Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing

By Dennis R. Jacobsen

Doing Justice introduces readers to "congregation-based" community organizing rooted in the day-to-day struggles and hopes of urban ministry. It draws from the author's decades-long career of personal experience in community organizing ministries.

Illustrated with examples from the experience of community organizers, Doing Justice weaves theological and biblical warrants for community organizing into concrete strategies for achieving justice in the public arena. It offers sound treatment of fundamental organizing principles like power, self-interest, and agitation and suggests ways to build and sustain an organization, relate to media and corporations, and strengthen ministries and empower lay leaders.

The second edition includes forewords by veteran pastor-activists Bill Wylie Kellermann and Grant Stevensen and a new preface that notes recent changes in organizing, describes needed new directions and connections, and discusses the significance of new movements such as Black Lives Matter. Also new is Stevensen's running "conversation" with Jacobsen, drawing readers into deeper engagement with organizing practices.

Designed for use by congregations and church leaders as well as by ministerial students, Doing Justice will open new vistas for community action in support of the poor, the disadvantaged, and the disenfranchised of our society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: May 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781506418827

Book preview

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Foreword and Introduction to the Conversation

Grant Stevensen

All books are written within a particular historical context. Dennis Jacobsen’s Doing Justice was first published fifteen years ago. That seems like a short time, but trends in our world and in the church that only some could then perceive have now become obvious to all but the most ostrich-like among us.

Fifteen years ago, we were only grasping at what it might mean for our lives and our daily news for our fears and our politics to be consumed by the prospect of terrorism. Climate change, while known and understood by many, had not yet produced the fifteen hottest years on record, begun to reshape agriculture from California to North Africa, and opened up travel routes through the Arctic.

The world has exploded around us with possibility and threat. While in the United States and in most of the world the gap in wealth between the rich and the poor has grown exponentially, movements for econo-mic and racial justice have opened up political space for change that did not exist before. Both the Occupy Wall Street movement of a few years ago and the Black Lives Matter movement today have forced politicians and other power brokers to shift, slowly (as they always do), toward positions and policies that take into account these and similar demands for justice.

This last development has not come without a backlash. While decades ago many of us began hearing the overtones of jingoism and ethnic cleansing in American politics, in 2016, one party is running a candidate who says these things out loud. As of this writing, the presidential race is not yet decided but no matter the outcome, millions of Americans will have voted for a man who spoke without shame about cutting our nation off from the rest of the world, of building walls, of rejecting people from whole religions; a man who has verbally degraded women, people of color, the physically challenged, and nearly anyone else who disagreed with him.

Fifteen years ago, many of us worried about the religious right and their growing competition with what we still called mainline denominations. In the time since then, we have seen the drastic decline in numbers in the mainline denominations. We are also beginning now to see a corresponding decline in those religious movements that were built on negating the liberalism of the mainline. Fifteen years ago, the denomination of which Dennis and I are both members, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, had scarcely finished celebrating the tenth anniversary of its creation as three historic Lutheran bodies came together. The ELCA was by far the largest Lutheran body in America and one of the largest Protestant denominations of any stripe. We hadn’t yet stopped congratulating ourselves on our denomination’s massive size, let alone begun to take stock of the very real possibility that we might also be one of the shortest-lived denominations in American history.

The ELCA is not alone in facing this new day. Depending on whose numbers and whose statistics we read, those who are actively part of a Christian congregation are now perhaps only 25 percent of the US population. Of those who do participate, the average age is pushing sixty years. While many people still respond to polls that they claim a faith allegiance, it seems more and more that the religious allegiances most Americans name to pollsters have more to do with habit or lack of imagination than with any real commitment, contribution, or even attendance at services. We are, in common parlance, more and more a nation of nones and dones—those who claim some religion affiliation but are done practicing it.

All of this is why Dennis Jacobsen’s book is more needed now than when it was first published fifteen years ago. While the book is called Doing Justice, at its heart I believe Dennis is proposing not only a way of seeking justice but also a new way of being church. He writes from the perspective of established congregations and established denominations that are learning how to build public power to effect change in the world, but within that argument there is something more for our day. How do we go about being church now? How, when so many of the habits and patterns that once constituted the church are gone, can the body of Christ be the body of Christ today? Jacobsen begins chapter 11 with a quotation from Acts 4 that describes the earliest church organizing itself for mission in the world. We are in a comparable situation today. Nearly gone are many of the structures that we earlier relied on. What is left are people who may come to know each other, or not; who will discern a common path, a common faith, a common hope, or not. Jacobsen’s book is grounded in his own experience of this path to discernment and connection. It provides a set of tools for others to enable them to come along on that path.

