Don't Forget the Church!

As community organizing continues to develop and become a greater fixture in American public life, many groups are drifting from the church as a base. I think that community organizing ignores religious communities at its peril.

The church has been the cornerstone of organizing efforts dating back to the Catholics support of labor unions and the Christian and Jewish communities support of the Civil Rights movement. The church provides several key elements essential to the well being of good organizing: a readily available constituency for turn out purposes, strong foundation of many communities, and a moral imperative to do good works above self interest.

When organizing groups leave this critical group on the sidelines, they expose themselves to potentially fickle coalitions of groups seeking to only address their narrow interests. This can make long organizing campaigns especially difficult since some of the toughest issues requires enduring long suffering. Although non religious groups can do this, religious organizations are uniquely positioned to carry out the role of being the soul of a campaign.

Therefore, I encourage community organizations to re-engage the church as a primary partner in the fight to improve communities through organizing.