Isthmus

God's will be done.

Local religious activists are moving beyond charity to address the root causes of social problems.

Date: 2003

By Melanie Conklin

In the cheerful though spartan offices of the recently opened Workers' Rights Center, a Peruvian couple sit at the table. "Elena" clasps and unclasps her hands as she describes her husband's work troubles in Spanish. She quietly recounts her tale, at one point briefly brushing aside a tear as she mentions not always having time to cook after working 12-hour days. "Jorge," who is in his 40s, was laid off from his Madison assembly-line job after he developed back problems from heavy lifting at work. (The couple's names and inconsequential details of their story have been changed.) He collected workers' compensation for a while, but the payments ended. The couple hired a local attorney, whom they haven't heard from him in weeks. "Is this how it works in this country?" asks Elena. "I only know how it works back home." Carol Bracewell, a volunteer from the United Church of Christ, takes down notes, asks questions and drafts a plan. The center's director, Sarah Shatz, translates. The phones ring in the background but go unanswered, as the two focus on the details of Jorge's complex case. "Workers' compensation law applies to documented and undocumented workers," Shatz explains at one point. "Most labor laws do." Religion never comes up. In fact, the only sign of it is a poster that names the group's umbrella organization, Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice of South Central Wisconsin, and a picture on the wall of former El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero -- a champion of the poor.

The Workers' Rights Center, located in the Villager Mall on Park Street, is the result of a survey conducted last year by the Latino Workers Project. That survey highlighted the need for a place to advocate and help low-wage workers. Religious groups banded together with labor unions, and the center opened its doors in mid-November. The center is set up to help any low-wage workers, not just Latinos. It answers questions on workers' rights, helps workers recoup unjustly withheld wages (it's had several success stories already), and connects them with other services. Despite its religious affiliations, its mission is to give aid and effect change -- not convert souls. Yet Bracewell is in this office today because of her beliefs. While participating in a church trip to Chiapas, Mexico, a pastor challenged her group to go back and make a difference in the lives of immigrants in her community. She took those words to heart. "The idea of coming home and sitting still and doing nothing is intolerable," says Bracewell, a self-employed graphic designer who volunteers at the center. "What am I going to do about our government's foreign policy? This is something I can do." On the wall behind Bracewell, a poster expands on a well-known proverb: "If you give me a fish, you have fed me for a day. If you teach me to fish, then you have fed me until the river is contaminated or the shoreline seized for development. But if you teach me to organize, then whatever the challenge, I can join together with my peers. And we will fashion our own solution."

In Madison, the religious left is alive and more active than ever fashioning solutions on such issues as workers' rights, homelessness, prisoner support, racial justice and the environment. And increasingly, it is finding not only new needs, but new allies, across the theological and political spectrums. Mainline religious groups, which have assumed a greater role in dealing with social problems, are moving beyond charity and even volunteerism into an almost revolutionary stance. They're pushing to change the system, acting on various incarnations of the line in the Christian Lord's Prayer, "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." "We try to participate in programs that move beyond simply charitable contributions and toward changing structures and somehow making more significant contributions to social justice work," says Rev. Michael Schuler, senior minister of the First Unitarian Society. "We don't do it with an expectation that it will result in fuller pews or coffers. There's just the sense that it's the right thing to do."

Going upstream There's a story that frequently comes up in sermons on social justice. It's the tale of a community that finds a baby floating down the river in a basket. The community rescues the infant and cares for it. Then it notices another baby coming downstream, and another. "After a while," says Rev. Mary Kay Baum, "you go upstream and see why this is happening, rather than just rescuing the ones you see." Baum, director of Madison-area Urban Ministry, says witnessing problems firsthand while engaging in charity work is a key reason the faith community is increasingly active on justice issues. And as government has over the past two decades dismantled much of its safety net of social programs, religious folk have stepped into the breach. And that's made them aware of the need for fundamental reform. "In Madison, at least in spirit and somewhat in practice, there's been a very strong emphasis on social justice and not just charity," says Baum. "The faith communities realize that there are Band-Aids that have to exist -- emergency shelters and emergency food -- but we have to go beyond the Band-Aids. There's greater needs, and people see that congregations aren't just going to be able to increase charity to fill them."