The basic tools of organizing‒‒the one-on-one conversation, for example, or agitation as transformative love‒‒continue to be counter-cultural in a society where we are taught in so many ways to keep to ourselves and not rock the boat. Doing Justice explores these tools, grounds them in Christian experience, and invites us to put them to use.

Reading is often a solo activity. That is a challenge when the subject of the book is a new way of being together. This is not a book to read by yourself. If you are looking for a book to peruse and consider in solitary conversation with yourself alone, I could suggest other alternatives. Jacobsen is calling for community: he is writing not to people who want only to think about community or read about community, but to those who want actually to build community with other people.

My job, here and in sidebars throughout the book, is to get such action-oriented conversations going. I will engage with Jacobsen along the way with questions and observations that are designed to invite you to do the same. If you are part of a congregation, ask others to join you in reading and reflecting on this book. If you are done with congregational life but still yearn to live your faith in community and toward justice, ask one or two others to read with you and to imagine with you what it would mean for you to practice the tools described.

I have used this book with members of my own congregation. It helped us order our thinking and our talking about justice and community; it tied that thinking and talking together with our faith in the resurrected Christ. In my own congregation, I used Doing Justice to accompany leading members of my congregation into actions of justice and into the trainings that our organization in Minnesota provided.  Reading this book amid the work of organizing gave members of my congregation a text to reflect with as they practiced doing justice in our own community. There is nothing particularly new about the tools of organizing that Jacobsen lifts up, just as there is nothing particularly new about the gospel that drives his call for justice, but there is newness each time it is lived. What is new is that someone who actually lives in the complexities of congregational life and leads as a pastor is articulating how this works for him.  Jacobsen uses stories from his own work and his own congregations to make it clear that this work and these practices are for regular people who feel God’s call on their life to change their communities.

The world might be just about done with many of the structures that have long identified the church and Christian faith, but the world is not done seeking hope and a way to live it out.  Whether or not you are reading as a member of a traditionally structured church, Doing Justice can help you engage in that all-important work. A spirit runs through this book that says, We can do this, and we are the only ones who will.

Preface to the Second Edition

Fifteen years after the first publication of this book, I find myself asking a basic question: Why should anyone engage in congregation-based community organizing (CBCO)? After all, participating congregations and leaders commit significant resources and time for a process that is often tedious, contentious, and vulnerable to being ego-driven or lockstep. Hard-won victories at the local or state level are often overturned by the next elected governing politicians.  Organizing networks—such as Gamaliel, IAF, PICO, and DART—often compete for the favorable attention of funders and have a tendency to disparage each other’s work.  National media is much more interested in covering charismatic leaders, gender politics, movements around the latest hot issue, and organizations with the power to influence elections at the state and national level than the less-dramatic work of organizing. Amid the global crises of climate change, warfare, nuclear threat, terrorism, and millions of refugees, the organizing struggles at the grassroots seem, well, rather small and insignificant.

And yet, here I am still engaged in CBCO and just as hopeful and intrigued by it as when I started out as an organizing novice in Jersey City in 1984.  A couple of years ago, research from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Pawasarat and Quinn) found that the incarceration rates of African American males in Wisconsin were the highest in the nation and that the worst zip code for this mass incarceration was 53206—just where I had been serving as pastor of Incarnation Lutheran Church for the past twenty-six years. Without CBCO, I could have preached on this ignominy, conducted a relevant Bible study, complained to politicians, and participated in an ineffectual demonstration.  But with the skills, tactics, and resources available through congregation-based community organizing, I could engage Incarnation in practical organizing strategies, working with MICAH (Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope) and WISDOM (the statewide organization of Gamaliel affiliates, including MICAH, in ten cities).  WISDOM launched the Restoring Our Communities Campaign, an impressive effort of leaders—including formerly incarcerated persons—to reduce the incarceration of nonviolent offenders, ameliorate the conditions of solitary confinement, and challenge the heartless practice of revoking parole or probation for petty reasons and where no new crime has been committed.

