A Vision for Community Transformation

 

I strongly believe Faith-based and non-partisan civic organizations are uniquely positioned to lead the way in imagining and building alternative, holistic solutions to the hyper-polarization of our country and the challenges facing individual communities. I also believe they are a better alternative to building bridges to restore the status quo. They have in the past, as Robert Putnam illustrated so well in his book, The Upswing. Rather than patiently waiting for or actively forcing top-down political change, we should begin constructing a better society now, locally, from the ground up.

Meaningful transformation does not come through partnering with or replacing governmental power. Real change happens when people simply begin living differently, forming new relationships, new networks, and new ways of organizing communal life.

At the heart of this vision is the development of local, grassroot community networks, webs of relationships focused on improving the quality of life for everyone. These networks are not defined by bureaucratic institutions or centralized planning, but by local, voluntary participation, mutual aid, direct action, consensus decision-making, decentralization and relating to each other through solidarity, shared interests, and shared commitment.

When the local community genuinely embraces the vision outlined above, it naturally subverts governmental bureaucracies and partisan politics by rendering them, and by extension hyper-polarization, irrelevant, offering a vibrant, flexible alternatives in their place.

It is not necessary to go out and create organizations from scratch. There are many faith-based and non-partisan civic organizations out there looking for volunteers. However, local communities may be presented with unique challenges requiring imagination and creativity to craft unique solutions, requiring one to embark on a new journey.

If you feel called to faithful, creative, and courageous community-building, don’t wait for permission or the perfect moment, but seek out an existing organization or chart a new path and begin living today as though a better way of life is already breaking through. In this sense, a healthy community is not a future event to be seized, it is a present reality to be practiced, one relationship, one network, and one community at a time.