Healing Through Faith-Based Programs

On October 10 the California Violence Prevention Network held its annual conference in Long Beach, California. This year’s theme, “Community Healing Through Action,” was viewed through four topical lenses: “Healing from Trauma,” “Healing the Healer,” “Healing Police/Community Wounds,” and “Healing Through Faith-Based Programs.”  I moderated the last session, which included three panelists, all ordained ministers, a session that serves as the basis for this blog. 

HEALING THROUGH FAITH-BASED PROGRAMS: Does the Faith Community Have a Place at the Violence Prevention/Community Revitalization Table?

Question: Yours are not traditional ministries.  Rather, you’re out in the streets, forming alliances, running programs.  Tell us why you chose this ministry or why it chose you.

Answers: Each panelist indicated that the pain and suffering outside the church walls necessitated faith community engagement both by running programs, e.g., mentoring, reentry work, and attending to needs of the spirit for companionship and presence.

Question: Why is the faith community an essential partner in a city’s violence prevention/community-building work?   

Answers: Panelists’ answers seemed to cluster in four areas:

• Faith communities serving minorities are closest to the pain, the problems
• Faith communities often have buildings easily accessible to those living in poor communities for programs such as Head Start, Restorative Justice, Peacekeepers
• Faith communities are usually more unfettered, able to speak truth to power
• With commitments to compassion and “welcoming the stranger” the faith community can play a unique reconciling role, a bridging role

Question: Some might say, “What you’re doing is government work.  Job training, mentoring, and social work are not your work.  Stay in your faith lane.”  What’s your response? 

Answers: The pastors each felt called to the work of the spirit, a ministry of presence, of love, and equally to a ministry of justice, to “feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger,” and thus felt absolutely unfettered in responding to both needs.

Question: Many in the faith community are not involved in justice work either because they do not know what to do, or they think there is only one thing to do, or that it may compromise a focus on their congregations. 

Answers: Pastoral work, especially in the criminal justice arena, is hard, rough and sometimes is dangerous –but not always.  Pastors emphasized the fact work in this arena varies widely –from Head Start, mentoring, and setting up after school programs to working in prisons or on the street at midnight.  Each faith community should do what it does best, and that might be simply preaching, spotlighting the issues of injustice, and the need for compassion.

Question: One of the constitutional building blocks of this country is the separation between church and state.  Is your work in violation of the Constitution?  If a church receives money, let’s say for Peacekeeping work at night, should this be allowed? 

Answers: The pastors responded that they weren’t seeking souls, proselytizing.  They, fueled by faith. were responding to the needs of hurt people, but not driven to convert others.  Although in their justice work, if the needs of/needs for faith became a presenting issue, the pastors would respond theologically. “You bet,” said one.  “If someone wants to pray, I’ll get right down on my knees with them.”

Question: The faith community is a notoriously independent community.  What is your secret sauce to building a faith coalition? 

Answers: Almost in unison, the pastors responded, “crisis.”  Ministering in areas of violence, poverty, un-parented children and youth, poor housing, and scant community support, pastors felt that the needs were so great and the resources so scant that “all hands on deck” were required.  To the pastors, the work, not denominational loyalty, was the driving force leading to coalitions.

Question: Most of those with whom you deal on the street, in the justice system –the alone, the angry, those hurt and hurting don’t trust easily, if at all.  They are desperate for a relationship, but would spit in your faces to keep you away.  Why?  Because they fear you’ll leave them like everybody else in their lives has.  You have each spoken passionately about the need for trust.  How do you get to “trust?”

Answers: Their responses seemed to cluster around three themes:

• “I love you for who you are. I do not punish you for who you’re not,” said one, or variations on the theme that everyone is better than the worst things they have done.  “They are each made in the image of God, however distorted that may have become,” said another.
• Presence and persistence. Each acknowledged that they had been rejected, often more than once, by those they would help. It was a “slow dance,” or first “walking with…” Initially a focus on the person, not the pathology.  Letting the other know that they are worth “walking with.”  Do not start with “fixing.”  Start with trying to build a relationship.

It should be noted that no single non-governmental entity is more affected by crime than the faith community.  Other than immediate family, two entities—the police and the faith community—are closest to the excruciating pain, disruption and anger caused by violent crime.  A clergyman holds a sobbing mother, buries her murdered child while struggling mightily to prevent retaliation by her older son.  In many cities, police and clergy work together to prevent crime and in many cases are seen working together under the tape in the aftermath of a crime.  The same holds true in the medical arena via faith community/public health partnerships.  Mayors and county supervisors throughout the country have established inter-faith advisory councils.

From the policy perspective, it should also be noted that throughout the nation’s history, the faith community has played a seminal role in setting America’s value base via provision of basic services in the medical, educational and crime prevention arenas and leading seismic social changes including the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and the Civil Rights Movement.

As the California Violence Prevention Network goes forward, it will continue to emphasize the critical roles the faith community can play in city-wide violence prevention strategies.