REVIEWS
“A Shared Future is a very important and exciting book. Wood and Fulton have written a state-of-the-art treatment of the field of faith-based community organizing with a focus on two important developments: local-state-federal organizing and the emergence of a racial equity analysis at the heart of the organizing. These two developments, alongside the provocative yet careful analysis of the authors, make this a critically important book. It will be widely read and debated.”
— Mark R. Warren, author of A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform
“In A Shared Future, Wood and Fulton bring alive the triumphs and dilemmas of contemporary faith-based community organizing. They describe how vibrant networks of community organizations based in churches, unions, schools, and other community groups have won victories at state and national scales as well as in local communities. Interviews with organizers and a large-scale survey show how these dynamic coalitions have become one of the most ethnically and racially diverse forces in contemporary American politics, retaining a commitment to universal justice while confronting the realities of racialized exclusion. This book offers not only careful evidence and analysis, but also hope that faith-based organizing, grounded in moral commitments that bind a diverse society together, can contribute to the ethical democracy we so badly need.”
— Ann Swidler, author of Talk of Love: How Culture Matters
“A Shared Future tackles the crises of our time—rising economic inequality, racial injustice, and policy paralysis—by examining the efforts of faith-based community organizing to create an ethical democracy. This is scholarship at its best, combining empirical research with a vision for the possibility of a shared future within our increasingly multiethnic society.”
— Donald E. Miller, Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California
“This book is both a distinctive achievement in terms of the comprehensive new data it provides on the evolving field of faith-based community organizing, and a major contribution for those who work at the intersections of religion and politics as well as theory and practice. Wood and Fulton’s rich account will be the starting point for the next generation of democratically engaged scholars and thoughtful activists who want to play a role in movements toward a more ethical democracy.”
— Andre C. Willis, author of Towards a Humean True Religion: Genuine Theism, Moderate Hope, and Practical Morality
“The authors look to exorcise three demons ‘bedeviling’ American society: unparalleled economic inequality, policy paralysis, and racial inequality. Wood and Fulton turn their hopes to faith-based community organizers, who often find themselves at the intersections of economy, politics, and identity. In navigating these issues, faith-based organizers model democratic life. Loaded with firsthand accounts, accessible critical analyses, and spirited conviction, this book exemplifies religious witness and political participation.”
— Christian Century
“Unabashedly promoting a liberal agenda to address issues of growing inequality, poverty, educational disparities, racial injustice, voter suppression, and policy paralysis at the national level, the book is relevant background to the Black Lives Matter movement today. The authors believe these organizations, multicultural and racially diverse, can coalesce around Wood’s concept of ethical democracy to achieve greater influence in the future. Though faith-based organizations were recognized as critical to the modern civil rights movement, the authors urge researchers to take a closer look at these networks of organizations as agents of social change today. Highly recommended.”
— Choice
“An increasing number of congregations have found the universalist ambitions and multicultural platforms that faith based community organizing coalitions offer to be a compelling extension of their faith commitments. Wood and Fulton have done a major service to scholars, clergy, lay activists, and community organizing practitioners alike by revealing the workings of this process and the scale on which it is happening. The book will also be useful in courses related to race, religion, social movements, and democratic theory.”
— Review of Religious Research
“The book is a remarkable achievement and should prove of immense interest to sociologists interested in politics, democracy, social movements, and religion. Wood and Fulton should be commended for both their thorough examination of the field of FBCOs as well as their theoretically nuanced and astute conversation about how such organizations empower communities to reach further into a political system that has too often been insensitive to the demands of marginalized populations. A Shared Future is a book that is both optimistic and critical about a compelling model for social change at a time when concerns about civic engagement are both timely and relevant.”
— American Journal of Sociology
“This book is a tour de force for any scholar of religion in the United States today and for anyone interested in community organizing. Wood and Fulton’s use of the survey data as well as their ethnographic work have produced a top-of-the line thoughtful analysis of the role of faith based community organizing coalitions. With less than 200 such coalitions, it is not clear how effectively they can be in breaking the national policy paralysis, but they are among the few forces in today’s society that are actively addressing economic inequality and the marginalization of minority groups. Wood and Fulton skillfully show us what they advocate for and how they do it.”
— Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
“In this timely and insightful book, Wood and Fulton examine how ‘faith-based’ community organizing can help ‘exorcise’ the three demons that harm American society today: ‘economic inequality,’ ‘racial injustice,’ and ‘policy paralysis.’ . . . This book is a very significant contribution to the growing literature on community organizing as a field and a hopeful testimony to how racial injustice can begin to be addressed constructively within one form of democratic practice.”
— Sociology of Religion
“A Shared Future offers important lessons and a conceptual framework for sustaining the ongoing struggle to deepen democracy in the United States. The authors provide a sophisticated analytical study of one of the most promising efforts to create cross-racial alliances that address racial equity as part of a larger common agenda, and the faith-based community organizing field’s work to build up power nationally to redress inequality through a variety of initiatives for economic and racial justice. Ultimately, the book offers a vision for how we might build a future that reflects the shared aspirations and hopes of the American people in all their diversity. The book makes a major theoretical and practical contribution to the study of civil society organizations and to the strengthening of democratic values and social movements in the modern state.”
— Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
“Wood and Fulton offer a theologically sensitive sociological study in A Shared Future. . . . Part one offers an ambitious national study of all community organizing coalitions, a report that is worth the price of the book by itself. Yet it continues with a remarkable combination of the fruits of the broad national study of the field of community organizing and in-depth interviews of key leaders, focused on the PICO National Network, to take account of the struggles and successes of work on racial equity. Part two then narrows the aperture to focus on one network, PICO, and its efforts at racial equity within its own organization and on racial justice in the nation at large. . . . Wood and Fulton offer ways forward for those wishing to understand ecclesia in its many manifestations today by drawing on social science approaches.”
— Ecclesial Practices
“A must-read for anyone seeking to understand what can be done to save our ailing democracy.”
— Contemporary Sociology
“A must read for anyone looking to get a handle on faith-based community organizing literature. . .A necessary volume for anyone interested in the fight against economic inequality, policy paralysis and, most importantly, racial injustice.”
— Reading Religion
“The ground underneath our democracy is shifting rapidly. In A Shared Future, Wood and Fulton provide insight into how we might rebuild our democratic institutions. . . .Wood and Fulton’s work should be taken seriously not just by those in the faith-based sector, but also by activists and politicians who care about building an America that represents and works for us all.”
— Mobilization
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Exorcising America’s Demons, Building Ethical Democracy - Richard L. Wood, Brad R. Fulton
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226306162.003.0001
[faith-based community organizing, economic inequality, policy paralysis, racial injustice, ethical democracy, multiculturalism, universalist democracy, multiculturalist democracy, democratic theory, targeted universalism]
Three demons bedevil contemporary American democracy in the domestic realm: economic inequality, the paralysis of federal policy-making, and racial injustice. American politics in the years ahead will be driven by the struggle over whether to address these demons, and how best to do so. In the background of that struggle lies a related tension: that between universalist and multiculturalist democratic ideals. The Introduction argues that faith-based community organizing represents a critical case for studying this tension between democratic ideals within a movement dedicated to fighting economic inequality, policy paralysis, and racial injustice – in part because this movement now has the scale and strategic ambition to actually make a difference in these fights. But doing so will require the wider spread and deeper critical appropriation of recent strategic innovations in the field. Faith-based community organizing also reveals religion’s capacity to help bridge universalist and multiculturalist visions of democratic life, and thus offers insight into another contemporary democratic dilemma: the role of religion in public life. (pages 1 - 20)
This chapter is available at:
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Democracy and Multiculturalism: Dilemmas of the Democratic Public Sphere
Universalist and Multiculturalist Democracy in Action: The Scale and Strategic Ambition of Today’s Faith- Based Community Organizing
The Other Democratic Dilemma: Religion in the Public Sphere
Outline of the Book’s Argument
Part I: The Strategic Infrastructure, Ambition, and Racial/Ethnic Diversity of Faith-Based Community Organizing
1. The Scale of Organizing Today: The National Study of Community Organizing Coalitions - Richard L. Wood, Brad R. Fulton
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226306162.003.0002
[faith-based community organizing, strategic infrastructure, community organizing coalitions, federated structure, Industrial Areas Foundation, PICO National Network, Gamaliel, direct action, National People’s Action]
