Alinsky model, replicated in local organizing efforts through the major networks as well as smaller localized efforts, understands interpersonal relationships based on one-on-one conversations and house meetings to be the very building blocks of democratic society. Thus, personal experience becomes the basis for identifying shared concerns and building solidarity. A prime example from another part of the globe is the highly effective organization of women in Liberia by Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee. Her grass-roots effort did not depend on technologies to build an organization, but drew on some tactics from ancient Greek literature. Formed by her Lutheran faith and her personal history with violence, Gbowee experienced a



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call from God, and mobilized women to confront the state violence of the Charles Taylor regime. The women’s tactics were non-violent but attentiongrabbing: like Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, they organized a sex strike as a way of getting the leaders to the table. (No doubt, this strategy would have pleased Alinsky who said that a good tactic should be directed at the vulnerability of the opponent, should grab public attention and should be enjoyed by the participants.)2 It is hard to imagine that this type of organization based on solidarity among women could have been accomplished by relying on social network technology. Moreover, the face-to-face versus technological organizing method raises interesting theological questions. On the one hand, a purely utilitarian approach to communication can be critiqued from a perspective of an incarnational public theology that privileges human experience and encounter over information: building community in the mobilization process is at least as important as the social change it hopes to effect. On the other hand, the structures of technology are increasingly the locus of power; as the digital divide increases, access to information technology becomes an important goal of democratization. In this respect, public theologians can help organizers think through the deeper implications of cyber-organizing. Further, the old tension within ethics of whether we are called to be faithful or effective comes into play here, namely around the ways technology might enhance the effectiveness of organizing without compromising commitments to remain faithful to building human communities of shared experience, or common passions (that is, compassion). The case of the Liberian women’s efforts also raises profoundly the question of gender and leadership in organizing. While the most effective leaders are often drawn from the margins of a community, organizing networks have been critiqued for leadership structures that are still heavily male. Women’s experience can offer a different perspective from the male one, leading to different analyses and strategies. Gbowee is a case in point; after years of physical abuse, she literally embodied a critique of violence. Women are not the only victims of violence, of course, but Gbowee’s experience resonated with that of many other women who saw the violence of the civil war in gendered terms. Perhaps feminist/womanist/mujerista theologies are resources for the consideration of FBCO at this point in history. Similar questions can be raised in terms of race and ethnicity. FBCO has been intentional in its self-definition as being ‘broad-based’, as opposed to issue organizing or ‘identity politics’. This means that communities who share 2) Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (New York: Random House, 1971).

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urban space are organized across a broad spectrum of religious and community institutions to address issues that emerge from common concerns. Hence, the particularities of race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation are transcended for the common good. While an issue might have particular impact on a racial group—such as working for affordable housing in a context with high housing need among African Americans—organizing is decidedly not racebased. Issue organizing, such as mobilization efforts in the prevention of gun violence or ecological movements, often utilize Alinsky-esque methods but are not geographically based for the most part, drawing participants across communities and regions. Broad-based organizing, on the other hand, gives the whole community the opportunity to work together, in coalition, on issues of shared concern which emerge through their discernment processes. (Readers will notice that writers in this book refer to ‘broad-based community organizing’ (BBCO) and ‘institution-based organizing’ (IBCO). BBCO, the rubric employed by John Bowlin and Jarrett Kerbel, and IBCO, used by Fulton and Wood, essentially reflect the same phenomenon as FBCO, but indicate the inclusion of groups beyond religious institutions.) To widen the net beyond religious and institutional parochialism allows issues that might divide subgroups to be transcended for the greater good. Caution is required, however, to ensure that the concerns of particular groups are not ignored. It would be complicated for FBCO to address discrimination against the homosexual community, for example, given the diversity of perspectives on gay issues. While dialogue begins at the one-on-one level as individuals identify their self-interests, we need to know what the criteria are that warrant the identification of collective interest and the diminution of particular interests. In his reflection Anthony Banout, until recently working with Gamaliel, wrestles with the utility of ‘self-interest’ as a primary organizing principle, developed by Alinsky during the Cold War when Americans needed to differentiate themselves from atheistic communism which was seen as a threat to the individualism deeply embedded in American culture. Perhaps the cultural milieu of hyper-individualism has made the focus on ‘self-interest’ counterproductive; perhaps individuals, at least in North America, struggle to make the transition from ‘my interest’ to ‘our interest’—the very premise of faith-based organizing. The assumption of this transition has contributed to the construction of a boundary between broad-based and issue organizing. This demarcation is challenged by the presence of effective groups such as the Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ), a national network that focuses on employment issues. The reflection of a young IWJ leader, one of its national organizers Jonathan Currie, speaks eloquently to the role of theology in their organizing efforts, as well



