The religious practice of community organizing

We’re in desperate need of broad-based community organizing these days. Many of the most tangible injustices in our world, both large and small, appear to be unresolvable through straightforward political means. We receive hints here and there of the revitalization of worker organization and unions, but the news is mixed. (For example, while 2023 saw a 200,000-person increase in workers represented by unions, those numbers represent a slight decrease in the share of unionized workers.)

Into this scene, Aaron Stauffer interjects his study of the radical social gospel and broad-based community organizations, a widely successful model of local political organizing supported by churches. Stauffer maintains that at the heart of BBCOs are the relational meeting, “a public, value-directed conversation between two people on what they care most about in their community and what they are willing to do to fight for and protect those values, goods, and people,” and the listening campaign, “a series of relational meetings carried out within a single institution or organization with the aim of identifying the institution’s core values and issues.”

Two of the most recognizable names in BBCOs are Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama. Alinsky is often heralded as the founder of this particular style of organizing, having published the widely read Rules for Radicals in 1971. Obama famously began his political career doing such work in Chicago in the 1980s with the Industrial Areas Foundation, which Alinsky founded.