Faith-Based Community Organizing Research Articles

Process of Engaging Community and Scientific Partners in the Development of the CIRCL-Chicago Study Protocol.

Hypertension affects 1 in 3 adults in the United States and disproportionately affects African Americans. Kaiser Permanente demonstrated that a "bundle" of evidence-based interventions significantly increased blood pressure control rates. This paper describes a multiyear process of developing the protocol for a trial of the Kaiser bundle for implementation in under-resourced urban communities experiencing cardiovascular health disparities during the planning phase of this biphasic award (UG3/UH3). The protocol was developed by a collaboration of faith-based community members, representatives from community health center practice-based research networks, and academic scientists with expertise in health disparities, implementation science, community-engaged research, social care interventions, and health informatics. Scientists from the National Institutes of Health and the other grantees of the Disparities Elimination through Coordinated Interventions to Prevent and Control Heart and Lung Disease Risk (DECIPHeR) Alliance also contributed to developing our protocol. The protocol is a hybrid type 3 effectiveness-implementation study using a parallel cluster randomized trial to test the impact of practice facilitation on implementation of the Kaiser bundle in community health centers compared with implementation without facilitation. A central strategy to the Kaiser bundle is to coordinate implementation via faith-based and other community organizations for recruitment and navigation of resources for health-related social risks. The proposed research has the potential to improve identification, diagnosis, and control of blood pressure among under-resourced communities by connecting community entities and healthcare organizations in new ways. Faith-based organizations are a trusted voice in African American communities that could be instrumental for eliminating disparities.

Pemaknaan Artefak Budaya dan Tuturan Perayaan Keagamaan

This study was intended to comprehend how faith-based community groups communicated about cultural artifacts such as diverse Christmas celebration speeches. this study employed a phenomenological approach in order to understand the importance of identity expressions from the cultural artifacts associated with the Christmas season. This study found that faith-based community organizations interpret the issues of Christmas speeches or greetings differently. Muhammadiyah "frees" its adherents to wish Christians a Merry Christmas or not. Additionally, since Christmas characteristics were seen as examples of cultural inventiveness, it did not raise any objections to them. Congratulating the religious holidays of other religions, such as "Merry Christmas," are officially not prohibited by Nahdlatul Ulama. Similar circumstances apply to the Indonesian Chinese Islamic Association. With so many different religions practiced in Chinese society, sending presents and expressing congratulations during religious events is customary. Persatuan Islam and Majelis Mujahidin offered a different viewpoint. Because it goes against their beliefs, they generally resist sending christmas greetings.

The Role of the Forum Komunikasi Umat Beragama in Building Religious Harmony in Banyumas Regency

This paper seeks to portray the life between religious communities in plural societies, namely in Banyumas Regency. The harmonious dynamics of life that are in line with the life philosophy are harmonious tentrem agawe santosa. Concerned pluralism in the community is built in the synergy between government apparatus, which in this case is strongly supported by KESBANGPOL in Banyumas Regency and as its driving force, the Banyumas Regency Religious Harmony Forum. This synergy is one of the basic foundations that can be used as a platform for activities that aim to communicate all religious people in Banyumas Regency. This type of research is qualitative research with research participation methods. The researcher collected data by interview, observation, and documentation. The results of this study state that Banyumas Regency is an area with a high diversity of religious diversity. The FKUB Communication Forum is one of the things that encourages harmony between religious people and is able to have a good sense of religious pluralism. In Banyumas Regency there are various faith-based community organizations and all of them are embraced in the Banyumas Regency FKUB. FKUB organizations are also made in every sub-district and with the emergence of organizations under the FKUB, the level of harmony in Banyumas Regency is getting better. The role and function of FKUB are increasingly clear in the community in an effort to maintain religious pluralism and counteract radicalism. The activities organized by FKUB are a way to gather people from various religions. Efforts to stir up the spirit of living harmoniously channeled through the written propaganda media, namely by using the BENER Bulletin (Beda Ning Rukun)

Engagement of Hope

Building upon the proposed concept of an engagement of hope (Green, Stewart, Bergen, & Nayve, 2020) emerging from the exploration of faith-based approaches to community engagement, the authors delve into collaborative inquiry and critical reflection to construct a framework and equity-centered theory of action for community engagement. Drawing from the work of faith-based community organizations and institutions of higher education, and through the lens of a practitioner-scholar framework, the authors present a scholarly approach to collaborative inquiry and exploration into an engagement of hope, responding to the current context of higher education. The development of the engagement of hope conceptual framework emerged with core approaches to community engagement, responding to the current context and seeking to move the field of community engagement to address this context. The five themes that scaffold the conceptual framework are explicated, including challenging unjust structures, the common good, collaborative courage, community-centered, and individual goodness. The implications of this framework and theory of change are discussed as well as a call to re-center relationships in the community engagement field.