introduction

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their shared commitment to including an expanding plurality of religious groups. The differentiation between the broad-based approach of the networks and IWJ’s focus on a single issue is not so clear; however, they share theological grounding, language and understandings of power, a commitment to transformation for those who suffer, and even strategies to bring about change. IWJ casts their net widely (nationally in fact) in their focus on the issue of justice within the labour market, while the major organizing networks have local affiliates pursuing local goals that might relate to improving education, addressing crime, developing affordable housing or economic development and jobs. Yet both IWJ and the major organizing networks need to be concerned with organizing at local and national levels. It seems, therefore, that a clear distinction between broad-based and issue-oriented faith-based organizing is a construction that should be contested. A Community Organizer in the White House Community organizing in the US has historically had periods of waxing and waning with periods of social upheaval and social stability, but it has rarely been a universally recognizable phenomenon. Currently community organizing has re-emerged in popular public discourse with the election of Barack Obama, not only the first black President in the historically ‘White’ House, but the first to bring a background in community organizing. After graduating from Columbia University, Obama moved to the southside of Chicago in 1985, where he spent three years organizing in an impoverished neighbourhood, developing an organization that became affiliated with the Gamaliel Foundation. Veteran community organizers mentored him as he focused on improving the quality of life in a squalid public housing project. In his announcement that he would run for the office of presidency years later, Obama described his organizing experience as ‘the best education [he] ever had’. His work as an organizer was transformative, as he describes in his autobiography, Dreams From My Father.3 In his work on the southside of Chicago, he deeply engaged the harsh realities of poverty, powerlessness and structural racism. Initially he saw government, whether local, state or national, as being inadequate to bring real change; change would only come as people had the opportunity to advocate for themselves. Early in his work he reflected Alinsky’s 3) Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1995 and 2004); pp. 133–295.

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methodology that newly organized groups focus their efforts first on ‘winnable goals’. He states: My plan for the parents was simple. We didn’t yet have the power to change state welfare policy, or create local jobs, or bring substantially more money into the schools. But what we could do was begin to improve basic services in Altgeld (the housing project)—get the toilets fixed, the heaters working, the windows repaired.4

Organizer Obama did see some modest successes through his community organization, as its members learned how to be leaders, to identify issues, to confront those in power and to access the media. This public engagement with civil society was the first true experience of democratic participation for those in the Gamaliel affiliate, living on the economic and political margins of the city. Working with many local churches, Obama came to appreciate the role that faith communities play in social change, not just as units of organization but as sources of moral vision and agency. He did finally affiliate with one of the churches, Trinity United Church of Christ, through which he encountered God through Afro-centric liturgical forms. Eventually Obama sensed the complexity and intransigence of poverty, the limitations of local organizing, and the need to access the power structure in order to more effectively address economic injustice. In reflecting on his decision to go to Harvard Law School he writes: ‘I would learn power’s currency in all its intricacy and detail, knowledge that would have compromised me before coming to Chicago but that I could now bring back to where it was needed, back to Roseland, back to Altgeld; bring it back like Promethean fire’.5 Poverty in the US is indeed a many-headed Hydra. Twenty-four years later, Roseland still struggles with poverty and all of its dysfunctions, which are mutually reinforcing.6 President Obama recognizes the complexity of the problem and the comprehensive transformation that is required to address it: jobs, health care, education, hunger, family fragmentation, affordable housing, community empowerment and personal choices will need to be addressed through strategies incorporating government policies and grassroots efforts. In his first term as President, Obama was able to direct federal efforts toward tangible supports for the poor. Still, poverty increased during his watch from 13.2% 4) Ibid., p. 234. 5) Ibid., p. 276. 6) See Paul Tough, ‘Obama vs. Poverty’, New York Times Magazine (19 August 2012).



