Civics and Spirituality

Like bookends on the 1990s, what began with preaching concluded with song. Thousands turned out at the Hollywood Bowl on a Sunday afternoon earlier this month to hear music from the world’s religious traditions as part of a nine-day festival of sacred music. In the same fashion that a program after the 1992 riots had clergy exchanging pulpits to foster a sense of cohesion in sprawling Southern California, the music festival sponsors wanted to use the arts to bolster civic unity.

These gestures frame a decade when an informal, grass-roots movement sprang up in the region to use religion to strengthen the social fabric rather than win converts.

The purpose initially was therapeutic, literally to make people feel better about where they lived during a period of turmoil. Yet there is a more practical and lasting side to the interfaith work that resulted. It has evolved today into a strategy for offering economic development assistance to the poor through churches and other supporting institutions.

Researchers at USC’s School of Religion took note of this trend, both the symbolism and the substance, and its emerging “civic spiritualists,” like Los Angeles’ Rev. Cecil Murray and Rabbi Harvey J. Fields, in a 1994 study titled “The Politics of the Spirit.”

Murray, for example, was involved in both the post-riots ministry and the festival. His First AME Renaissance project is a partner in a conference Thursday and Friday that will teach economic development strategies to inner-city residents.

These sessions bring together African American, Latino, Mormon and other churches, along with the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture, and some financial institutions. The workshops will cover such topics as writing business plans, selecting boards of directors and developing community partnerships to get housing built.

The work is significant for its acknowledgment that if people can move beyond creeds and dogmas, they can address poverty and related social problems by mobilizing their communities for common objectives.

It is too early to tell whether what has evolved will make a lasting difference on urban areas of Southern California.

A coalition that was poles apart on social theology had some success fighting neighborhood decay in Anaheim in the early 1990s, though momentum sputtered once early objectives were met. Still, this is the kind of interfaith work at the local level that will make or break the role of religious communities in successfully addressing social problems.

If the current political discussions about a larger role for churches and religious communities in solving social problems is to be more than campaign rhetoric, Southern California can provide models.

Efforts like next week’s economic development conference, while producing few big triumphs or monuments, already have laid an important foundation. With their affirmative responses, ordinary citizens have shown that they are ready for fresh approaches, and they aren’t waiting for politicians to tell them what’s significant.