MICAH clergy from 53206 and surrounding zip codes formed the 53206 Holy Ground Youth/Young Adult Organizing Project. This project is now forming teams of young people in the neighborhoods of participating congregations that are being trained in organizing skills. These young people will do research, discern winnable issues, and take actions to end the pipeline to prison in their neighborhoods, thus creating a more hopeful future for themselves and their peers. This project is in its infancy, but I am already excited to see young people from tough settings claiming their power and working with congregations to restore their communities and their lives.

My faith as a Christian is central to my life. Congregation-based community organizing serves as a vehicle for me to live out my faith and values in the public arena in ways that otherwise worthy secular efforts cannot.  CBCO makes possible an undivided life, a healthy integration of personal faith, communal life, and effective action in the public realm. Prayer and theological reflection offer powerful grounding for the savvy arts and practices of organizing. CBCO offers a rare opportunity for grassroots leaders to form relationships with people of other faith traditions and for religious leaders to be theologically stretched and engaged beyond their narrow comfort zones. While I am still somewhat afflicted by my dogmatic and fundamentalist upbringing, my interfaith experiences in CBCO have helped me to embrace the beauty of Ibn ‘Arabi’s vision:

My heart can take on

any form:

a meadow for gazelles,

a cloister for monks,

For the idols, sacred ground,

Ka’ba for the circling pilgrim,

the tables of the Torah,

the scrolls of the Qur’án.

I profess the religion of love;

wherever its caravan turns along the way,

that is the belief,

the faith I keep.[1]

Gregory Galluzzo, founding Director of the Gamaliel organizing network, says that organizing is a commitment to lead an interesting life and that issues are just an excuse for building relationships. There is no interesting life without relationships. CBCO has put me in relationship with remarkable organizers, clergy, and lay leaders across the nation, people of authenticity, courage, and tenacity whose faithful witness makes me proud to be a person of faith. Locally, my engagement in MICAH has helped me to enter into authentic and longstanding relationships across racial lines in one of the more hyper-segregated metropolitan areas in the country. Many clergy feel isolated, unsupported, and bored by humdrum ministries. This has never been my experience in the parish. My involvement with MICAH and my staff role in Gamaliel provided me with countless stimulating experiences in the public arena, strong collegial support, continual challenges to take risks, and many moments of exhilaration when an issue was won or a member of Incarnation enjoyed public affirmation and a bit of a spotlight for their leadership in an issue campaign.

I am convinced that Incarnation Lutheran Church was stronger because of my efforts to integrate organizing arts and practices into the parish ministry.  One-on-one inreach and outreach campaigns deepened relationships in the congregation and its neighborhood. Some members of the congregation were personally transformed by their participation in MICAH. Others reaped the benefits of various MICAH campaigns. Within the congregation, a former organizer trained our leaders to apply organizing principles to stewardship. The result was a soaring increase in annual offering plate giving through an engaging and relational campaign. In the community, the Holy Ground efforts of Incarnation resulted in many neighborhood victories pertaining to drug trafficking, housing, neighborhood safety, delivery of city services, and improved police relations. Incarnation, with the support of MICAH, was instrumental in securing a million dollars in Milwaukee County funding for state-of-the-art renovation of its neighborhood park facilities—after years of neglect had resulted in a locked and shuttered fieldhouse filled with asbestos and mold, no functioning toilets, and an inoperable splash pad with broken plumbing at the public pool.  Preaching and prayer connected Sunday worship with weekday public action for justice.  I think there was increased clarity of mission, the development of leaders, and a serious commitment to discipleship.

Why engage in congregation-based community organizing? I hope I have offered some credible reasons. However, I also have some concerns about congregation-based community organizing, which I raise as challenging questions.

Will the national organizing networks overcome ego and concern to protect their turf in order to work together, perhaps even collaborate, on issues of common interest to share best practices and shape new paradigms for organizing?

Will clergy creatively establish the theological and faith basis of organizing? Will they insist that organizing reflects the values and spirituality of people of faith in its trainings and actions? Will they boldly claim the centrality of congregational vitality for effective organizing?

Will at least one network declare its clear commitment to nonviolent direct action as a prism for evaluating organizing concepts, tools, and methods?

Will denominations and judicatory leaders find the courage to act boldly in support of organizing issue campaigns at the local, statewide, and national level?

Will seminaries utilize the experience, discipline, and practice of organizing to train their students to build strong communities of faith that are actively engaged in the public arena for