For example, clients at the Workers' Rights Center are offered help on their individual situations, but the center also takes note of problem companies or contractors. "One advantage we have is we can create change through public pressure," says Shatz. If a local business or contractor is abusing its workers and won't stop, Shatz can mobilize a group of pastors to protest or hold a prayer vigil -- highly visible and potentially embarrassing activities. Just across Park Street from the new center, the Catholic Diocese this month opened its new $3.5 million Catholic Multicultural Center, which houses Centro Guadalupe and St. Martin's House, as well as rooms for community meetings and classes, a library, a computer lab and a restaurant-quality kitchen. There's a chapel with beautiful stained-glass windows and a few religious icons. But Mark Brinkmoeller, who directs the Madison Diocese's Office for Justice and Peace, says people who seek help or a meal here won't be pressured or even asked to join the church. "We don't question people who come here on their beliefs," he says. "We simply hope that what we are doing here is a strong witness to our faith." Part of Brinkmoeller's job is pushing members of the church to do justice work, on issues ranging from East Timor to affordable housing. "I organize parishioners to be engaged," he says. "It's an essential, intrinsic element of our faith. The Catholic Church is rooted in the world as it is, and tries to change it as it should be." This, explains Brinkmoeller, entails two elements: the social act of addressing concrete needs by volunteering or giving contributions, and the justice element, which seeks to address the root causes of social problems: "We need to ask ourselves, 'How do we change what's causing us to have to write these checks?'"

Acting as advocates A year ago, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk met with more than 40 religious community leaders. The group, explains Baum, was concerned that even though the number of vouchers to provide emergency housing for the homeless had increased since the year before, "there would still be some families turned away in the cold because there wouldn't be room. It turned out to be prophetic." These religious leaders, as a result of being on the frontlines of charity work, were among the first to notice the unmet need. And they felt it was their duty to push government. As a result of this meeting, Dane County and the city of Madison each came up with about $25,000, with additional contributions from religious groups and United Way, to open a warming house at the Salvation Army, a program that is operating again this winter.

At the local level, there's a strong partnership between government and religious groups, even as federal and state government withdraws from social programs. Baum suggests this owes in part to the stance taken by local religious activists: "While in some parts of the country there may be an emphasis on doing charity ourselves and not relying on any governmental help, here there's a united agreement among the faith community and clergy of all spectrums that we should act as advocates or social-change agents to insist that our government have the correct priorities, which means concern about the wellbeing of every individual. We are called to point out injustices and create a more just society."

Madison-area Urban Ministry has been active on a host of political issues, including efforts to increase the availability of low-income housing through inclusionary zoning and the push to ban discrimination against renters who receive Section 8 vouchers. Another example of secular-religious cooperation is an eviction-prevention program devised by a group of isthmus-area clergy who meet regularly on housing issues. The program provides small subsidies paid for by congregations and administered by a county social worker in the Joining Forces for Family Program. Pastors and politicos may seem like odd bedfellows in a community that debates having the word "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and is home to the national Freedom From Religion Foundation. And indeed, the cooperation between government and religious groups on social issues has become a source of concern for those devoted to maintaining the separation of church and state.

It takes all kinds Nationally, the Christian right, represented by such groups as the Christian Coalition, has been highly visible and often successful in influencing the political agenda, particularly that of the Republican Party. Yet First Unitarian's Schuler believes the religious left actually constitutes a far larger segment of the faith community. He says religious people on the right tend to be evangelicals, or pre-millennialists, whose focus is on converting people in anticipation of an afterlife. "It's the conviction that the kingdom of God will come about when God the Almighty decides it will and whisks the chosen off to glory." But what he calls the left, or post-millennialists, includes most mainline Christian churches. This group is defined by its desire to make the world we're in now a better place. "We're all working together to progressively build up the kingdom of God in our lifetimes. God has given us the intelligence and conscience we need to create the kingdom amongst ourselves. We're partners with God." Justice activism, stresses Schuler, has long been a part of many religious traditions: "Any historian would say most of the significant changes that have occurred to create a more equitable society have been aided and abetted, if not spearheaded, by religious groups." And while Schuler's congregation works with Planned Parenthood and supports abortion rights, he notes that conservative churches would define their anti-abortion advocacy as a social-change movement. Then there's the Catholic Church, which sides with the Christian right in opposing abortion and with the traditional left in its compassion for the poor. "Our typical parish is in the center of American political life," says Brinkmoeller. "Our politics are based on our principles, and we're a swing group in our voting."

