CHELSEA LANGSTON BOMBINO
Editor's Note: This is the first article in a recurring Religion Unplugged column from Sacred Sector Director Chelsea Langston Bombino that will explore religious freedom in the United States.
Pastor Cheryl Mitchell Gaines. Photo courtesy of Gaines.
(OPINION) Questions and conversations surrounding structural racism and how to address it have risen to national attention, particularly in the disparate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color and in recent incidents of violence against Black people. Chelsea Langston Bombino interviewed Pastor Cheryl Mitchell Gaines, founder and senior pastor of ReGeneration House of Praise, also known as the Church in the Field, in southeast Washington, D.C., to explore her vision for the role of community-based, Black congregations and faith-based nonprofits in advancing solutions relevant to structural racism.
Bombino: Pastor Gaines, thank you for engaging with me. How are you doing right now in this moment?
Gaines: There are these moments in American history where institutional racism becomes more apparent in the public square. We get these big picture, macro-level revelations. Now is the moment, with the killing of George Floyd. But the moment has been here. In some ways, the moment has come and gone. For Black communities, we live in the moment of racial injustices, both personal and structural, every day. It is an organic part of the fabric of our lives. For example, my son is incarcerated right now because of a nonviolent drug offense. He is a husband, a father, a military veteran and a first-time offender. He received a sentence of more than a decade because of the laws passed in the 1990s that were tough on crime, and continue to disproportionately impact Black men. Because of this, he got more time than some people convicted of violent crimes more recently.
Bombino: Pastor Gaines, thank you for sharing this deeply personal experience. How does the experience of your son’s incarceration shape how you both think about exercising your faith in this moment?
Gaines: My faith in God is at the heart of everything I do, as an individual and in the public square — as a citizen, an attorney, a pastor and the leader of a faith-based nonprofit. Recently, I cried. I cried because my 6-year-old grandson, Amir, reached out to me, saying: “I miss my Daddy.” I think one can only imagine the heart of a mother whose son is incarcerated in congregate living during a virus like the pandemic we are now facing. I cried because my son, a first-time nonviolent offender, was treated like a violent criminal. Today, I know that there are thousands of Black mothers and grandmothers like me whose sons are locked up during this era of COVID-19. [Our sons and grandsons] could be at home to provide the familial leadership needed in such a time as this. [They could] re-enter society to provide meaningful economic contributions and much-needed support to families like ours. When the criminal justice system disproportionately punishes Black men, it does not impact just those individuals.
My God is a God who shows us that every area of life is interconnected. When I advocate for my son’s compassionate release during a global pandemic, I am exercising my faith. I am also advocating for restoration of a father to his family, a citizen to his political community, an employee to the workforce, a congregant of his house of worship and a volunteer to the ministry in which he volunteers. When Black men are disproportionately impacted by racial injustice in our justice system, all of the God-created institutions and communities in which those individuals contribute and serve also are broken and subjected to injustice.
EDEN is a faith-based urban garden initiative that brings fresh fruits and vegetables, workforce development and transitional employment opportunities to under-served youth and adults in southeast Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of Cheryl Mitchell Gaines.
Bombino: In addition to being a mother and grandmother, you are a pastor and the founder of EDEN, a faith-based, innovative youth-focused urban garden initiative that brings fresh fruits and vegetables, workforce development and transitional employment opportunities to under-served youth and adults in southeast Washington, D.C. Can you discuss how the faith-based institutions which you lead are faring during this challenging time of a global pandemic and ongoing racial inequity?
Gaines: Religious freedom for me is about exercising my God-given responsibilities. Religious freedom is about religious organizations being treated on an equal basis with secular organizations when, for example, they are applying for government programs like the Payroll Protection Program to help sustain their basic operations during COVID-19. But religious freedom also must extend to recognizing the additional barriers that small, community-based ministries — often led by and serving Black people — face, in applying for these government support programs. Religious freedom requires more than just opening up the program to all religious organizations on an equal basis. Large, white faith-based organizations often have the connections to the lending institutions, the attorneys and CPAs, and the government officials that make it easier for them to apply for government funding, whether grants for social services or loans like the PPP program to cover payroll. Religious freedom is about creating true equal treatment for the organizations like EDEN who lead and serve their communities day in and day out. To do this, religious freedom demands that the government recognize that Black ministries and community organizations may need more help, more time to navigate the application process, and need to not be shut out by banks.
To achieve this level of religious freedom’s potential, advocacy is needed. But so many essential ministries in the Black church community do not have the pre-existing connections to important government officials to make their voices heard. Because [the Center for Public Justice] took the time to connect me directly to a White House official, I was able to reach out to [the White House] to advocate for Black ministries like mine regarding the barriers we were facing in accessing PPP. And it worked, because people are now getting their money. But it took the advocacy of your organization [working] with Black faith leaders and small faith-based organizations.
For two months, I had dwindling resources in the bank. And now the Black community, some of us who are relatively well-connected and know how to navigate the process, some of us are finally getting the loans. Others are not. We cannot forget that there are many Black community-based ministries and nonprofits [that] still need help navigating the process.
Bombino: Pastor Gaines, you mentioned advocacy. Can you discuss what sorts of civic actions, advocacy among them, you believe may be the most effective in this moment?
