Civic Engagement — A Cornerstone in Building the Beloved Community
By Dora Muhammad, Congregation Engagement Director, Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy
Autumn is my favorite season of the year. The nip in the winds gently taps on the shoulder to remind us that life is still present even as we see things passing away. It is refreshing to deeply inhale the crisp air that stirs our bodies. The gradient colors of the leaves wisping to the ground, gathered around the trunks of trees, leaving their final beauty mark on the earth to herald the oncoming winter.
Transition.
As the yearlong push of voter education, mobilization and protection staggered one week beyond presidential Election Night, past meticulous vote counts and hand recounts, the electorate collectively exhaled with the final declaration of a winner. The entire world now eagerly awaits America’s transition of power.
One truism is that two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. It is a metaphysical impossibility. What remains stifled is the unease that stable democracy has been critically damaged in the process; and that by Inauguration Day in January, like a brain deprived of oxygen, the principles that undergird good governance will be irrevocably suffocated.
Our post-election period is not riddled with riots like Thailand, or opposition leaders in exile like Tanzania, or government buildings taken over like Kyrgyzstan. Before the 2020 election cycle, I encountered advocates and activists who disdained the electoral process and people of faith who hesitate to enter the public square. These international crises clearly demonstrate that democracy is not passive.
Our contemporary realities of inhumanity, oppression, injustice, and corruption make it profoundly clear that we do not live in the Kingdom of God. We may experience personal moments of bliss, but we are not gathered in the eternal paradise or heavenly gardens that religious doctrines describe. I contend that the spiritual must attend to the practical to sustain a truly balanced and fully empowered society.
Civic life does not subvert the divine or corrupt the sacred. It is a harmonizing instrument of the exhortation of values that can erase the fragmentation of community. Systems do not organically emerge nor spontaneously support themselves. Thought, communication, and resources converge in a willful design, construction, and maintenance of institutions in every sector of society.
People of faith have a terrific mandate. Civic activities are an extension of faith, an expression of our faith and, in some cases, even an act of faith. We must find authentic, meaningful connections to the various demonstrations of faith we are seeking to engage in civic work. Grounding civic engagement in a resonance unique to each faith community, we can simultaneously galvanize the collective power of faith voices.
I do not ascribe divinity to the public square. Political leaders do not sanctify holiness. I behold what can be created in the public square, what beckons from this space. What pulls, draws, and fills this space is the freedom to be. Within the hallowed walls of houses of worship is not the sole locator where people of faith find identity and purpose. How we live out our faith is demonstrated in how we treat all others who show up in this space called community.
When we are determined to exclude, fixated on crushing another’s franchise and agency, and insistent on the invisibility of the margins and the “others” that have been pushed there, we narrow civic engagement. When we relegate our role in the community to religious benevolence or outreach that bends towards paternalistic altruism, we neuter civic engagement. Calling people of faith to civic engagement must be more than a group of different denominations showing up in the same spot to lift a sign, pump a fist, sign a petition, drop a ballot, or tap on the door of elected officials. However, when we fashion a public square that goes beyond simply reflecting universal principles and convictions to truly embodying them, we set the frame of the highest good that exists internally in our character and externally in our communities. The banner we form is a brilliant fabric weaved together with each faith expression that elevates our being.
This is the highest good envisioned by Josiah Royce, the philosopher-theologian of the 19th century who first termed, “the beloved community.” In his 1908 publishing of a compilation of his sermons in “The Philosophy of Loyalty,” he espoused that to attain the highest good, we must first achieve the common good. In this paradigm, the highest good rests upon the common good, like a cornerstone in the building of a house.
While Royce is credited widely for founding the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), this is not factual. The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) emerged in 1914 Europe from a vision of a human community in response to the wars that ravaged Europe. The U.S. chapter was established in 1915 and prominent members came to Montgomery, Ala. to support the bus boycott in the 1950s. FOR members also traveled to Tennessee to train activists to lead the Freedom Rides. One of the most prominent members of this global interfaith peace organization was Baynard Rustin, the architect of the 1963 March on Washington.
Royce centered the grounding of self and mind — that we can have both a moral community and authentic individuality. Individuals must equally seek to build “a beautiful life” and a “beautiful community” because we are products of the work of our hands but also a product of our community and its circumstances. Communities themselves are living, breathing, and responsible “plans of action” that are rooted in the wills and spirit of the people.
It is unclear whether Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. encountered the philosophy of “The Beloved Community” when he became a member of FOR or while studying at seminary. Nevertheless, he deepened its meaning and heightened the concept. After the Supreme Court decision to uphold the desegregation of Montgomery buses in December 1956, Dr. King would later share in his 1957 speech, “Facing the Challenge of the New Age,” that his goal of the civil rights movement was not political or economic power; it was reconciliation, redemption and the creation of the Beloved Community. He wrote, “It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men [and women].”
This is the spiritual power of civic engagement that it invites every person to experience and live out. The common good calls us to forge and foster a public space where every person in the community is touched and moves toward the highest good, together and transformed. Where we can’t find it, we will create it. Where it is diminished or suppressed, we demand it. Where it is abrogated, we will fight to restore it.
Transition.
I consider the trees differently this peculiar autumn of 2020. My gaze rests not on the beauty of the leaves that have fallen. Fresh leaves will emerge after this transition. My eyes gleam at the bare branches stretching forth, extensions of the firm roots that remain. It speaks to me of the core beauty that emerges from common ground. I witness elevation. I behold the fundamental. This natural, enduring freedom to be, to reach, to rise — is Beloved.
Dora Muhammad is an author, artist, and advocate with more than 25 years of experience in communications and public policy formation. She currently serves as the Congregation Engagement Director at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, where she also manages its health equity program and spearheads its civic engagement program and racial equity work. VICPP is the largest statewide advocacy voice of the faith community in Virginia. It is a non-partisan, racially and ethnically diverse coalition of 23,000 members including 700 faith communities and 1,000 clergy of all faiths and people of goodwill that advocates for economic, racial, social and environmental justice.
Dora has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and documentary photography and a master’s degree in public administration. She studied International Law and Human Rights at the University of London and also received a Certificate in Theology and Ministry from the Princeton Theological Seminary.
