The UUA IOI/CBCO Team: Fred Seidl, Jim Eller, Susan Leslie, Craig Roshaven, Gini Courter, John Blevins.
Dr. Forrest Harris, President, American Baptist College.
UUs Fred Seidl and Ned Wight led the closing worship for the meeting.
UUA Joins Interfaith Organizing Initiative at Historic Gathering in Nashville
December 19, 2007
The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) joined eight other denominations in sending teams to the Inter-Religious Organizing Initiative Strategic Training Summit hosted by American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee, on December 13 and 14, 2007.The Inter-Religious Organizing Initiative, known informally as the IOI Table, is a collective effort of committed denominations and religious bodies, congregation-based organizing networks, and funders to strengthen congregation-based community organizing within denominations and to increase successful advocacy at the national level.
The UUA team consisted of UUA Moderator Gini Courter; John Blevins from the Board of Trustees; Rev. Jim Eller, President of the UU Ministers Advisory Council on Congregation-Based Community Organizing and minister at All Souls Unitarian Universalist (UU) Church in Kansas City; Rev. Craig Roshaven, minister at First Jefferson UU Church in Ft. Worth, Texas and a member of the ministers council; Susan Leslie, Director of the UUA Office for Congregational Advocacy and Witness; and Dr. Fred Seidl, retired Dean of Social Work, advisor to the UUA on organizing, and a member of the UUs of Clearwater, Florida.
The other teams included senior social justice staff, judicatory leaders, and clergy from the United Methodist Conference, United Church of Christ, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Fellowship of Historic Black Denominations, Presbyterian USA, Sojourners, National Baptist Convention, and the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation. Representatives from the national congregation-based organizing networks – Gamaliel Foundation, DART (Direct Action and Research Training), and PICO (People's Institute for Community Organizing – were also in attendance and led training on relationship building and power analysis for the participants, along with representatives from Interfaith Worker Justice and Faith in Public Life. Also present were representatives from the funding community including Rev. Ned Wight, Executive Director of the UU Veatch Program at Shelter Rock (New York). The IOI Table also includes Reformed Jews, Catholics, Muslims and others who were not able to attend the December gathering.
Those present came to Nashville during December's busy religious season to examine ways to amplify the power of congregation-based community organizing. The IOI was started a few years ago by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), which has many congregations engaged in congregation-based community organizing with all four major organizing networks and recognized that most other denominations did as well – both large and small. There are close to 200 CBCOs nationally which include about 4,000 congregations, along with labor unions, community organizations, and schools. While often out of the media spotlight, these organizations are winning major victories, from restoring millions of dollars to California's budget for education to reserving $100 million for affordable housing in Massachusetts.
The UUA has 110 congregations in CBCO – a relatively small number but a high percentage at over 11 percent. Only fairly recently has the UUA started tracking congregational participation.
Like other denominations, all the relationships were negotiated individually between congregations and the individual organizing networks. Susan Leslie, UUA Director of the Office for Congregational Advocacy and Witness explains, "Like other religious associations, we have congregations engaged in CBCO with all the major networks, as well as some regional ones. It's to our benefit to gather with other religious associations who are in the same situation to examine the gains and the challenges of congregation-based community organizing and to work together to share these lessons with the organizing networks. An exciting prospect is to work toward gathering national strength. Bringing the interfaith community, the organizing networks, and the funders together at one table has allowed us to increase the impact of CBCO exponentially."
One of the highlights of the gathering was a presentation by PICO (a national network of faith-based community organizations) on their first national campaign to expand SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) through a collaboration of grassroots organization and denominational advocacy efforts. Having been vetoed by President Bush, the legislation is currently awaiting approval by Congress. The presentation raised participants' sights as to what might be achieved through greater interdenominational and internetwork organizing. The other networks have also launched national campaigns in the past few years and the possibilities for collaboration are emerging.
Testimonials on the transformational change achieved by CBCO on the personal, congregational, community, seminary, and judicatory level were offered in one panel. Dr. Forrest Harris, President of American Baptist College, shared the story of how their seminary decided that to truly follow in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s footsteps, the seminary made training in CBCO a requirement. Harris called for all seminaries to be 'schools of transformation.'
Another panel shared how various denominations have supported CBCO in their congregations. UU minister Rev. Jim Eller spoke to how joining the church's local CBCO "transformed our social justice commitment from social justice committee projects that were marginalized and at the periphery of the congregation to the entire mission and ministry of the congregation becoming one of active civic engagement in the community across racial and class lines."
Dr. Richard Speer of Vanderbilt University provided participants with training in relationship building and power analysis as well as a presentation on the academic research on the state of the field of CBCO and its accomplishments.. Denominational teams were given time to strategize ways that they could strengthen congregational involvement in CBCO and work to support inter-religious and internetwork capacity building toward systemic change on the national level.
Rev. Dennis Jacobsen, an Evangelical Lutheran pastor and member of the Gamaliel Clergy Caucus, shared a story about a 2005 meeting with President Bush, during which some of their bishops and other denominational clergy shared concerns about the Iraq war. The president remained silent; a few minutes later, he talked instead about the good fishing in one of the bishop's part of the country. "We'll know we've really been successful," said Jacobsen, "when we don't just get the meeting, but we get a response and we get action."
This historic meeting in Nashville by the banks of the Cumberland River, in the lovely, modest buildings of the American Baptist College, resulted in new denominational teams joining the IOI Table and in deeper commitments made by participants to denominational support for CBCO. Appreciation for the interfaith community and the group's common commitment to justice was expressed in many heartfelt ways throughout the gathering.
The event concluded with a rousing and evocative rendition of the UUA hymn by Carolyn McDade, "We'll Build a Land," led by Ned Wight and Fred Seidl. The hymn is based on biblical text taken from the books of Isaiah and Amos that were famously cited by Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Justice shall roll down like waters, righteousness like a mighty stream."
For more information contact socialjustice @ uua.org.
Last updated on Wednesday, December 19, 2007.