introduction

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to over fifteen per cent between 2008 and 2012. Yet, it can be argued that given the great recession, that began in 2008, the numbers of those in deep poverty could have been much higher. While liberals are appreciative of a President with authentic, and formative, experience among the poor, conservatives opposing President Obama in his second campaign have drawn on his community organizing background with vitriol. Alinsky, unknown to most Americans, has been brought into political discourse through the conservative media and identified with President Obama. Obama has been derided as the ‘community organizer-in-chief’, and his leadership has been framed as divisive and confrontational. Community organizing, on this interpretation, divides the haves from the have-nots, pitting school teachers against oil companies and unionized workers against the wealthy. One writer in the prestigious business journal, Forbes Magazine, writes: President Obama’s 2012 campaign strategy, too, comes right out of Saul Alinsky’s classic guide for community organizers, Rules For Radicals. In his demonization of “the rich” and his charge that Republicans are putting politics ahead of the country, Obama is employing Alinsky’s thirteenth rule: ‘pick the target, personalize it, freeze it, and polarize it’.7

The writer of the above slur has an understanding, if unnuanced, of Alinsky’s approach to community organizing. However, his most basic assumption is that this is a strategy for the grassroots to confront those in power, in both the public and private sectors; it is not a prescription for federal policy. In fact, Alinsky did not consider those in power capable of voluntarily redistributing resources; they could only be pressured to do so by those with the greatest stake in the outcomes. Still the public debate around community organizing does expose fundamental differences in political philosophies espoused by liberals and conservatives about the mechanisms for just distribution of resources. Conservatives contend that the paradigm of distributive justice assumes a fixed number of resources that need to be decentralized and redistributed equitably. In advanced capitalism, resources should not be moved around but need to be consolidated in order to grow; aggregated resources eventually contribute to the common good through the trickling down of surplus profits. Community 7) Charles Kadlec, ‘President Obama: Community Organizer in Chief’, Forbes Magazine (3 October 2011).

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organizing, primarily defined by social processes and organizing methods, does have a skeletal political philosophy built around some core assumptions and values. The universal access to rights and opportunities and the commitment to a fully democratic society, premised on Enlightenment ideals of human dignity and freedom, provide those philosophical underpinnings. Questions remain, however, concerning the most effective methods for living out these ideals; whether they are necessarily localized or whether they can be national or global in scope; whether social change necessarily involves division and conflict; whether power is a fixed commodity; and if the consolidation of capital is not morally defensible, whether distributive justice is possible apart from coercion. The Future of Faith-Based Community Organizing As community organizing moves into the future, a number of questions are raised, from the theological to the practical. The future of faith-based organizing in the US is at the centre of the concern of the writers from multiple perspectives included here. Very tangibly, there are concerns over how FBCOs will be sustained financially. To mobilize the poor requires a particular entrepreneurism. To find sources of funding, while maintaining the integrity of the organizing effort, is a formidable challenge. The chapter by Fulton and Wood indicates that sources of funding are shifting from religious organizations to private foundations. Contributor Sheila Greeve Davaney is uniquely positioned, as a former programme officer in the Ford Foundation, to analyse the goals and commitments of potential funders within the secular philanthropic sector. The further issue in considering the future of faith-based organizing is educational: simply put, it concerns how organizing principles will be taught to the next generation of faith leaders, and whether there is a role for the academy in an age that raises questions about the relationship of theological education to, and perhaps continuing distance from, the practice of ministry. Thus, Bowlin and Kerbel reflect on teaching their course on community organizing at Princeton Theological Seminary. As well as providing some important information on their pedagogy, the course surfaced important tensions that arose in the class, where the approach of community organizing challenged seminary culture and the formation for Christian ministry currently employed in a leading Protestant theological institution. It raises the thorny issue of whether community organizing should have a place within the theological



introduction

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curriculum, or whether it is best taught in the field, as clergy encounter, and are trained by, organizing networks. In the closing postscript, one experienced IAF leader in the field, Elizabeth Valdez, affirms the value of its study in the academy, having taken a recent sabbatical in Princeton to benefit from such seminary courses for her work in Texas. Community organizing has benefited over the last decades from the human resources and social capital of communities of faith, but less so from the attention of public theologians. Organizers, including clergy, often do not have the time to attend to theological reflection and critique, yet their experience and insights are profound. Academically based theological education creates cultural, institutional and psychic distance from the on-the-ground, from-thepews-into-the-streets organizing. We have to ask, therefore, what practitioners and academics have to give each other in moving forward; how do they, in Fulkerson’s words, ‘receive from each other’. Clearly global trends of technology, the mobility of capital and the maldistribution of resources put new pressures on faith-based organizing; both its necessity and its forms. Theological questions continue to emerge around inherent political philosophies and tactics for change, around the structural nature of sin and human personhood, around the meaning of power and of human agency. It is my hope that this book will deepen the theological dialogue. In Memoriam As we put together this book, the father of Katie Day passed away. With gratitude for his life as a loyal churchman, defender of freedom, and loving father, we dedicate this book to Donald C. Day, 1924–2012.

