Faith Organizing for the Common Good—Reclaiming America’s Values Debate
By Rev. Jennifer Butler, Executive Director, Faith in Public Life
If 2004 represented a nadir for progressive faith communities, 2006 opened several windows of possibility. In 2004, values voters were defined narrowly as those who opposed abortion and gay marriage. The voice of religion and values came to be synonymous with the voice of the Christian Right; religious leaders from progressive communities were virtually silent (or ignored) in local and national media. In stark contrast, just two years later, communities of faith across the ideological spectrum are strong and clear voices on issues of religion, values, and public policy.
The shifting values debate was nowhere on better display than in Ohio in 2006. In 2004, national conservatives poured millions of dollars into Ohio to fuel the ‘Patriot Pastors’—a movement of conservative clergy mobilized to get out the conservative religious vote to pass a same-sex marriage ban. ‘Patriot Pastors’ leaders dominated media coverage of religion and politics; there was no alternative progressive religious voice. In the same state two years later, ‘We Believe Ohio’—a movement of hundreds of clergy who sought to provide a positive, diverse voice of faith in Ohio—reclaimed the values debate from the ‘Patriot Pastors’ with headlines like, “Religious Leaders Put Faith in Broader Values” in The Columbus Dispatch and “Liberal, Moderate Faith Groups Team to Counter Religious Right,” in The Associated Press.
How did this shift occur? While several factors have contributed to this change in the values debate, one factor was clearly critical: moderate and progressive religious leaders were better organized to influence public debate and mobilize voters. These leaders represented communities concerned about the War in Iraq, growing poverty and income disparity, and government corruption and failure to protect vulnerable citizens—revealed most starkly in the failed government response to Katrina. Many of these efforts are fiercely concerned about reclaiming faith—from partisan politics in particular, as well as working for justice and unifying people of faith.
Faith in Public Life (FPL), an organizing and communications resource center for faith leaders sharing a call to pursue justice and the common good, is an example of one faith-based effort to organize in new ways. Created by 40 prominent interfaith leaders, FPL seeks to shift the American values debate by amplifying the voices of faith leaders across the country working for progressive causes.
Faith leaders created FPL with an “open source” movement mission. Open source organizing is a concept inspired by open source software coding that eschews proprietary ownership in favor of more potent, communally designed projects. Rather than serving as an umbrella coalition or spokes organization advancing a particular agenda, FPL lifts up faith leaders’ voices and connects movement leaders who are working on shared causes. FPL has a movement-building rather than issue-centered mission. This model has enabled FPL to stretch meager movement resources to help over-burdened organizations develop collaborative approaches to shared challenges.
What does it look like to implement such a mission? FPL creates “public goods” and “public spaces” that foster strength across the diverse, resurging faith movement. In its first year of operation, and with a handful of staff, FPL won 400 unique media hits in more than 1,000 media outlets for faith leaders. It got ahead of the election spin to shape 2006 election coverage of the religious vote by coordinating a pre-election message strategy for movement leaders, amplifying faith leaders’ voices in the media with multiple press teleconferences, and circulating rapid-response exit poll analyses to media. Faith in Public Life’s name rarely appears in lights; the mission is to lift up the voice of faith leaders.
While moderate and progressive faith leaders outnumber the Christian Right, one would not always know that from media coverage, which plays a powerful role in opinion-making. Equally important to strategic communications work is the rebuilding of faith infrastructure and grassroots networks. Scores of phenomenal faith-based efforts exist in every state and community, but they are often disconnected one from another. To confront this problem, Faith in Public Life mapped religious leadership dedicated to working for justice and the common good in all 50 states and loaded the data into an online wiki-map supported by Google technology (rather than hoarding it as a private resource). Leaders can add their own efforts to the map (if they are not already there) and use the map to search for allies and advertise events and campaigns. FPL can also blast email alerts to all faith leaders on the map, or tailored alerts to faith leaders with a particular issue focus or located in a certain geographical area.
Drawing on the mapping work, FPL began providing communications and organizing resources to important faith leader efforts in Ohio. In 2006, FPL helped launch, and continues to support, ‘We Believe Ohio.’ Building on its work there, FPL will train leaders from five states this summer in partnership with Chicago Theological Seminary and We Believe Ohio.
FPL’s website, www.faithinpubliclife.org, has become a national hub for faith organizing, with nearly 500,000 hits a month. The tools on the website focus on highlighting movement successes, building connectivity among movement leaders, and amplifying moderate and progressive faith voices in the media. In addition to the faith leader map, tools include a daily faith and politics newsreel, blog, media speakers bureau, faith events calendar, best practices, and issue resources. One of FPL’s most popular tools, the daily news reel, keeps journalists, bloggers, and activists up to date on trends in faith and politics so that they are able to respond to the 24-hour news cycle. This year, FPL will develop a tool kit section on the site. Two training manuals will be uploaded in the next several months: the first will be a media strategy guide (soon to be published) and the second will cover online organizing.
Faith Movement Challenges
A number of challenges remain as moderate and progressive faith leaders retake the terrain they dominated during the Civil Rights Era. Despite recent successes, national faith organizations still have a long way to go in building grassroots connections. Partnerships between national religious bodies and congregation-based community organizing networks, which were estimated to have reached between one and three million Americans in 2000, would be one way to strengthen the reach of each. For the past few years, the Inter-Religious Organizing Initiative has brought denominational and community organizing leaders together to help churches expand their involvement in organizing. As a result, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) trained most of its Bishops in community organizing. The bishops were trained by the top organizers around the country and are now helping their dioceses become more involved in organizing.
Developing stronger online strategies will also strengthen our base. Progressive faith bloggers held a conference last summer and communicate weekly through a listserv Faith in Public Life set up. Email list sharing helped launch large e-lists for Faithful America and Sojourners.
Diverse movements continue to operate in silos but could be powerful if united around common causes. We must foster greater synergy and communication between state and national work, African-American, Latino, White mainline, moderate White evangelical, Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish communities. The New Sanctuary Movement has just been launched and promises to strengthen the diverse coalition supporting immigrants’ rights. Faith in Public Life’s mapping project (which can be viewed online) and training efforts will continue to help build bridges between state and national efforts.
The faith community has a long way to go on these and other challenges, but significant strides have been made in the past two years. Get connected to www.faithinpubliclife.org to stay up-to-date on the latest developments!