This chapter introduces the National Study of Community Organizing Coalitions, an original survey of all faith-based community organizing coalitions in the U.S.. This study, which achieved a 94% response rate, offers the first comprehensive data on this field; in combination with a more limited earlier study, it allows assessment of changes between 1999 and 2011. The movement has grown substantially on a foundation of mobilizing structures that have expanded and diversified. Three developments helped to catalyze this growth: a more ambitious political imagination that now informs the work of some sectors of the movement; new collaborative efforts at the local, state, and national levels that are forming emergent ‘federated structures’ which increase the field’s capacity to impact public life; and new financial resources and organizing talent that have entered the field. Together, these factors have contributed to the emergence of new organizational cultures, a heightened public presence, and new political sophistication across some sectors of faith-based community organizing. But the resulting new strategic capacity has spread unevenly across the movement; deeper innovation will be necessary if faith-based community organizing is to play a crucial role in shaping the future of American democracy. (pages 23 - 48)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Background
On Nomenclature: Faith-Based or Institution-Based or Broad-Based Organizing?
Research Design
Organizational Infrastructure: The Changing Field of Organizing
Scale and Scope of Organizing: The New Political Imagination
Emerging Federated Structures: State and National
Mobilizing Resources: Funding in the Field of Faith-Based Community Organizing
Summary: Dynamics Underlying the Growth of Faith-Based Community Organizing
2. Leadership and Diversity - Richard L. Wood, Brad R. Fulton
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226306162.003.0003
[board members, organizing staff, racial diversity, ethnic diversity, gender diversity, socioeconomic diversity, faith-based community organizing, staff retention]
This chapter draws on data from the National Study of Community Organizing Coalitions to analyze the individual-level diversity among two sets of key leaders within faith-based community organizing: professional staff and governing board members. The chapter focuses on racial and ethnic diversity, but also examines socioeconomic, gender, and age diversity. The high level of diversity within the field’s leadership makes this social movement unusual in American civil society, and its impressive racial/ethnic diversity in particular, combined with its historic emphasis on universalist democratic ideals, makes faith-based community organizing a suitable case for analyzing the dynamics between universalist and multicultural commitments in grassroots democratic movements. The chapter also argues that retaining professional staff embodying high levels of racial/ethnic diversity represents a critical challenge for the field, and examines the practices through which faith-based community organizing coalitions and networks have sought to retain diverse organizing staff. Those practices include paying professional salaries; engaging issues of racial equity internally and externally; building shared meaning within their organizational cultures; and offering professional development opportunities, including some focused on racial equity. (pages 49 - 66)
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Governing and Leading: Board Members, Clergy, and Leaders
Organizing the Terrain: The Makeup of Professional Staff
Retaining Professional and Diverse Staff: Salaries, Meaning, and the Shared Work of Multiculturalism
Conclusion
Racial Diversity in Faith-Based Organizing - Richard L. Wood, Brad R. Fulton
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226306162.003.0004
[member institutions, faith-based community organizing, racial diversity, racial diversity index, religious diversity index]
This chapter draws on data from the National Study of Community Organizing Coalitions to analyze a fundamental dimension of diversity in the national field of faith-based community organizing: the racial/ethnic diversity of its member institutions. Member institutions are primarily religious congregations from a variety of religious traditions, but about a fifth of member institutions are public schools, labor unions, faith-based organizations, neighborhood associations, and other non-congregations. National data show that the field embodies racial/ethnic diversity far beyond that of U.S. congregations, counties, public schools, or society as a whole, and with white, black, Hispanic, and multiracial institutions being well represented. However, by some measures racial/ethnic diversity in the field actually fell between 1999 and 2011. The chapter argues that an important strategic strength of the field lies in the fact that it achieves high racial/ethnic diversity by incorporating both institutions that are predominantly ‘of color’ and predominantly white institutions. The chapter locates the origins of high racial/ethnic diversity in particular strategic and institutional dynamics within the field; discusses the reasons for its changing diversity profile; and highlights how its handling of racial/ethnic diversity contrasts with its handling of religious diversity. (pages 67 - 90)
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Demographics of Institutional Diversity: Racial and Ethnic Diversity of Member Institutions
And Yet . . . Is Diversity in Faith-Based Organizing on the Decline?