Interfaith Community Organizing: Emerging Theological and Organizational Challenges Brad Fulton

Duke University, USA

Richard L. Wood

University of New Mexico, USA

Abstract Interfaith work in the United States takes diverse forms: from grass-roots collaboration on projects such as feeding the homeless, to locally-sponsored interfaith dialogues, collaborations sponsored by national denominational bodies and shared work on federal ‘faith-based initiatives’. This chapter profiles the characteristics and dynamics of a particular type of interfaith work, done under the rubric of ‘broad-based’, ‘faith-based’ or ‘congregation-based’ community organizing. For reasons detailed below, we term this form of interfaith and religious-secular collaboration ‘institution-based community organizing’. By drawing on results from a national survey of all local institution-based community organizations active in the United States in 2011, this chapter documents the significance of the field, its broadly interfaith profile, how it incorporates religious practices into organizing, and the opportunities and challenges that religious diversity presents to its practitioners and to North American society.1 Keywords interfaith, organizing, institution-based community organizing, United States, national survey, religious practices

Contemporary community organizing in the United States draws from a variety of figures in the history of grass-roots American democracy, including Jane Addams, Saul Alinsky, Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr, and from union organizing and the movements for civil rights of African Americans, 1) The 2011 census study was sponsored by Interfaith Funders and carried out by researchers at Duke University, USA and the University of New Mexico, USA.

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women and Hispanics. Ed Chambers of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) pioneered early elements of organizing based explicitly in community institutions, primarily but not exclusively religious congregations.2 Today, most institution-based community organizing efforts in the US are affiliated with a sponsoring network; nationally, these include the IAF, the PICO National Network, the Gamaliel Foundation and National People’s Action (the last of which practices both institution-based and individual-based organizing). Important regional US networks include Direct Action Research Training (DART) in the southeast and mid-west, Inter-Valley Project (IVP) in New England and the Regional Council of Neighborhood Organizations (RCNO) in California. A smaller number of organizations doing institution-based work exist independently of the networks.3 Although each of the above efforts, whether network-affiliated or independent, has developed its own organizing model, they remain sufficiently similar to justify treating them as a field; all having been built with institutions as their foundation, and their ‘toolkits’ of organizing practices overlap considerably. Institution-based community organizations (IBCOs) demonstrate a growing capacity to produce outcomes that deviate from major social trends. Amidst evidence that North American society is becoming increasingly fragmented, IBCOs bring people together across racial, class, religious and ideological lines. As rising inequality and deteriorating quality of life continue to diminish the power of disadvantaged people, IBCOs provide a vehicle for reducing inequality by consolidating power among the people. As elites and lobbyists dominate the political arena, IBCOs generate substantial political power among underrepresented communities. Finally, even though the media often highlight conflicts between (and within) religion traditions, IBCOs provide numerous examples of positive outcomes achieved by interfaith efforts aimed at addressing shared concerns via the public arena.4 2) See Heidi Swarts, Organizing Urban America: Secular and Faith-Based Progressive Movements (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) and Mark Warren, Dry Bones Rattling (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) for fuller history of institution-based community organizing. Note that the institution-based model is one among a variety of approaches to community organizing that emerge from overlapping roots, for more information see . 3) Some additional organizing structures have recently emerged alongside the networks and independent organizations among which the Ohio Organizing Collaborative has played a prominent and innovative role. 4) See Claude S. Fischer and Greggor Mattson, ‘Is America Fragmenting?’, Annual Review of Sociology, 35:1 (2009), 435–55 and Kathryn Neckerman and FlorenciaTorche, ‘Inequality: Causes and Consequences’, Annual Review of Sociology, 33 (2007), 335–7. On the work of the IBCO field to



