Community Organizing in Britain: The Political Engagement of Faith–Based Social Capital

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark R. Warren
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Congregations ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Democratic Life

Faith–based community organizing in the United States has emerged as one of the most effective ways to rebuild democratic life in urban communities. Scholars have argued that the success of modern community organizing lies in its ability to engage the social capital embedded in religious congregations. I examine this claim through a comparatively set case study of the effort to apply an American community organizing strategy in Britain. Using interviews, observations, and documentary sources, I analyze the experience of the British Citizens Organizing Foundation (COF), which is affiliated to the U.S.–based Industrial Areas Foundation. I find that the COF has attained more national influence than its American counterpart, but its local foundations remain much weaker. the relative weakness of faith–based social capital in Britain only partly explains this result. the orientations of religious institutions toward political engagement also matter, and so does the relative power of local versus national political institutions. I argue for bringing a more institutional approach to our theoretical understanding of community organizing and of the role of social capital in revitalizing democratic life more broadly.

scholarly journals Taming Prophetic Religion? Faith-Based Activism and Welfare Provision

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-95
Author(s):  
Richard Wood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Service ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The Us ◽  
Faith Based Institutions ◽  
Prophetic Religion

AbstractThis article examines the current debate in the United States (primarily) and Britain regarding government-funded social service provision via faith-based institutions. By highlighting the tension between the 'priestly' and 'prophetic' roles of public religion, it argues for the critical importance of protecting religion's prophetic role even as society moves toward more extensive public financing of priestly social service provision. The article first outlines contemporary prophetic religion in the United States, especially faith-based community organizing (also known as broad-based community organizing) efforts, emphasizing three facets of the field: its scale, its role in building social capital, the issues it has addressed. Secondly, the article argues that, despite the narrow partisan tenor of recent faith-based social service provision in the US, it may have redeeming features that new leaders will want to preserve. However, H. R. Niebuhr's (1951) analysis of the relationship between religion and culture is invoked to characterize four key tensions between priestly and prophetic religion that may be exacerbated by governmental funding. The conclusion outlines several approaches through which practitioners, policymakers, the press, and scholars can help society maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of such funding.

scholarly journals Interfaith Community Organizing Emerging Theological and Organizational Challenges

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 398-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brad Fulton ◽  
Richard L. Wood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organizational Challenges ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Local Institution ◽  
American Society ◽  
Interfaith Community ◽  
Work Done

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 article 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 article 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

Congregations and Communities

2020 ◽  
pp. 63-84
Author(s):  
Jeff Levin
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Substance Abusers ◽  
Underserved Populations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Healthcare Organizations ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Public Health Professionals ◽  
Congregational Health ◽  
The Unemployed

Chapter 4 tells the story of how congregational health promotion and disease prevention programs evolved decades ago. Pioneered by the work of Granger Westberg in the 1970s and earlier efforts in community medicine in apartheid-era South Africa, later programs included collaborations with academic public health professionals, such as work in North Carolina churches focused on eliminating health disparities among African Americans. These programs, targeting underserved populations, have grown into a major feature of public health outreach in the United States, involving partnerships between faith-based and healthcare organizations. This chapter also outlines faith-based community programs involving healthcare and human services professionals that provide outreach to specialized populations. These include primary care clinics, faith community nursing, patient education, hospices, and other programs targeting older adults, mothers and children, the homeless and hungry, the unemployed, substance abusers and the physically and cognitively challenged, and others. Interfaith efforts are highlighted, as well as projects involving community organizing for social change.

scholarly journals A different face of faith‐based politics: social capital and community organizing in the public arena

2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (9/10) ◽  
pp. 6-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Wood ◽  
Mark R. Warren
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Arena ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Deprived Areas

Questions whether, in the USA, faith‐based communities can have an important effect on politics. Contends that other areas, where there are poorer communities, are more likely to be influenced politically in civil society although does not preclude other income sectors from being similarly affected just that deprived areas are more likely to listen to faith‐based organizers.

Personality, Prosperity, Priority, Productivity, and Piety: Selecting Congregational Valued Lay Leaders

2021 ◽  
pp. 382-405
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Behavior ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lay Leaders ◽  
Religious Congregations ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Social Welfare Services

Religious congregations are community hubs of welfare and health services. They are known mostly for their spiritual and faith-based activities while being the largest providers of social care with the exception of social welfare services. Their leaders, the clergy, do not work alone. Members that work alongside clergy are essential for the congregation’s functioning but are under-researched, which limits our understanding of the inner workings of local religious congregations. In this exploratory study, we surveyed clergy to assess the characteristics possessed by their most trusted congregants—the valued members. This study helps to better understand the organizational behavior and an overall understanding of congregational members, who work most closely with clergy. We used an online survey of clergy across religious traditions within the United States (N=202), who provided personal data and described their valued members’ collective characteristics. Alongside our conceptual literature review, the findings identified five key groups: Personality, Prosperity, Priority, Productivity, and Piety. Overall, the valued members ranked highest were high on productivity and lowest on prosperity. We also found differences between clergy ranking based on their age, gender, and religion.

