Faith Movement Facts

The Resurgence of Faith Movements for Justice and the Common Good

New Organizations

CrossWalk America: CrossWalk America seeks to explore and articulate the theological principles behind both faith and politics from a distinctly Christian perspective. Christian ministers and laypeople will walk 2,500 miles across the country, from Phoenix, Arizona to Washington, DC, starting on Easter Sunday 2006.

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good: The Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good connects and allies Catholic organizations, religious institutes, public and community leaders, Catholic scholars, and individuals in the United States with a commitment to Catholic social justice tradition. The Catholic Alliance community, founded in 2005, fosters collaboration and coordinated messaging on Catholic issues relating to public life.

We Believe Ohio: In 2006, more than 100 clergy in Columbus, Ohio, formed We Believe to give Ohioans a positive public voice of faith. We Believe Ohio – which has expanded to a statewide effort including more than 300 religious leaders -- embraces justice, diverse religious expression and the common good. They affirm the need for religious voices to inform public policy and reject crossing the lines that separate the institutions of religion and government.

Beatitudes Society: Formed in 2006, the Beatitudes Society is an ecumenical educational organization consisting of students and faculty who meet in School Chapters to make it easier for members to fulfill their potential as religious leaders in the spirit of the Beatitudes.

Church Folks for a Better America: An online initiative for peace founded in July 2004, Church Folks for a Better America hopes to break the silence about the war in Iraq that is still too widespread in our country -- not least in our churches. It believes that without new priorities in our nation's foreign and military policy, a safer world and a better America will not be reached.

Catholics for Faithful Citizenship: Formed in 2004, Catholics for Faithful Citizenship is a Catholic organization based in Ohio that promotes education and involvement in the U.S. political process from a lens of social justice, just war policy and attention to the poor. Catholics for Faithful Citizenship seeks to inform Catholic voters about the wide range of issues on which the Church calls Catholic voters to base their political decisions.

Catholic Democracy Institute: The Catholic Democracy Institute is a non-partisan not-for-profit organization dedicated to educating Catholics about the fullness of Catholic Social Teaching. CDI produces the daily online Catholic Media Report, which presents current information about issues relevant to Catholicism and public life, including links to the news articles and analysis of contemporary political issues.

Catholics for the Common Good: Based in Michigan, Catholics for the Common Good came together in August 2004 in response to the call of Catholic Bishops for involvement in fall elections and for careful selection of candidates after thorough examination of the issues in the light of the Catholic faith. Catholics for the Common Good created voter guides for Catholics on issues ranging from Iraq to health care.

Recent Campaigns and Initiatives

God is not a Republican. Or a Democrat: Responding to claims from some Religious Right leaders that President George W. Bush is “God’s Candidate," faith leaders from across the theological spectrum placed a full-page statement in The New York Times at the start of the Republican National Convention: “God is Not a Republican... Or a Democrat." More than 40,000 people of faith endorsed the ad, including more than 40 prominent evangelical, Catholic, and Protestant leaders.

Life Does Not End at Birth: Pax Christi USA’s “Life Does Not End at Birth" statement -- a Catholic election-year statement that articulated a call for Catholics to vote on the broad range of issues that impact the common good -- was placed in more than 30 diocesan and secular publications throughout 2004, reaching more than 30 million Catholics in the United States. This work was done in partnership with Faithful America and Res Publica. Pax Christi is a section of Pax Christi International, the Catholic peace movement.

Mobilization 2004: Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., Senior Minister of The Riverside Church, led Mobilization 2004, a call to action to people of faith across the United States to involve themselves in the political process on the basis of what he called the “Prophetic Justice Principles." Forbes took his message on the road, traveling to several states to speak to voters about the importance of developing public policy that addressed these principles.

Vote ALL Your Values: The 2004 “Vote ALL Your Values" campaign included a national Day of Action and a Get Out the Vote effort, at which volunteers telephoned hundreds of thousands of young, low-income, and minority voters to encourage them to turn up at the polls and cast their ballots on Election Day. Vote ALL Your Values was launched 40 days prior to the election by a broad coalition of national moderate and progressive faith-based groups, including. Let Justice Roll, Call to Renewal, Sojourners, National Council of Churches, Children’s Defense Fund, Center for Community Change, The Riverside Church, FaithfulAmerica.org, The Interfaith Alliance, Pax Christi USA, Center for American Progress, Progressive Christians Uniting, People for the American Way, and many others.

Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility: In October 24, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) produced an historic document calling on evangelicals to expand public engagement in global poverty, genocide, and other social justice issues while looking beyond any one political party. The document was the result of years of internal deliberation during which moderate and progressive evangelicals pushed NAE beyond the traditional focus on personal piety.

Evangelical Climate Initiative: In February 2006, more than 85 influential evangelical leaders signed onto a statement expressing a biblically driven commitment to curb global warming and called on the government to enact national legislation to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions that are contributing to global climate change.

State of Belief: Hosted by Interfaith Alliance president Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, State of Belief is based on the proposition that religion has a positive and healing role to play in the life of the nation. Launched in 2006, the radio program explains and explores that role by illustrating the vast diversity of beliefs in the United States while exposing and critiquing both the political manipulation of religion for partisan purposes and the religious manipulation of government for sectarian purposes.

Progressive Faith BlogCon: Progressive religious bloggers from across the country will come together in July 2006 to create personal relationships in an effort to (1) generate and strengthen a more coherent Progressive Faith voice in the public arena; and (2) raise public awareness about the large number of people of good faith who do not feel represented by the Religious Right.

