By Chelsea Langston Bombino & Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies
This resource provides faith-based organizations and faith leaders principles and guidance to understand how positive engagement in the public square, across a diversity of actors, is necessary to advance public policies that promote human flourishing for all individuals and institutions in our pluralistic society.
Positive engagement in the public square is especially timely in this current moment of dual health and economic crises, as well as increased calls for racial justice. Sacred Sector believes that faith-based organizations (FBOs) and congregations should be empowered to speak and act in the public square based on their faith distinctives, while seeking to build relationships across religious and cultural differences that advance justice for all community members. By strengthening faith-based organizations to fully incarnate their sacred beliefs regarding how they both honor God and love their civic neighbors, policymakers will safeguard the sacred sector as a vital part of a resilient and flourishing society.
Objective: This resource prepares faith-based organizations to engage their communities strategically in order to shape public policy in a positive way. Faith-based organizations (FBOs) do not exist and serve in a vacuum. Rather, their ability to serve effectively depends in part on how the public around them regards them.
Sacred Sector has created six different “Toolboxes” to guide organizations and emerging leaders in the faith-based nonprofit sector through the common challenges that they face. Each Toolbox is composed of three distinct parts: Public Policy, Organizational Practice and Public Positioning.
This resource is an excerpt of the Sacred Sector Advocacy and Lobbying Toolbox - Public Policy, which is available to participants of the Sacred Sector Community and Sacred Sector Fellowship.
The Need for Positive Engagement
Faith-based organizations (FBOs) rightly focus on those they are called to serve. Yet, FBOs should recognize that a wider audience is attentive to what they do and how they do it. Often, people in society are sensitive to the operational practices and ways of serving that are distinguishably marked by faith. By building positive relationships within their communities, FBOs can help create a hospitable environment in which to thrive. Positive engagement with the public — whether that means joining a coalition or simply beginning a conversation — is a way for FBOs to encourage policies that will preserve their freedom to serve according to their religious principles.
Like every other organization in society, FBOs need laws, regulations and court decisions that support their existence and capacity to thrive. In particular, religious organizations may need accommodations such as religious freedom protections in public policies so that they can remain true to their faith-based identities. For the favorable legal environment they need, FBOs count not only on government officials but also on broad public support for religious freedom as a valued principle as well as tolerance for the faith-shaped ways that they operate and serve.
In general, the American tradition has followed what the Center for Public Justice calls a public justice framework: the U.S. government supports a thriving civil society and protects the rights of religious organizations to operate in accordance with their faith-based values and missions. For example, constitutional principles such as freedom of association and freedom of speech and religion support the existence of both secular and faith-based groups. Tax policies benefit nonprofits and houses of worship. Legislated religious exemptions and laws such as Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs) prevent the government from infringing upon the ability of individuals and institutions to operate in accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs. These policies, however, do not sustain themselves; they need supportive public attitudes, and for that, FBOs may need to deliberately cultivate those positive, or at least tolerant, public attitudes.
Identify Engagement Opportunities
To promote a favorable environment for the fulfillment of its sacred mission, every FBO should consider carefully how to best engage with the leaders and members of the community around it. Cultivating relationships broadly allows your FBO to have an influence on the public policies that influence your community at a systemic, organizational and individual level. Keep in mind that identifying persons and organizations with whom to work should not be opportunistic. Do not open a discussion with a leader only when a policy decision or problem arises. Instead, cultivate relationships early and often so that when policy issues and/or problems arise, a healthy working relationship has already been established. In this way, the relationship becomes mutually beneficial over a long period of time.
Consider each of the following categories as your FBO identifies opportunities for positive engagement that will help shape public opinion, and thus public policy, in positive ways:
Public officials. Public officials are those individuals who have either been elected or appointed to an official position of government authority. Officials include judges, legislators and mayors, or they may serve within an executive branch agency such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or a state’s treasury department. While cultivating relationships with local officials might make the most sense (i.e. city council members), remember that relationships with state and federal officials can have far-reaching impact. At the least, be aware of public officials at the local, state and federal level in all three branches of government. Cultivating relationships with government officials can have the most direct impact on public policy. Thus, consider connecting with those who will have impact in key areas that affect your work. For example, if an FBO works with gang prevention, it could consider meeting with the local police chief.
Community leaders. Besides public officials, an FBO should consider positive engagement with community leaders more broadly. Government is not the only force that affects an organization’s ability to fulfill its sacred mission. Winning the support of an influential neighborhood leader may promote missional success. For example, an FBO that runs an after-school program in a low-income neighborhood may need the approval, guidance and wisdom of a long-time community member. In return, the FBO may also serve as a bridge for connecting her informal leadership to political, social and financial resources outside of the community. Think through which community gatekeepers, business people and faith leaders at the local, state and national level will be good partners. Moreover, these leaders may help serve as a connection to public officials.
Peer organizations. Know which organizations are doing similar or complementary work. Have a mindset of cooperation, where possible, as opposed to competition. For those organizations that seem opposed to your sacred mission or your FBO’s practices, opening a conversation may increase understanding and thus reduce the opposition.