Civil sphere and democracy in Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Ch. Alexander ◽  
Carlo Tognato
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Class Stratification ◽  
Civil Sphere ◽  
The Everyday

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that the civil spheres of Latin America remain in force, even when under threat, and to expand the method of theorizing democracy, understanding it not only as a state form, but also as a way of life. Moreover, the task of the authors goes beyond the purely application of the theory of the civil sphere in order to emphasize the relevance not only in practice, but also in the theory of democratic culture and institutions of Latin America. This task requires decolonizing the arrogant attitude of North theorists towards democratic processes outside the United States and Europe. The peculiarities of civil spheres in Latin America are emphasized. It is argued that over the course of the nineteenth century the non-civil institutions and value spheres that surrounded civil spheres deeply compromised them. The problems of development that pockmarked Latin America — lagging economies, racial and ethnic and class stratification, religious strife — were invariably filtered through the cultural aspirations and institutional patterns of civil spheres. The appeal of the theory of the civil sphere to the experience of Latin America reveals the ambitious nature of civil society and democracy on new and stronger foundations. Civil spheres had extended significantly as citizens confronted uncomfortable facts, collectively searched for solutions, and envisioned new courses of collective action. However when populism and authoritarianism advance, civil understandings of legitimacy come under pressure from alternative, anti-democratic conceptions of motives, social relations, and political institutions. In these times, a fine-grained understanding of the competitive dynamics between civil, non-civil, and anti-civil becomes particularly critical. Such a vision is constructively applied not only to the realities of Latin America, but also in a wider global context. The authors argue that in order to understand the realities and the limits of populism and polarization, civil sphere scholars need to dive straight into the everyday life of civil communities, setting the civil sphere theory (CST) in a more ethnographic, “anthropological” mode.

Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Roy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
West Bank ◽  
Gaza Strip ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Promise ◽  
Religious Congregations ◽  
Regional Dynamics ◽  
Second Intifada

Many in the United States and Israel believe that Hamas is nothing but a terrorist organization, and that its social sector serves merely to recruit new supporters for its violent agenda. Based on extensive fieldwork in the Gaza Strip and West Bank during the critical period of the Oslo peace process, this book shows how the social service activities sponsored by the Islamist group emphasized not political violence but rather community development and civic restoration. The book demonstrates how Islamic social institutions in Gaza and the West Bank advocated a moderate approach to change that valued order and stability, not disorder and instability; were less dogmatically Islamic than is often assumed; and served people who had a range of political outlooks and no history of acting collectively in support of radical Islam. These institutions attempted to create civic communities, not religious congregations. They reflected a deep commitment to stimulate a social, cultural, and moral renewal of the Muslim community, one couched not only—or even primarily—in religious terms. Vividly illustrating Hamas's unrecognized potential for moderation, accommodation, and change, the book also traces critical developments in Hamas' social and political sectors through the Second Intifada to today, and offers an assessment of the current, more adverse situation in the occupied territories. The Oslo period held great promise that has since been squandered. This book argues for more enlightened policies by the United States and Israel, ones that reflect Hamas' proven record of nonviolent community building. A new afterword discusses how Hamas has been affected by changing regional dynamics and by recent economic and political events in Gaza, including failed attempts at reconciliation with Fatah.

Restoring Damaged Relationships Through the Art of Invitation: Application with Addicted Incarcerated Women

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katti J. Sneed ◽  
Debbie Teike
Keyword(s):  
Human Services ◽  
Addiction Treatment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Relationship Building ◽  
Health And Human Services ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Department Of Health ◽  
Complementary Approach

This article presents a description of Art of Invitation as a complementary approach to traditional addiction treatment through the alignment of Art of Invitation (AOI) with Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Ten Guiding Principles for Recovery.  AOI is a faith based relationship building approach that combines key Judeo/Christian teachings with relationship building tools, skills, and concepts for those seeking to build and restore relationships.  SAMHSA, as the leading agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, spearheads public health efforts to advance behavioral health within the United States.  Each Guiding Principle is presented along with a description of how AOI is shared with incarcerated women, an often neglected population, participating in an inpatient treatment program housed in a community corrections facility.

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