Tikkun National Conference: A national conference in May 2006 in Washington, DC, to introduce a prophetic spiritual politics agenda to the media and elected officials, as well as train organizers to share the agenda with communities. The conference also will celebrate the release of Rabbi Michael Lerner’s new book, The Left Hand of God, with its proposed Spiritual Covenant for America; and the release of the paperback version of Jim Wallis’s God’s Politics.

Issue Programs

• Roman Catholic groups were at the forefront of advocacy on behalf of immigrant rights in early 2006. Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles vaulted to national prominence in March after calling for civil disobedience from Catholic humanitarian workers if harsh House immigration measures became law. The Catholic Justice for Immigrants campaign, launched by the Catholic Bishops, Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities, and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, has mobilized churches in every diocese around the country behind immigrant rights.
• Throughout late March and early April, millions of Americans took to our country’s streets to advocate for immigrant rights. Faith communities played a crucial role in publicizing and organizing these events throughout the country. Groups involved included numerous Catholic dioceses, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, ecumenical faith groups like Center for Community Change.

• Leaders of five denominations -- the United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church USA, and United Church of Christ -- came together to call on the U.S. Congress to draft a budget that would bring “good news to the poor."
• Jim Wallis, convener of Sojourners and Call to Renewal, led 300 religious activists in kneeling in prayer for a moral budget on the steps of the Cannon House Office Building; 115 religious leaders were arrested.
• NETWORK, a Catholic Social Justice Lobby, worked with a nationwide network of supporters to extensively lobby around the budget as a moral document.
• Though Congress (with the help of Vice President Dick Cheney’s deciding vote) passed a budget that cut millions in funding for the needy, cuts to food stamps were thrown out of the bill -- due, in large part, to the efforts of the religious community.

• National Council of Churches, the Catholic Alliance for the Common Good, Faithful America, and Protestants for the Common Good created the Higher Ground Promise public awareness campaign to help people of faith call on national leaders to seek a place of well-being where the common good of all is the highest priority. The campaign included events with religious and political leaders and radio spots.
• More than 40,000 people signed Sojourner’s Katrina Pledge, which contained both a personal and political commitment to rebuild the devastated region while also reordering our national agenda to prioritize the needs of people living in poverty.
• In November 2005, 50 religious leaders -- including hurricane witnesses, relief workers, and religious leaders from the Gulf Coast area and across the nation, joined together in Houston, Texas. The meeting led to local meet-ups, at which participants drafted “The Declaration of Interdependence," a guide to action within communities.
• In the summer of 2006, the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference launched Katrina National Justice Commission nationwide hearings to document successes and failures in the local, state and federal response to Hurricane Katrina from the perspective of the African-American church community

• Iraq: Faith groups across the country have remained actively engaged in efforts to end the US military presence in Iraq and rebuild that society in a just manner. Clergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq, the Shalom Center, the Union of Reform Judaism, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Sojourners, and many others have staged public events, lobbied legislators, and worked to mobilize religious communities. A number of these groups were involved in the antiwar weekend of September 26, 2005.
• Torture: The National Religious Campaign Against Torture was established specifically to end the use of torture by American military personnel. This umbrella network is broadly interfaith, and made up of conservatives, moderates, and progressives Channeled during a national conference in Princeton, NJ, the widespread opposition to torture among religious leaders resulted in the creation of the campaign, the elements of which include grassroots organizing, a Web presence, and policy lobbying aimed at ensuring torture is not a tool of U.S. government policy.
• Darfur: Faith groups from across the spectrum are unified in demanding immediate intervention to stop the genocide in Darfur. Recently, faith leaders were arrested outside the Sudanese Embassy; faith groups organized a 1,000 person “Die-In" in front of the White House to visualize the daily death toll in Darfur; and faith coalitions coordinated 3,000 people from all 50 states in a Day of Fasting for the people of Sudan. In April 2006, the Save Darfur Coalition, which features leadership from faith-based groups such as the Union of Reformed Judaism and the National Association of Evangelicals, will hold a national conference in Washington, DC, to continue to raise awareness about the genocide.
• World Trade: The global market has the potential to alleviate suffering and increase the well-being of hundreds of millions of people; but if the global market is mismanaged, those same people can be plunged further into poverty. Faith leaders, including the Interfaith Coalition on Trade and Investment, the Center for Concern, NETWORK Lobby, and Sojourners, have passionately spoken out and organized communities around the G-8 Summit and the congressional passage of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Sojourners co-convened a forum of 50 faith leaders on the eve of the G-8 Summit; by the end of the Summit, G-8 leaders agreed to cancel 100 percent of the debt of 18 of the poorest countries in the world.

• The Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, a nonpartisan program of more than 50 faith-based and community-based organizations, launched an interfaith tour of 17 states. They challenged voters, public officials, and candidates to raise the minimum wage and to make poverty eradication a national priority. The campaign held events reaching over 10,000 people. Their services at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions were each attended by more than 1,000 people of faith, activists, and party delegates.
• State and local campaigns for just wages are taking place throughout the country, and almost all feature strong grassroots leadership from religious communities and coalitions. There are four national community organizing networks: the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), the Gamaliel Foundation, the Pacific Institute for Community Organization (PICO), and the Direct Action Research and Training Center (DART); together, the networks represent more than 130 active, local, faith-based community organizing groups, comprised of up of 4,000 member institutions and involving between one and three million Americans.
• Groups like the California Council of Churches, through its lobbying wing, IMPACT; Protestants for the Common Good; and Progressive Christians Uniting California organize thousands of activists around wage events.