Faith’s Role in Navigating Crisis
In the testimonies of those who have been through a severe crisis, there is often the observation that one’s senses were heightened. What is extraneous to the crisis, even if it generally creates a lot of noise and gets a lot of attention, becomes invisible, and the senses focus on what is most relevant to addressing the crisis at hand. What seemed superfluous before might then become essential; the very thing that is needed to make it through. This, I would suggest, is often the place of faith in civic life. We become aware of it in moments of crisis, and realize how much it is needed, even as we might ignore it in the normal course of our lives, our programs, and our analysis of assets and resources.
In our most recent meeting of PACE’s Faith In/And Democracy’s Learning Community, we discussed the role faith and faith communities play in times of crisis. There are many different kinds of crises: natural disasters, political disruptions and flashpoints, widespread social harms or particularized, personal tragedies. Crises can be immediate or long-suffering. Crises can be seen from a mile away or seemingly come out of nowhere.
To open our session on faith and crises, we heard from Allison Ralph of The Aspen Institute’s Religion & Society Program. Ralph shared about a recent program her organization ran which focused on racial inequity, climate change and the…