Implementation of HIV Interventions Into Faith-Based Organizations: Models and Methodological Considerations.

Implementation of evidence-based interventions aimed at reducing and treating HIV can have a wider spread if funneled through faith-based organizations. However, there is a paucity of frameworks or process models aimed at providing the best practices to implement HIV interventions into faith-based community organizations. Implementation framework and process model for African American faith settings. Presented here is a systems multilevel implementation framework and implementation process model for integrating HIV interventions into faith-based organizations. We conclude with presentation of key methodological considerations and recommendations and discuss strategies for moving implementation science forward in faith-based organizations. Because of their key role in the African American community, faith-based settings must be engaged in implementing evidence-based HIV interventions. Through use of a multilevel systems framework and process model, the methods and approaches of implementation science can be leveraged to encourage the spread of HIV interventions in the African American community.

Building a Practice-Focused Academic-Practice Partnership.

A practice-focused academic-practice partnership merging the strengths and resources of 2 faith-based community organizations built evidence-based practice, nursing research, and innovative nursing programs. The unique partnership emphasizing quality care and patient outcomes resulted in hospital-acquired infection reduction, interventional research reducing readmissions, clinical redesign, increased percentage of bachelor's degree-prepared nurses, and dissemination through publication and presentation. Key elements to partnership success were shared mission and vision, program oversight, strong contract, and annual plans with specific measurable outcomes.

Making Structural Change with Relational Power: A Gender Analysis of Faith-Based Community Organizing

This article presents research on faith-based community organizing in the US to examine how congregation members engage in structural change efforts related to marginalized populations. Examining the case of one organizing model, justice ministry, congregations focus on power defined through relationships, cultivated in informal spaces, and communicated through personal narrative (traditionally private, feminine spheres), and change is enacted by creating tension in public (traditionally masculine) spaces with decision-makers. A growing body of literature presents nuanced gender analyses of policy advocacy, social movements, and community change efforts both in terms of strategic models of action and revisiting our understanding of historical movements. We ask questions about how the expectations and work are constrained or facilitated by cultural expectations of gender roles and power dynamics. Examining the organizing model of justice ministry through a gender lens helps to understand how an emphasis on relational power (traditionally gendered as feminine) facilitates and strengthens the use of a range of tools, including publicly challenging authority (more frequently gendered as masculine). While the private/public, feminine/masculine dichotomy has severe limitations and risks oversimplification, the utility remains in helping name and challenge real power differentials based on gender.

Repairing the Breach: Faith-Based Community Organizing to Dismantle Mass Incarceration

Public awareness of the injustices of mass incarceration has grown significantly over the last decade. Many people have learned about mass incarceration in church contexts through book groups, study campaigns, and denominational statements. In recent years, faith-based community organizing (FBCO) networks have increasingly turned their attention to mass incarceration in light of the growing awareness of many Christian individuals, congregations, and denominations. Mass incarceration, however, presents three distinctive challenges to FBCO. First, dismantling mass incarceration requires overtly and conscientiously confronting white supremacy and advancing racial and ethnic equity; faith-based community organizers have avoided this work in the past for fear of dividing their base. Second, streams of Christian theology based in retributivism have provided justifications for increasingly punitive practices and policies, thus contributing to mass incarceration; FBCO networks must construct and uplift alternative theological streams to support alternative practices and policies. Finally, several practices and policies tied to mass incarceration deplete the political power of individuals, families, and communities most deeply impacted by it. Organizing against mass incarceration requires new strategies for building social capital and creating coalitions among groups who have been disenfranchised, marginalized, and undercounted by these practices and policies. Together, these challenges have required FBCO networks to adapt assumptions, strategies, and relationships that had previously been effective in addressing other issues, such as healthcare, employment, education, and transportation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores the insights, struggles, and innovations of ISAIAH, a network in Minnesota, as its members work to dismantle mass incarceration and confront its unique challenges.