One of Madison's most politically active churches is Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ on Atwood Avenue. Its leader, Rev. Charles Wolfe, a main player in local housing issues, says religious activism is growing for two reasons: because there's increasing injustice and because churches are more aware of it. Wolfe believes activism breeds more activism, as people forge connections with those for whom they fight. "Justice issues become much easier to solve if we have a sense of neighborliness," he says. "When your child needs to have some food or a neighbor wants to borrow an egg, you give it to them. You don't ask if they deserve to have food or if they did anything to earn it." Asked what causes members of his church to work for change, Wolfe tells a story of a man who is walking along the beach picking up clams that have become stranded by the tide and tossing them back into the ocean. Another person comes along, sees what he's doing and says, "There are thousands of these clams; you can't possibly put them all back. Why bother?" The first man holds up the clam he's about to toss back and replies, "Well, it makes a difference to this one."

Keep them separated President George Bush has thus far been unsuccessful in his push to get his Faith-Based Initiative program. Even a watered-down, last-ditch version failed to pass the U.S. Senate in the session that ended in mid-November. But the new Republican majority in both houses may change that. Local religious leaders are divided in their opinions on the program, which would give government money to faith-based groups without the strict regulations now in place against proselytizing or attaching religious conditions to service. Yet local groups do well without it, and some worry that it could do more harm than good. Consider the Interfaith Hospitality Network, one of the Madison area's most successful faith-based initiatives. Founded in 1999, it organizes 39 congregations to help house, feed and care for homeless families. The program moves from week to week, and a lay coordinator at each location organizes about 70 volunteers to cook, play with children or spend the night with the families. There's also a mentoring component and a new initiative to help get families into permanent housing. Yet executive director Rachel Krinskey stresses how careful her group is not to proselytize, and to make sure volunteers observe that rule. Sometimes it's a struggle. For example, there is the issue of saying grace before meals. The program wants to make sure that no family feels pressured to do so, but also that they are free to do so if they so desire. Similarly, if family members are in crisis, volunteers can't try to comfort them with their religion unless they are asked about it. The Interfaith Hospitality Network is a nonprofit 501-C3, and must be nonsectarian to maintain that status. And Krinskey, a member of Temple Beth El, is "particularly sensitive" to making families feel comfortable regardless of their beliefs. She notes that in the Jewish tradition there's a concept called "tzedakah," which is often mistranslated as "charity." "It really means righteousness," says Krinskey. "You share money, time, talent because it's just right. It's not that you get kudos." Schuler is also skeptical of Bush's faith-based plan. "It's not just governmental dollars, but governmental subcontracting," he says. "It has the potential to corrupt faith communities if they become dependent on governmental aid." Indeed, one concern is that it may make congregations less inclined to lobby government for change. Says Schuler, "There's going to be a conflict of interest because groups are not going to want to jeopardize that relationship." Even Brinkmoeller, whose Catholic Church applauds Bush's faith-based plans, offers a note of caution about arrangements that let churches become more involved in social work: "We have to make sure we're not taking the rest of society off the hook."

'Big tent' At last year's meeting with Falk where the warming-house idea was born, pastors in attendance ranged from Wolfe to the staunchly conservative moral watchdog, Rev. Richard Pritchard. The two disagree on many social issues, but stood together in wanting to help homeless families. "He wouldn't be enthusiastic about our open and affirming stance [toward homosexuality]," says Wolfe of Pritchard. "But I think it's a good thing that we can cross some lines on justice issues without having to agree on everything." Membership at Madison-area Urban Ministry ranges from progressive to evangelical congregations, and Baum agrees that faith communities are finding strong bonds. Besides housing, the group is involved in promoting the restorative-justice movement, reacclimating prisoners into society and questioning the disproportional representation of minorities in prisons. In these issue areas, progressive churches work side by side with conservative churches, especially African American congregations, who view the justice system as racially biased. Another relatively new issue uniting many churches is concern for the environment. Faith communities, because their raison d'être is to work toward creating a better future, are worried about what the world might look like for future generations. Here, too, a variety of churches are getting involved. For example, an evangelical organized the new "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign targeting gas-guzzling SUVs. While Baum would like to see even more congregations getting active, she's filled with hope about the difference religious folk can make when they unite. "There may be lots of arguments over sexuality issues," says Baum. "But there is a big tent. I personally believe God is working to bring people of all different spiritualities together to stand with the poor and to point out racism and economic injustice when it happens. We have many different names for God. But most faiths believe we are supposed to establish God's ways here on earth."

Reach out Madison-area Urban Ministries, 256-0906, www.emum.org Diocese Office for Justice and Peace, 821-3086 Interfaith Hospitality Network, 294-7998 Workers' Rights Center, 255-0376, www.workerjustice.org