Faith based Community Organizations

Faith-based Community Organizations have demonstrated an amazing ability to achieve social justice in the urban communities of the world. In parts of India this organizations helped achieve water and sewer plants for their neighborhoods. In other parts of the world people who had been kept out of jobs for various reasons were able to get jobs through agreements with employers or labor unions. With all the good that these organizations do I think the one thing they do the best is to build leaders. Usually the poor have been so beaten down that they cower before the powerful. Injustice happens because there are powerful people and weak people, powerful organizations and weak organizations. Community Organizers work with the poor, equipping them to understand the issues and then they, the poor, stand up to power and achieve their goals. The poor discover that they have power equal to the powerful and can achieve their goals if they band together.

What makes faith-based organizations different than other community organizations is faith. These FBCOs usually are organizations of churches that build the people from the foundation of faith. These organizations bring God back into public life. No longer are the religious relegated to serving God only on Sunday; no, they discover that God is relevant every day of the week. What's even more important is that public institutions also recognize the public life of the church. Faith-based Community Organizations are not evangelistic (that is left to the individual Churches); they are about justice and identifying & building leaders. These newly discovered leaders take their personal faith and make it public. The urban centers of the world are more livable because of the work of faith-based community organizations.

Has the Christian Right Cried Wolf Once Too Often?

I'm all caught up in the election this year; I guess everyone is. Some approach next week with excitment; while others dread next Wednesday when the results will be known. This afternoon I received a DVD in the mail that was from a conservative Jewish and Christian organization. It dawned on me, as I just threw it away, that I now ignore all the right wing emails I have been receiving from all my conservative friends. Time after time I would do a snopes.com on their accusations, discovering the half truths and outright lies that these emails contained. It's like the boy who cried wolf; I no longer listen to these dire warnings. What happens if they have really something to say? they have so poisoned the well that no one wants to drink from their water.

Another thought came as I was watching one of the talking heads wonder out loud why the conservative Christians are so hateful; he thought Christians should be known for their love of neighbor. I tend to agree. In fact the conservative talking head actually called these evangelicals culturally conservatives; she refused to speak about the Christian Right. They have spewed so much hate and so many lies that I am wondering if there is anything Christian about the Christian Right. should we call them the Christian Wrong or perhaps the Secular Right or as the talking head suggested, the Culturally Conservative?