The Strategic and Institutional Origins of Changing Diversity
Better Measures? Capturing the Complex Diversity Picture
Brief Contrast Case: Religious Diversity in Organizing
Conclusion
Part II: Ethical Democracy on the Ground- Organizing, Democracy, and the Challenges of Diversity
Introduction to Part II - Richard L. Wood, Brad R. Fulton
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226306162.003.0005
[ethical democracy, faith-based community organizing, challenges of diversity]
This brief introduction to the second half of A Shared Future discusses the concept of ‘ethical democracy’ and links it to the following chapters’ case study of organizational transformation in the PICO National Network. It also explains why the work of faith-based community organizing might matter in large scale societal terms in the years ahead. (pages 93 - 100)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
4. Transforming Institutions: The Strategic and Ethical Dynamics of Commitment to Racial Equity - Richard L. Wood, Brad R. Fulton
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226306162.003.0006
[targeted universalism, implicit bias, racial equity, Scott Reed, John Powell, PICO]
This chapter offers a case study of one of the primary sponsors of faith-based community organizing in the United States, the PICO National Network. It analyzes the organizational dynamics underlying PICO’s transition from a race-neutral analysis of American society to an analysis focused partly on racial injustice and the struggle for racial equity. In the preceding decade, the PICO National Network expanded its local level organizational infrastructure; built organizational infrastructure at the national level; and in some locations built significant infrastructure at the state. This emergent ‘federated structure’ gives this network a new strategic capacity for addressing economic inequality and policy paralysis. Simultaneously, PICO moved to systematically incorporate an explicit focus on racial equity in its public policy work and within its own organizational structure. This chapter draws on ethnographic, documentary, and interview data to analyze the strategic and ethical reasoning and organizational dynamics behind these shifts. The chapter also outlines the transition’s intellectual underpinnings in the writing of john powell, particularly his work on ‘implicit bias’ and ‘targeted universalism.’ Finally, the chapter documents the first organizational steps taken toward an analytic framing that incorporates both racial equity and economic justice. (pages 101 - 124)
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Getting Real: Building a Culture of Engagement on Racial Equity, Preserving Political Effi cacy
How Hard It Is: The Intellectual Work behind PICO’s Transformation
Conclusion: Envisioning and Rebuilding a “Land of Opportunity” in America: Can Americans Deal with America’s Racial Legacy?
5. Lifelines to Healing: Betting Resources and Reputation on Racial Equity - Richard L. Wood, Brad R. Fulton
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226306162.003.0007
[targeted universalism, Lifelines to Healing, LiveFree, PICO]
This chapter analyzes ‘targeted universalism’ in action, via the “Lifelines to Healing” campaign (subsequently renamed the “LiveFree” campaign). Lifelines to Healing/LiveFree is the PICO National Network’s effort to address racial equity, in this case by advocating for policies to fight urban violence and the mass incarceration of African American and Latino youth. Subsequently, the network moved to incorporate the fight against economic inequality and racial injustice(?) across all issue work and in its own internal structure. Like the field as a whole, PICO’s initial success in this regard varied considerably across local coalitions. The chapter considers the interaction of organizational structure, culture, and leadership in advancing the Lifelines to Healing/LiveFree campaign and the broader organizational changes in the network; documents the campaign’s policy gains; argues that the network’s ‘federated structure’ has been critical to those achievements; and examines how specific institutional, strategic, and cultural factors shaped PICO’s commitment to racial equity. The chapter discusses how the national network has sought to institutionalize this commitment, leverage the benefits it offers, and avoid the risks it entails – in part by deepening commitment to both universalist and multiculturalist democratic ideals, and by utilizing religious practices as cultural glue to hold the organization together during the transition. (pages 125 - 156)
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A Campaign for Racial Equity: “Targeted Universalism” in Action
The Symbiosis of Structure, Culture, and Leadership: Campaigns within a Network
Change over Time: The Institutional, Strategic, and Cultural Origins of Commitment to Racial Equity
Conclusion: Risks and Rewards of Ambitious Organizing
