Bearing Witness to Power: Ecumenical Faith-Based Community Organizing Deployed for Public Education Reform

• In Event: 25.067 - Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: 25.067-19 - Challenging Power and Transforming Relationships Through Grassroots Organizing

Abstract

A postcritical ethnography (Noblit, Flores, & Murrillo, 2004) of North Carolina’s NAACP led “Forward Together Moral Movement” and the Industrial Areas Foundation’s (IAF) local organizing community, Durham Congregations, Associations, & Neighborhoods (CAN), reveals the potential efficacy of faith-based organizing in educational reform. This paper narrates significant successes by both of these organizing communities in the arena of education delineating some of the distinct social justice possibilities for the social movement style of organizing enacted by the NAACP and the local, issue-based organizing characteristic of IAF. Conclusions include the importance
of moral imaginaries and language as well as ecumenical, multi-faith coalitions for significant justice outcomes in faith-based organizing.

Author

• Tim Conder, The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill