Hope + Provocations for Funders about Faith + Democracy

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PACE’s Faith In/And Democracy initiative’s ultimate goal is to inspire interest and investment at the intersection of faith and democracy. We know this intersection — which is becoming a field in its own right — is not well resourced or understood (read this and this if you need convincing). As such, one of PACE’s responsibilities as humble facilitators of the Faith In/And Democracy Learning Community is to amplify the stories that are going unnoticed, the perspectives that are being missed, the insights that are not being heard.

When the FIAD Learning Community gathers, leaders who work, fund, organize, or operate in both faith and democracy contexts have the space to exchange reflections, challenge assumptions, and share some hard truths about what it means to work at the intersection of faith and democracy in America today.

Below, I outline a few points that emerged during recent convenings and feel important to magnify. Individually, these points provoked major reflection for our community and warranted amplification, particularly with other funders. Collectively, these points provided hope and evidence that this growing field of faith and democracy has the reflective, insightful, and dedicated leadership our country needs to continue strengthening democracy and civic life.

We are thankful to our colleagues who articulated these learnings for our community, and we have anonymized their remarks for the purposes of learning out loud. They are presented in no particular order.

1. Perhaps one of the most provocative insights came from a colleague who shared this observation (paraphrased): “It seems like we call work ‘faith-based’ or ‘religious’ when it is done mostly by White Christians. When other races and religions do faith-based work, we tend to classify it as civic or social infrastructure. Most people talk about Islamophobia as anti-racism work, but that potentially instrumentalizes the work rather than referring to it as religious work.” This left us questioning, in philanthropy, is there a bias for who we consider doing faith-based work and who we consider doing social infrastructure work (which we may have more expectations of)? In what ways are we forcing leaders to secularize their work to fit into categories? What does that mean for how we live into commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion?
2. There was a lot of conversation about what it means to represent “faith” or “religious” work when engaging with philanthropy or elected officials, and that there is often a resistance to get into particulars about the faith itself in terms of understanding its beliefs or traditions. As one of our colleagues shared (paraphrased): “There is an assumption among many that the best approach is to not dig deep into religious specifics. But the people who hold religious specifics — for them — it’s isolating when the conversation is pitched at the level of generic or universal. There is no such thing as being generically religious. The particulars matter.”
3. “What is the place of other faiths in the democracy that you believe in?” This is the question one of our colleagues poses to earn trust when working at the intersection of faith and democracy. He shared that in his experience, most people have not thought about this question before. Particularly for constituencies that have lived in relatively homogeneous settings all their lives, he finds that this question allows them to fill a space that’s empty versus trying to correct a space that is filled with misconceptions and harsh perspectives of other faiths.
4. The way that faith leaders were catapulted into civic roles over the last year-and-a-half was a common theme of reflection and discussion. The gap between the faith knowledge that civic leaders have and the civic knowledge that faith leaders have was alarming and sobering for many of our colleagues. As one colleague shared (paraphrased): “The issues we faced, particularly in 2020, have been so enormous, we felt the need to create ritual that could hold the emotional heaviness and anxiety of the year — especially around Juneteenth and the election. For example, we were leading rituals to understand our role in promoting voting, advocacy, and pushing policy forward, as well as discerning faith’s role in understanding the American narrative. We discovered that most religious leaders were unprepared to talk about American democracy at this level. Now that faith leaders have to take on new civic roles, the lack of civic knowledge, literacy, and agency to do so is an even more urgent challenge.”
5. One of our colleagues shared that she sees two kinds of faith and democracy work: fire-fighting and tree-planting. Fire-fighting addresses immediate threats, where tree-planting is about doing the long-term work that will hopefully bear fruit down the road. In some ways, this colleague articulated short-term versus long-term, or reactive versus proactive — these are concepts we’re familiar and comfortable with. But she introduced something with more nuance (paraphrased): “My organization made the decision to be tree-planters. That puts us in a position to say ‘no’ a lot, and that’s uncomfortable. A lot of our (religious minority) communities are under threat or attack. It’s difficult to go to communities that are dealing with trauma and tell them it’s important they also care about the zoning commission, for example. Fire fights are not imagined; they’re real. And they need resources and energy. We want to be there for our causes and communities, but we also have to decide where we’re going to have impact. It creates a lot of discomfort.”

To learn more about Faith In/And Democracy, please visit the website and check out our latest learnings.