6. Challenge to America: An Interview with Rev. Michael McBride, Lifelines to Healing LiveFree Campaign, PICO National Network - Richard L. Wood, Brad R. Fulton
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226306162.003.0008
[Michael McBride, Lifelines to Healing, LiveFree, PICO, Pentecostalism]
This unconventional chapter presents the full text of Wood’s 2013 interview of Rev. Michael McBride, an African American Pentecostal pastor who serves on the national staff of the PICO National Network as the Director of Urban Strategies. The interview thus offers the voice of one key national figure central to racial equity work in the field of faith-based community organizing. McBride’s interview includes his thinking related to implicit bias, targeted universalism, the civic and religious values underlying this work, the inter-racial dynamics and racial/ethnic tensions within American life and the field of organizing, the strengths and weaknesses of a ‘federated structure’, the satisfaction he gains from this work, and the funding challenges it faces. (pages 157 - 164)
This chapter is available at:
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7. Strategic Innovation and Democratic Theory - Richard L. Wood, Brad R. Fulton
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226306162.003.0009
[inequality, policy paralysis, racial injustice, racial equity, spirituality, democratic theory, faith-based community organizing, social movement, strategic innovation, creativity]
This chapter summarizes how faith-based community organizing challenges three key demons of contemporary American democracy: rising economic inequality, racial injustice, and the continuing paralysis of federal policy-making. It also summarizes this book’s analysis of the dynamics through which some sectors of faith-based community organizing have come to embrace an explicit focus on racial equity work, and of the tension between universalist and multiculturalist democratic ideals as they play out in that work. Religious culture and participants’ diverse spiritual commitments have been central in integrating commitments to equality, effective policy-making, and racial equity within a coherent organizational culture; spiritual and political reflexivity have been particularly crucial in sustaining organizational coherence through the resulting challenges of organizational transformation. The chapter also analyzes the role of those challenges – and of the creativity they demand in response – in generating strategic innovation, which underlies much of the field’s recent transformation. The chapter closes by reprising the theoretical stakes within the book’s analysis, arguing that a certain kind of moral and political universalism underlies the success of faith-based organizing. Faith-based community organizing thus offers important lessons for the historic struggle for ethical democracy in America. (pages 165 - 182)
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The Fire of Faith in Organizing
Creativity: Strategic Innovation in Faith-Based Organizing
Reprise: The Theoretical Stakes behind Real-World Democratic Struggles
Conclusion - Richard L. Wood, Brad R. Fulton
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226306162.003.0010
[faith-based community organizing, Habermas, colonization, lifeworld, system, ethical democracy, inequality, policy paralysis]
This unconventional conclusion considers the broad struggle for ethical democracy in the contemporary world. The chapter draws on the work of Jurgen Habermas to argue that constructing ethical democracy will require re-anchoring democratic life within society. Contemporary democratic dilemmas arise due to the gargantuan growth of the ‘Systems’ of Politics and the Economy. Absent adequate structures of accountability to hold these Systems in service to society, they dominate and ‘colonize’ society, pathologically distorting human communities via excessive pressures rooted in money and power. Existing social theory suggests that social movements and the legal system hold the key to reversing this distortion. But this assumption underestimates how social movements and the legal system are themselves colonized and distorted. The struggle for ethical democracy must draw not only on social movements and the law, but also on: i) moral/ethical anchoring in secular and religious traditions; and ii) alliances with individual reformists in the Systems whose worldviews and commitments have been shaped by such ethical anchoring. By ‘bootstrapping’ democracy to raise the capacity of human communities to hold the political and economic systems in service to society, we can gradually move toward something closer to ethical democracy. (pages 183 - 196)
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Conclusion: A Shared Future—Ethical Democracy, Racial Equity, and Power
Building Ethical Democracy by Reanchoring Democratic Life in Society
Real-World Work for Ethical Democracy: Insights for Democratic Movements
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