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Although this chapter does not delve into the political achievements and potential of this field, we note that IBCOs collectively constitute a social movement dedicated to building democratic power, strengthening public life and improving social conditions in low income and working class communities. IBCOs contribute to North American democracy by grounding democratic action in the social institutions that structure the daily lives of individuals, families and communities. In addition, IBCOs bolster public life by identifying leaders and developing them into effective advocates for their communities; in so doing, they help communities organize and generate power that can be channelled toward shaping public policy to meet needs at the local level, and increasingly at the state and national level as well. Through this evolution, the IBCO field has become a strategic partner in nationwide efforts to build democratic power, reverse rising inequality and strengthen public life. Further, IBCOs current and potential future impact on specific issues and the public arena in general is being recognized.5 In this chapter, we briefly characterize the field as a whole then focus primarily on its interfaith profile. In so doing, we aspire to promote public understanding of institution-based community organizing, discuss the interfaith dynamics and spiritual practices that underpin it, and highlight the contributions it makes to interfaith relations and bridging social capital in North counter some of those trends, see Warren, Dry Bones Rattling; Swarts, Organizing Urban America; Richard L. Wood, Faith in Action: Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Kristina Smock, Democracy in Action: Community Organizing and Urban Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Janice Fine, Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream (Ithaca: ILR Press/Cornell University Press, 2006) and Marshall Ganz, Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 5) See Richard L. Wood and Mark R. Warren, ‘A Different Face of Faith-Based Politics: Social Capital and Community Organizing in the Public Arena’, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 22: 9/10 (2002), 6–54; Stephen Hart, Cultural Dilemmas of Progressive Politics: Styles of Engagement among Grassroots Activists (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Michael Gecan, After America’s Midlife Crisis (Boston: MIT Press, 2009); Paul Osterman, Gathering Power: The Future of Progressive Politics in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003) and Robert D. Putnam, David E. Campbell and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010). On its ability to project power at the state and national levels, see Richard L. Wood, ‘Higher Power: Strategic Capacity for State and National Organizing’, in Marion Orr, ed., Transforming the City: Community Organizing and the Challenge of Political Change (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2007), pp. 164–92 and Richard L. Wood, Brad Fulton and Kathryn Partridge, Building Bridges, Building Power: Developments in Institution-Based Community Organizing (Denver: Interfaith Funders, 2012).

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American society. We hope, too, that this discussion can provide sociological underpinnings to ongoing theological reflection on the work of community organizing. Interfaith Funders’ ‘State of the Field’ Study In 1999, Interfaith Funders conducted a national census of IBCOs to provide a detailed portrait of the work characterized as ‘faith-based community organizing’ and to establish a baseline for understanding the scope and scale of this community organizing model.6 Over the last decade, however, both the societal context and the IBCO field have changed substantially: economic inequality has risen, money now flows into electoral campaigns virtually uncontrolled and political institutions have become more polarized. The three religious sectors that comprised the membership core of the field in 1999—urban Catholic, mainline Protestant and historic Black Protestant churches—have each dealt with declining members and internal struggles (see below).7 Meanwhile, the IBCO field itself has evolved by extending its geographic reach, both beyond the urban core and into new states and cities. Moreover, the IBCO field has also developed a more diverse base of member institutions and has increased its collaborative work with other kinds of organizing efforts. Finally, over the last decade a greater proportion of the IBCO field has begun leveraging its power beyond the local level to address issues at state and national levels. In light of the rapidly changing socio-political context and the significant developments within the IBCO field, we collaborated with Interfaith Funders to conduct a follow-up of the 1999 census study. Through the 2011 study, we aimed to provide a thorough assessment of the field by mapping its growth and development, documenting its external political work and identifying the key internal dynamics that underpin that work including, as reported here, how IBCOs navigate religious differences and incorporate religious practices into their organizing activities. 6) See ‘Faith-Based Community Organizing: The State of the Field 1999’, as well as later reports from a major study of the impact of this kind of organizing upon congregational development, published by Interfaith Funders and available at and . 7) We use the term ‘mainline Protestant’ in deference to its wide usage to refer to those liberal and moderate Protestant denominations once considered the ‘mainline’ of north American religions. It includes those denominations of historic Protestantism usually listed as theologically liberal or moderate, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), Episcopal Church, American Baptist Churches, United Methodist Church, United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ.