Individual community members. Do not overlook the average community member. The greatest advocate for an organization’s faith-based mission may be a family who has committed to giving $10 every month. Engaging individuals about the mission and positive contributions of an FBO can mobilize them to speak with a collective voice that may catch the ear of policymakers more effectively.
Media. Learn how to cooperate with and engage the media effectively. Invite local newspersons to learn about your organization. Consider writing editorials for the local paper. Communicating to the media about the positive contributions of an FBO to a community will increase the public’s appreciation for and understanding of its sacred mission.
Coalitions. Sometimes partnerships with community leaders and organizations should be formalized into a coalition. A visibly diverse coalition that has a unified voice may be uniquely persuasive in talking to policymakers and to the public at large about needed changes.
Remember that all of these community members and leaders need to know that FBOs have a vital role to play in maintaining a healthy society. Though it is hard to quantify the number of FBOs, most estimates agree that between 20 to 35 percent of public-serving nonprofits are faith-based in nature.1 Given the size and scope of the sacred sector, and the constitutional principles that protect them, government policies need to reflect their right and just role in society.
Build Relationships
Once you have identified engagement opportunities, here are examples of how to begin cultivating relationships:
Invite public officials to an annual banquet or other events where services recipients tell their stories. This experience gives the official a personal connection to the FBO, while becoming acquainted with the broader scope of the work that your FBO accomplishes.
Recognize any specific outcomes that are the result of previous relationship ties and discuss how that relationship has been positive for the FBO and the entire community. Be quick to congratulate the positive contributions of others, and articulate how their success positively impacts your FBO’s own sacred mission.
Meet with public officials and community members on diverse community topics, not just those issues immediately related to your FBO’s work. Show a willingness to engage with broader issues facing the community so you do not come across as an interest group. For example, consider the pastor who began talking to people in a public housing complex across the street from his church about a run-down football field in the neighborhood. Community members were worried because the area was dangerous for children. The pastor took note of the concerns and brought them before the city mayor. In the end, his efforts resulted in necessary improvements: repaired lights, new bleachers and a touched-up field.
Partner with other FBOs or secular non-profits to engage with and positively contribute to the public square together. Advocate together. Share resources regularly. Such collaboration decreases the likelihood of duplicating services and may increase understanding of your religious mission. All organizations involved can then focus on their respective services in order to increase impact.
Coordinate a monthly lunch in which local non-profits or FBOs discuss their work. In his book Confident Pluralism, John Inazu relays several stories of the power of relationships to positively impact policy and community despite sometimes stark differences. He tells of Loretto Wagner, a Catholic woman who served as president of Missouri Citizens for Life, and B. J. Isaacson-Jones, who was the director of Missouri’s largest abortion clinic. After Isaacson-Jones called for a meeting of pro-life and pro-choice leaders to discuss the common goal of preventing unwanted pregnancies, a group called Common Ground emerged. Monthly dinners created new friendships that ultimately resulted in advocacy work to secure state legislation that would help pregnant drug- addicted women. Although differences remained between Isaacson-Jones and Loretto Wagner, people across the spectrum found common ground in wanting to prevent abortions.
Share your newsletter with appropriate public officials and community leaders so they can stay up-to-date on your work in the community and how you are serving those whom the officials also serve.
Provide valuable expertise to policymakers and community leaders. Your FBO knows the needs of the communities whom it serves and how your unique, sacred mission addresses those needs. Public officials need to know the data — qualitative and quantitative — that your FBO possesses. As a result of this information, government officials can better serve their constituents.
Conclusion
FBOs are situated within a political and social community. Consequently, peer organizations, local businesses, government policies and individual volunteers either diminish or strengthen an FBO’s faith-based impact. Positive engagement with all of these groups help to promote favorable public policies that will protect the sacred sector.
Sacred Sector is a learning community for faith-based organizations and emerging leaders within the faith-based nonprofit sector that seek to integrate and fully embody their sacred missions in every area of organizational life. Learn more at www.SacredSector.org.
The Center for Public Justice is an independent, nonpartisan organization devoted to policy research and civic education. Working outside the familiar categories of right and left, conservative and liberal, we seek to help citizens and public officeholders respond to God's call to do justice. Learn more at www.CPJustice.org.
This resource was developed by Sacred Sector, an initiative of the Center for Public Justice, and was made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton Religion Trust. The opinions expressed in this primer are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton Religion Trust.
Chelsea Langston Bombino is the director of Sacred Sector, an initiative of the Center for Public Justice. Sacred Sector is a learning community for faith-based organizations and emerging leaders within the faith-based nonprofit sector to integrate and fully embody their sacred missions in every area of organizational life. Chelsea also serves as an adjunct professor for Pepperdine University and serves on the board of several nonprofit organizations, including First Amendment Voice and Young Leaders Institute.
Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies is the founder and senior director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, a division of the Center for Public Justice.