Gaines: I am on the frontlines. I give my attention to serving in my community. Through programs like EDEN, put garden tools, and not guns, in the hands of the people we work with. Essential services are real life.
There are so many national organizations donating to large, national political groups like Black Lives Matter. They have a platform that so many Christians may not fully support. The national and large corporations do not represent the voice of all Black folks. Black people are not monolithic.
The saying of the day is "defund the police," but this is probably a nonstarter. There should be at least as much conversation on what we should be funding: frontline, community-based and faith-based social services, like the services we provide through EDEN. Organizations like EDEN are under the radar, because we are not political and we have little money. But we are doing the work that matters, and we do the work with or without government support. And we have young people who have powerful skill sets, like videography. EDEN could, with the financial capacity, invest in training up these young people to take our ministries to the next level, to be more effective for what we do. I have a returning citizen who is my volunteer program manager and she basically works full time for us, but because we can't pay her, she still has to do gig work. We need to be able to pay our volunteers who are working full time for free because they believe in EDEN’s mission of living out their faith through promoting health equity.
Someone told me yesterday that ministries like ours are doing it, living out the vision of what all these marchers are doing. EDEN is just promoting healthy, safe communities and dealing with underlying conditions, health equity, food desserts. We support the quality of life indicators. EDEN is health equity, crime prevention, spiritual and relational supports. It is everything we say we are marching for. EDEN is my march and my protest.
Bombino: Pastor Gaines, you have experience in working with faith-based organizations as they navigate partnering with government. The federal faith-based initiative, called the White House Office for Faith and Opportunity under this administration, goes back over 20 years over four presidential administrations. The central mission of this initiative has been to empower government to build effective partnerships, both financial and nonfinancial, with faith-based and community-based organizations. What role do you see the faith-based initiative playing in this moment to respond to racial injustice?
Gaines: What would it look like for the faith-based initiative to fully live into their potential? It would look like the living out of religious freedom and racial justice for Black faith-based nonprofits simultaneously. Black grassroots ministries and their leaders face the interconnected barriers of not knowing how their legal freedom with respect to religious freedom along with not having the financial or professional expertise necessary to navigate government funding opportunities. If the federal faith-based initiative took seriously the power of these ministries to transform their communities and invested relational and financial resources into these programs, they would advance religious freedom, racial justice and quality of life in under-resourced communities all at the same time. This could be a positive, innovative response to the calls from the public to invest more funding in community and preventative services.
The federal government needs to invest more in grassroots Black ministries. We need equal access to financial support, but we also need capacity building. It looks like the federal government working with organizations as government contractors, which function as mediating institutions. These mediating institutions facilitate government funding, through sub-grants and sub-contracts, to small, grassroots groups who need support with financial compliance, technical assistance, capacity building and more.
When I moved to the Washington, D.C. area, during the President George W. Bush administration, I was hired to work with a federal contractor, McFarland & Associates. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association (SAMHSA) had provided faith-based federal funds to address three major priorities: prisoner reentry, HIV/AIDs and substance abuse prevention. In the Bush administration, the federal government really recognized the vital role of the faith community in addressing these systemic challenges. In the contract I worked on, we gave sub-grants to smaller churches and faith-based community groups that were grassroots. Our role as the primary contractor was to provide infrastructure, fiscal and technical support to these place-based groups providing the direct services.
Many of these churches and community organizations could provide the best services because they knew the needs of the community best and had the community’s trust. And yet, many of these groups didn’t know how to navigate the technical world of the Federal Acquisitions Regulations. [Through my work as a contractor, I was able to free up] smaller organizations from the hassles of back-end operations so they could do what they do best — serve.
Bombino: What would it look like if the federal government really started recognizing the impact and potential of these smaller faith-based and community-based groups to serve their communities best?
Gaines: It would look like larger institutions not always getting all of the government’s money. The government, including this administration, has made comments about the value of churches, local groups and the Black church in particular. But real impact is measured by whether the government puts money into these groups that it claims to prioritize. The White House faith-based initiative could invest in Black community-serving organizations like EDEN and other grassroots organizations that have such positive outcomes in the community. So many people in the Black church do not reach out to the current administration because they have disagreements with the president, but we are still called by our faith to engage all of our political leaders. Like Daniel and Joseph, we are called to be God’s instruments in such a time as this to facilitate getting resources to the communities that need them. We need to continue to engage all public officials. It is not just about preventing bad things, like crime in the community. It is about harnessing the community potential of grassroots ministries to advance the good things in our community. Thriving is not just about stopping violence. Shalom is not just about peace and a lack of violence. But it is about a robust prosperity in every area of life and holiness.
We would love to see this administration revitalize the federal faith-based initiative and fully fund [the work across] various agencies. The president could deliberately and intentionally connect more with Black churches to understand the ways in which these unique faith groups are cultivating healthy communities, and to figure out how government can support this work. You see, you never reach people through rules and regulations; it is always through relationships. And that is where the Black church shines.
Pastor Cheryl Mitchell Gaines, J.D., M.Div, is the founder and Senior Pastor of ReGeneration House of Praise, also known as the Church in the Field, in Southeast Washington, D.C. She is also the founder of EDEN (Everyone Deserves to Eat Naturally).
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.
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