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Research Design Our study was designed to replicate and build upon the 1999 study by surveying the entire field of IBCOs. It defines an IBCO as a local organization that practices the institution-based model of organizing (that is, it has institutional members), has an office address and has at least one paid organizer on staff. Based on these criteria, we identified 189 active organizations using databases from organizing networks, IBCO funders and denominational bodies, as well as IRS 990 Forms. Based on the exhaustive search and extensive crosschecking, we are confident that this study contains the entire universe of IBCOs active in the United States in 2011. In formulating the goals and content of the study, we drew on the counsel of local organizers, national organizing staff, foundation programme officers, denominational funders and scholars. In addition to asking identical questions from the 1999 study, several new items were added to better assess the work on specific issues, collaborative relations and religious practices within the field. The survey instrument was composed of two parts: part one was an online survey that gathered extensive data on each IBCO’s history, constituents, collaborators, activities, finances and issue work; part two consisted of customized spreadsheets that respondents used to provide detailed demographic information about their organization’s member institutions, board members and paid staff.8 The survey was distributed electronically to the director of every local IBCO during the second half of 2011, and the directors were informed that their responses would be kept confidential and that nothing would be published that identifies specific characteristics of their organization unless they provided consent.9 The survey achieved a response rate of ninety-four per cent, gathering data on 178 IBCOs and demographic information on 4,145 member institutions plus 2,939 board members and 628 paid staff involved in the IBCO field.10 The structure of the study enables the data to be analysed at two levels: the field level, which demonstrates patterns in the field as a whole, and the    8) The full online survey instrument can be accessed at .    9) Each director who completed the study received an honorarium that ranged between $25 and $100 based on the size of their organization. 10) Our assessment of the key characteristics of those IBCOs that did not respond to the survey suggests that no systematic patterns of non-response are likely to have produced a biased profile of the field. Hence, when providing total numbers for the entire field, we multiply values by a factor that accounts for information not provided by the non-responsive IBCOs (that is, we project figures from the 94% of respondents to the entire field).

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o­ rganization level, from which it is possible to assess similarities and differences among individual IBCOs. In addition, since we replicated items from the 1999 study and included the IBCOs surveyed in 1999, we can assess changes in the field (and in individual IBCOs) over the last decade; thus, offering a more dynamic view than possible with a one-time snapshot.11 Overall Profile of the IBCO Field A comparison of the 1999 snapshot with the current state of the field reveals the developments that have taken place over the last decade. In particular, the field experienced an overall growth rate of forty-two per cent: 102 new IBCOs were established and forty-six had become inactive (see Figures 1, 2, and 3).12 In most areas where an IBCO had become inactive, another IBCO still exists.13 Among the organizations that had become inactive, twenty-three had dissolved, eight are rebuilding, fourteen had merged into another IBCO and one had stopped using the institution-based organizing model. Further, the overall growth of the field corresponds with an increase in its geographic spread. In 1999, thirty-three states had active IBCOs; today, IBCOs are active in forty states, with new IBCOs having been established in nine new states (Alaska, Alabama, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Nevada, Oklahoma, Virginia and Vermont). As the field extended into new areas, it also deepened its presence in former areas. The states in which the number of IBCOs at least doubled include Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Mexico and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, half of the organizations reside in six states (California, Illinois, Florida, New York and Wisconsin), and the highest concentrations are in major urban areas. Most IBCOs are formally affiliated with a national or regional organizing network, and over the last decade each of these networks increased the number of IBCOs they serve. The largest relative growth occurred among three networks that were comparatively smaller in 1999; this has made the field more evenly distributed among the various organizing networks. In addition, during the

11) However, in some instances limitations in the 1999 study make complete comparisons impossible; we flag such instances below. 12) Some of the ‘new IBCOs’ existed in 1999, but did not meet the criteria for being included in the 1999 study. 13) The one exception is Tennessee which had three active IBCOs in 1999 but no longer had any active IBCOs as of 2011.

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Figure 1: The State of the Field in 1999 (N = 133)



Figure 2: The State of the Field in 2011 (N = 189)

24 brad fulton and richard l. wood



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same period, the number of organizations not affiliated with any formal organizing network also increased. The base of the IBCO field is its member institutions. In 1999, the field was comprised of roughly four thousand formal member institutions of which eighty-eight per cent were religious congregations and twelve per cent were non-congregational. Even though the number of IBCOs increased by fortytwo per cent over the last decade, the total number of member institutions increased by only 12.5% (to approximately 4,500).14 Thus, the median number of member institutions per IBCO declined from twenty-three to twenty-one. The composition of member institutions also shifted: since 1999, the number of member congregations has remained the same (approximately 3,500), while the number of non-congregational members has doubled (increasing from approximately five hundred to one thousand, most of which are not faith-based institutions). As discussed below, this growth in the secular side of Overall net gain + 56 IBCOs ( 42%) IAF

