Six Projects Yield Evidence Supporting the Impact of Faith Communities on Civic Life

Launched in 2019, Faith In/And Democracy is a funding and learning initiative dedicated to exploring the ways religious and spiritual communities support democracy and civic life. Last year, PACE announced the expansion of its FIAD initiative as it entered its third year and reached $1 million in grants. Now, as we enter a fourth year of FIAD work, we are pleased to share evidence from six projects that were supported by the FIAD Fund over the last year. Each of these projects tested their own hypotheses about how to advance, strengthen, and innovate on faith’s role in democracy.

(Projects are presented in alphabetical order.)

American Muslim Advisory Council

Project purpose: To investigate how civic engagement initiatives like advocacy training and candidate forums that are endorsed by religious leaders and hosted and promoted by mosques in Tennessee influence Muslims’ engagement with elected officials and voting in an election.
Findings: This study showed how supporting civic engagement at mosques helps to develop and sustain place-based civic infrastructure, supports civic character development, and promotes specific civic behaviors, such as voting, volunteering, and advocacy. Surveys before and after advocacy training events at mosques in Tennessee showed that participants were more likely to engage in civic activities beyond the mosque as a result; many initially followed up by attending a Muslim Day on the Hill event. Similarly, 65% of Muslims who attended a candidate forum at their mosque said they were more likely to participate in additional civic activities and 35% said they might be more likely to engage. 85% of Muslims who attended the Muslim Day on the Hill event somewhat or strongly agreed that their mosque supported civic engagement activities, especially those related to volunteering in the local community. Although men heavily outnumber women in regular mosque programs like Friday prayers and lectures, the survey participants for Muslim Day on the Hill were close to 50–50, with 88% of respondents somewhat or strongly agreeing that their mosque was women friendly.
Avenues for additional exploration: Follow up interviews revealed that ongoing barriers to civic engagement for Muslims include a lower sense of belonging due to language barriers, a lack of understanding about how the U.S. government works, and greater concern for politics in ‘home’ countries. Additionally, there is more work to do to assess how these kinds of activities may or may not impact voting behavior within the Muslim community in Tennessee.
We invite you to learn more about the American Muslim Advisory Council’s work here.

Aspen Institute Religion and Society Program and Indiana University

Project purpose: To understand the scope and scale of private faith-based foundations in the U.S. in order to equip researchers and practitioners to track the sources and flow of faith-based funding to faith communities and other entities throughout the nonprofit sector.
Findings: This study revealed the vast potential for impact that faith-based foundations have in promoting civic engagement and democracy. The results are a first-ever completed field-level analysis of all foundations, including both public and private, that distinguishes faith-based and secular foundations and maps their assets and grantmaking activities. These new data show that total assets of all foundations came to $1.73 trillion in 2015, of which $273 billion were held by faith-based foundations, with annual faith-based grantmaking of $17.8 billion. The study identified a total of 275,000 active (defined as have given at least one grant in the last five years) public and private foundations, of which 56,000, or 20%, are faith-based. Of the 83,000 active, private foundations, 24,000 of them, or 28%, are faith-based, which is higher than the 17% of active public foundation that are faith-based. Faith-based foundations tend to have fewer total assets and give fewer and smaller grants than their secular counterparts, but this difference is proportionate to their size. Faith-based private foundations average $9.1 million in assets as compared to secular private foundations averaging $15.5 million in assets. Average grant allocations are $765,000 per year for faith-based foundations, and $1.1 million for secular ones. Other differences between the faith-based and secular foundations are consistent with a smaller average size for faith-based institutions, such as faith-based institutions spending 21% on operating costs as opposed to 24% for secular foundations.
Avenues for additional exploration: These data give us a glimpse of the current faith-based identity of foundations from 2015 and 2018. Additional longitudinal studies could show change over time in raw numbers but also whether individual foundations drop their religious association. Longitudinal studies could identify overall trends but also allow individual cases to be flagged and investigated. It would also be useful to explore which types of organizations are more likely to fund certain kinds of charitable activities, such as civic education, health and human services, political activities, organizing around social justice, and/or family values.
We invite you to learn more about the Aspen Institute for Religion and Society’s work here and Professor Brad Fulton’s research here.

Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition and Native Movement

Project purpose: To understand the spiritual dimensions of faith in different traditions and the ways in which these are called upon to motivate people to plan and take actions to reduce social inequities, especially those associated with climate change and food insecurity.
Findings: This project demonstrated how faith-inspired leaders and communities help ameliorate systems of inequity or oppression, call people to work for the wellbeing of people and the planet, and support pluralism and bridge building in interfaith settings. Through interviews and community conversations, the project found that Fairbanks faith leaders are among the most articulate spokespersons in the community for explaining the spiritual, moral, cultural, and practical reasons for climate action. While some Fairbanks faith leaders did not explicitly address climate change, all of them promoted actions by their congregations that foster care for creation, including care for the Earth and vulnerable people. Three videos created from project interviews with local faith leaders demonstrate this: Bishop Mark Lattime of the Episcopal Diocese of Alaska, Rev. Leslie Ahuvah Fails of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fairbanks, and Pastor Johnathan Kenney of The Hope Church of Fairbanks. These interviews opened space for interfaith dialogue about climate action among congregations that draw on politically different segments of the community. Interfaith gatherings such as prayer circles and discussions of practical climate actions build community among congregations by identifying the links between faith-inspired goals and the community-grounded needs of the Earth and vulnerable people.
Avenues for additional exploration: Further exploration is needed regarding what types of interfaith gatherings are most effective in linking each congregation’s desire to care for creation with civic actions that address climate change and community wellbeing. The project team is currently comparing the impact of videos of interviews with inspirational faith leaders, prayer circles with potlucks, workshops to foster deep listening, community events with inspirational speakers or films, and editorials and newspaper articles that highlight the civic actions of local faith groups.
We invite you to learn more about the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition’s work here and Native Movement’s work here.

Faith Matters Network

Project purpose: To create evaluation tools for projects that promote democratic engagement as a spiritual practice and to analyze data from two existing projects: Disciples of Welcome in North Carolina and Micah Fellows in Arkansas.
Findings: In evaluating Disciples of Welcome, a learning journey about bridging divides for clergy serving in politically polarized United Methodist contexts in North Carolina, they found that the program had the highest positive impact on participants from the following identify groups: clergy of color, white clergy in search of support and resources to engage their congregations around issues of race, and LGBTQ clergy. Through analyzing data from participant interviews, focus groups, and program surveys, they learned that participants who shared these identities were 60% more likely to report that their participation in Disciples of Welcome helped them to feel less isolated, more courageous in their leadership, and more connected to resources for their own personal healing and spiritual sustainability. Based on this, they created a best practices document for leading learning journeys for changemakers called “10 Wise Practices for Leading Learning Communities”. Identified practices include the importance of storytelling as a bridge between participants of diverse backgrounds, the role of ritual in building group cohesion over changing times, and arts and creativity as sources of reflection, learning, and community building. Additionally, they have developed an evaluation system for future programs that combines qualitative and quantitative data collection at the beginning, midpoint, and end of program experiences.
Avenues for additional exploration: More research is needed to determine the effectiveness of future work related to two core themes: the idea of democracy as a spiritual practice and the connection between personal and communal healing in politically and racially divided communities. The project leaders are in the process of writing two public essays about these themes, which they hope will function as conversation-starters in the field.
We invite you to learn more about the work of Faith Matters Network here.

Live Free Illinois

Project purpose: To evaluate the growth of social justice ministries, their engagement with the community, and their ability to win change in their community. Congregations will track one-on-one conversations, relationships developed with community partners, meetings with elected officials, work to advance policy and activate voters, the number of justice-impacted people, the number of people impacted by gun violence, and the number of people impacted by police violence.
Findings: Churches involved in the project loved the idea of being able to expand their vision of justice, in part because they reported having many people in their churches who are impacted in various ways by violence, incarceration, lack of resources, and police violence. Churches found that with dedicated help from a professional community organizer, churches were better able to get outside their own walls and build bridges within their communities related to identified issues of concern. People in the churches were excited about hosting conversations and canvassing communities to learn more about how they could tailor their vision for justice to the needs of the community. Some churches and pastors noted that it is the church’s mission to integrate justice work within their existing core ministries and were grateful for the support of a paid community organizer.
Avenues for additional exploration: More work needs to be done to explore how churches can integrate justice work into their core mission and strategy, as well as how to fund and sustain the community-organizing expertise that is needed to equip faith communities over time for this work.
We invite you to learn more about the work of Live Free Illinois here.

Neighborly Faith

Project purpose: To gather publishable evidence on how faith leaders impact the civic engagement of Evangelical and born-again Gen Zs. The study will quantify the extent to which Evangelical Gen Z’s civic activities and beliefs are shaped by their faith leaders and how this compares to other leaders in their lives.
Findings: For this study, Neighborly Faith partnered with Springtide Research Institute to develop a comprehensive survey about how religious leaders influence civic engagement, particularly among Evangelical young adults. The study was done through a nationally representative survey of 1,989 young adults aged 18 to 25 conducted in May and June 2022, with oversampling for Evangelical and born-again young adults to establish an understanding of religious leaders’ unique capacity to impact young Evangelicals. Two key findings from the data are: 1) faith leaders shape the political opinions and civic behaviors of Gen Z evangelicals and born-again Christians more than any other leader in their life, and 2) many kinds of lay and professional faith leaders also shape Gen Z political opinions and civic engagement; it is not restricted to formal clergy. In some cases informal leaders such as prayer leaders, public religious figures, and music ministry leaders shaped them more. The study confirms that young Evangelicals can make valuable partners in achieving social goods and civic aims. They are more enthusiastic about civic activities than their peers, making them valuable to organizations working at America’s grassroots level. Young Evangelicals believe community service/volunteer work and charitable donations/fundraising are the most important civic activities. These also are the two civic activities they hear their faith leaders encouraging them to do the most. The full report is available here.
Avenues for additional exploration: As is true in many communities, there is a value-action gap between how important young Evangelicals perceive civic activities to be and how often they actually engage in those
activities. For example, while 57% of young Evangelicals find community service/volunteer work to be very/extremely important, only 45% engage in this work often/extremely often. Despite this gap, Christians who do not identify as Evangelical/born-again assigned significantly lower importance to civic activities — even lower than non-religious young people. More research is needed to understand the reasons for these differences in value and action among and between the identity groups.
We invite you to learn more about the work of Neighborly Faith here.

For more information about PACE’s Faith In/And Democracy initiative, please visit www.PACEFunders.org/faith.