Emergence of an Israel faith-based community organization facilitating live donor kidney transplantation

BackgroundThe 2014 Consensus Conference on Best Practices in Living Kidney Donations recognized live donor kidney transplantation as the best treatment for late-stage kidney disease, yielding superior graft and patient survival, improved quality of life, fewer requirements for dialysis and increased cost-effectiveness compared to deceased donor kidney transplantation. Yet in spite of the excellent results of living kidney donation, the annual number of living kidney donors is declining in many countries, including the United States. In Israel, a non-profit organization, Matnat Chaim (“Gift of Life” in Hebrew), a faith-based initiative, has emerged as a major force for arranging living donor kidney transplantation mainly by facilitating altruistic living unrelated donor transplantation.MethodsA retrospective review of the records of live kidney donations facilitated by the Matnat Chaim organization and referred to Israel transplant centers, since the organization’s inception in 2009, was performed and compared to published data from the Israel Ministry of Health.ResultsMatnat Chaim has facilitated 494 live kidney donations since its founding in February 2009 until the end of 2017. Of the 124 live kidney transplants performed in 2016, 111 (90%) were shown to be altruistic and unrelated. This large number of donations was associated with a doubling of the total number of kidney transplantations, performed in Israel (data published by the Israel Ministry of Health).ConclusionsThe success of an Israel community organization in the promotion of kidney transplantation may serve as a model for other religious and non-religious communities worldwide.

Fostering Muslim Civic Engagement through Faith-Based Community Organizing

<p>Muslim Americans often encounter discriminatory practices similar to those experienced by other minority groups living in the U.S. Such practices range from mass incarceration and anti-immigration efforts to racial and religious profiling. In response, a growing number of Muslim American leaders are organizing their communities and collaborating with non-Muslims to address these issues through civic participation and political action. At the same time, several foundations throughout the country have begun asking how to promote civic engagement among Muslim Americans. Although little is known about Muslim American civic engagement and its outcomes, data from a national study indicates that faith-based community organizing is becoming a viable pathway for Muslim communities to (1) strengthen themselves internally by developing civic leaders and mobilizing everyday Muslim Americans to address issues affecting their community and (2) strengthen their external ties by bridging religious and social differences and by promoting policies that also benefit non-Muslims.</p>

WITHDRAWN: Emergence of an Israel faith-based community organization facilitating live donor kidney transplantation

WITHDRAWN: Emergence of an Israel faith-based community organization facilitating live donor kidney transplantation

Prophets of Resistance: Social Justice Activists Contesting Comfortable Church Culture

Religious social justice activist groups strive to develop cultural commitments for sustained activism within congregations. Existing research explains the political and organizational challenges they encounter and hints at corresponding struggles over church culture, but these cultural conflicts have not been fully explained. This paper shows that in attempts to build cultural commitments to activism, faith-based community organizing (FBCO) leaders consciously contest congregational cultures rooted in individualistic orientations to religious commitment. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I demonstrate that clergy and lay leaders in FBCO coalitions seek to problematize and displace a comfortable church culture, which extends individualistic religious commitments and individualistic orientations to social problems and thus hinders the cultural appeal of social justice activism in many religious communities. I analyze efforts to replace this comfortable church culture with a culture that encourages activism, and I argue that this struggle reveals a discursive conflict between competing visions of religious life.

“Turning Private Pain Into Public Action”: The Cultivation of Identity Narratives by a Faith-Based Community Organization

Scholars have argued that activist identity narratives are key to social movement participation and commitment, but there are few in-depth analyses of identity construction processes that take place in social movement organizations. This study of a faith-based community organizing group, ELIJAH, draws upon interviews, participant observation, and archival data to address this. The findings indicate that ELIJAH leaders go through parallel processes of politicizing their personal experiences and personalizing their political beliefs. These processes result in a politicized personal narrative that motivates sustained activism by making involvement in social change efforts an integral part of individual identity. This study contributes to the literature on identity and narrative in social movements by demonstrating how an organization can intentionally cultivate activist identities using narrative.

Enacting Social Change Along the Cultural Identity Spectrum: Intercultural Identity Construction in Faith-Based Community Organizations

This study employs Cultural Identity Spectrum Theory to analyze identity construction and positioning of faith-based nonprofit organizations (FBOs). Intercultural communication studies have not adequately analyzed religion and identity, particularly as they intersect with socio-economic class and racial marginalization. Because religion is one of the most conflict-ridden social divides, the study situates FBOs as important (inter)cultural sites, and traces an FBO's Secular–Religious location on the Cultural Identity Spectrum to critically engage cultural discourses surrounding the organization, to shift its identity to serve historically marginalized groups. Building on the dialectical approach the study interrogates challenges of creating partnerships with diverse community stakeholders to promote enduring and far-reaching social change.