+ 6 ( 12%)

PICO

+ 13 ( 45%)

GAM

+ 6 ( 22%)

DART

+ 5 ( 42%)

NPA

+10

IVP

+ 3 ( 75%)

RCNO

1999 2011

+ 1 ( 25%)

Other

No Change

Indpt 0

10

+ 12 ( 400%) 20

30

40

50

60

Figure 3: Growth of the Field

14) The 1999 data include one IBCO that reported having 230 member institutions, by far the largest reported membership base (ten times larger than the median IBCO). This IBCO now has forty institutions. The 1999 study did not properly account for this outlier and probably over-estimated the total number of member institutions in the field. A more accurate estimate accounting for this outlier suggests that the field had approximately 3,900 member institutions in 1999; this would mean the field has increased by fifteen per cent since then.

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the IBCO field presents opportunities and challenges, both theologically and organizationally. The non-congregational institutions, which include schools, faith-based non-profit groups, unions and neighbourhood associations, now make up over twenty per cent of all member institutions, while seventy per cent of IBCOs have at least one non-congregational member. Twenty-three per cent of IBCOs have at least one union as a member institution, and roughly one quarter have a school, faith-based organization or neighbourhood association as a member institution. Among all of the non-congregational members, schools represent eighteen per cent, faith-based non-profit groups make up sixteen per cent, unions account for fifteen per cent and neighbourhood associations amount to thirteen per cent.15 A wide variety of other community-based organizations make up the remaining thirty-eight per cent. This diverse category includes community and economic development corporations, immigrant associations, social service programmes, civic organizations and so on (see Figure 4). Schools 4.0%

Faith-Based Organizations 3.6% Unions 3.4% Neighborhood Assoc. 2.9% Other 8.1%

Congregations 78%

Figure 4: Types of Member Institutions 15) Nearly all school members are ‘public schools’ in the American sense; their funding comes almost exclusively from the government and they serve the vast majority of youth in the United States. (That is, ‘state schools’ in Britain.)



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This shift in the composition of members has warranted changing how the field is referenced. That is, the phrase ‘congregation-based community organizing’ no longer represents the field as a whole; the phrase ‘institution-based community organizing’ provides a more accurate representation. Likewise, as more secular institutions have become members of IBCOs, the phrase ‘faithbased community organizing’ does not adequately capture the mix of cultural dynamics operating within the field. Most IBCOs draw on the faith components of their members’ religious traditions along with secular principles rooted in the North American democratic tradition. Notwithstanding, congregations remain the large majority of member institutions and thirty per cent of IBCOs have a member base comprised exclusively of congregations (which has gone down from forty-five per cent in 1999). Furthermore, the members’ shared religious beliefs provide the cultural glue that holds these organizations together. Most IBCOs continue to incorporate religious practices systematically into their work, and the networks have developed initiatives specifically designed to use organizing as a means to strengthen member congregations.16 Thus, although we use the term ‘institution-based’ to distinguish this field of organizations within the ecology of community organizing in the US, congregations and their faith commitments remain central to the IBCO organizing model. Religious Composition of the Field In the early days of institution-based organizing, religious congregations were the primary constituency that organizers recruited. While the proportion of non-congregational member institutions has since increased, religious congregations still make up the large majority of members. One per cent of all US congregations are involved in institution-based community organizing. Mainline Protestant, Catholic and Black Protestant congregations are the core constituents of IBCOs, while Evangelical, Jewish, Pentecostal, Muslim and Unitarian Universalist congregations represent a much smaller constituency. In the last decade, however, the religious composition of the IBCO field has become more evenly distributed among the various religious traditions 16) See Renewing Congregations (New York: Interfaith Funders and The Ford Foundation, 2003) and Faith and Public Life (New York: Interfaith Funders and The Ford Foundation, 2004). See especially the work to strengthen congregations using tools from community organizing within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Unitarian Universalist Association and Jewish faith community at ; and .

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brad fulton and richard l. wood Percentage of Member Congregation that are... Mainline Protestant

32% (–5%)

Catholic

27% (–6%)

Black Protestant

24% (+1.5%)

Jewish

5% (+3%)

Evangelical Protestant

4% (+1.5%)

Unitarian Universalist

4% (+2%)

Pentecostal / Charismatic

2% (Not available)

Muslim Other Non-Christian -

1999 2011

1% (Not available)