The Organizational Context of Faith-Based Community Organizing: Effects on Member Civic Engagement

This article explores the congregation as a conduit for civic engagement. Specifically examined are the effects of participation in congregations engaged in faith-based community organizing (FBCO). Civic engagement is examined by comparing FBCO-affiliated congregation members to non-FBCO-affiliated congregation members, local school participants, neighborhood association members, and those without such affiliations. Findings reveal that those engaged in FBCO evidence higher rates of civic engagement than members of the other groups. Implications for the field and future study are discussed.

What’s Next in Faith-Based Community Organizing

What’s Next in Faith-Based Community Organizing

Culturally tailored smoking cessation for arab american male smokers in community settings: a pilot study.

Tobacco use is a serious public health problem among Arab Americans with limited English proficiency. The main goal of this study was to develop a culturally-tailored and linguistically-sensitive Arabic-language smoking cessation program. A secondary goal was to evaluate the feasibility of recruiting Arab Americans through a faith-based community organization which serves as a neighborhood social center for the city of Richmond’s Arab Americans. Eight first-generation Arab American men aged 20 years and above completed the three-month program. There was general agreement of the following: (1) each stage of the five-stage cessation program could be improved; (2) several glaring errors could be easily corrected; and (3) minor variation among the various countries-of-origin of participants could lead to a few changes in the program with respect to the use of some colloquial terms. The results suggest that it is possible to reach smokers from Arab American communities with a tailored Arabic language smoking cessation program. The findings of this report will be used as the basis for a large-scale intervention study of a culturally and linguistically sensitive cessation program for Arab American ethnic groups.

Increasing cervical cancer screening in a Hispanic migrant farmworker community through faith-based clinical outreach.

Partnerships between academic medical centers and faith-based community organizations have been associated with increased screening rates in low-income minority women. We describe clinical outcomes of an outreach partnership between a cancer center and a faith-based outreach clinic offering gynecologic screening services in central Florida to increase cervical cancer screening adherence in a priority population of primarily Hispanic farmworker women. Data sources included a retrospective chart review. This descriptive study examined patterns of cervical cancer screening behavior among the patient population of the faith-based outreach clinic. Findings suggest that among this group of patients, the demographic factors that predict adherence with cervical cancer screening recommendations are number of years having lived in the United States and marital status. Women residing in the United States for more than 5 years were significantly more adherent with cervical cancer screening recommendations compared with women who have resided in the United States for 5 years or less (p = .05), and married women were more likely to be adherent than unmarried women (p = .02). The partnership was successful in increasing cervical cancer screening adherence in this medically underserved population. When enabling barriers to screening adherence are removed through faith-based clinical outreach and engaged continuously for a number of years, uninsured, low-income Hispanic women are more likely to receive recommended preventive services.

The Garden of Eden: Acknowledging the Impact of Race and Class in Efforts to Decrease Obesity Rates

Geographic assessments indicate that the selection of produce in local supermarkets varies by both area-level income and racial composition. These differences make it particularly difficult for low-income African American families to make healthy dietary choices. The Garden of Eden produce market was created to improve access to high-quality, affordable produce for these communities. The Garden of Eden is housed in a church in an economically depressed African American community in St Louis, Mo, that has less access to fresh produce than surrounding communities. All staff are from the community and are paid a living wage. The market is run with an eye toward sustainability, with partners from academia, a local faith-based community organization, businesses, and community members collaborating to make all program decisions.

Unprotected Sex With Multiple Partners: Implications for HIV Prevention Among Young Men With a History of Incarceration

The objectives of this study were to describe preincarceration risk behaviors of young men and identify correlates of unprotected sex with multiple partners during the 3 months before incarceration. Data on preincarceration risk behaviors were obtained from 550 men, aged 18 to 29 years, in state prisons in California, Mississippi, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. Correlates of unprotected sex with multiple partners were determined by logistic regression. Of 550 participants, 71% had multiple sex partners, 65.1% had sex with a partner they perceived as risky, and 45.3% engaged in unprotected sex with multiple partners. Men who drank heavily (odds ratio [OR], 1.68; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.11-2.54) or who had a risky partner (OR, 3.90; 95% CI, 2.60-5.85) were more likely to report unprotected sex with multiple partners. Men who attended religious gatherings (OR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.46-0.96) or lived in stable housing (OR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.48-1.00) were less likely to report unprotected sex with multiple partners. Most participants engaged in behaviors that could result in a sexually transmitted disease, including HIV. Prevention programs should address the relationship between heavy alcohol use and risky sexual behavior. Discharge planning should address housing needs. Faith-based community organizations may play an important role for some young men in their transition to the community.