PACE’s exploration into the relationship between faith and democracy over the last three years through the Faith In/And Democracy initiative has been a journey rich of learnings and insights. While we acknowledge there are adverse ways faith leaders and organizations affect our democracy, we believe the story of faith’s pervasive role supporting positive civic behaviors and character development, civic institutions and crisis response, social justice, and our social safety net is largely untold.
We aim to change that. Over the next few months, PACE will lead an effort to collect evidence (relevant narratives, statistics, reports, case studies, articles, expert recommendations, etc) that helps us make the case that faith-inspired organizations:
- build and sustain place-based civic infrastructure
- address civil rights, promote equity, and ameliorate oppression
- help navigate crisis moments (natural and human-made)
- support civic character development
- call us to our “better angels” in support of the common good
- promote civic behaviors (e.g. voting, volunteerism, etc)
- support pluralism and bridge-building in intra-or interfaith settings
- combat authoritarianism and white supremacy
What evidence would you point to if you were going to demonstrate faith has the power to influence democracy in these ways? What evidence do you lean on to make this case in your work?
We also encourage you to check out data about civic language and religion that we gathered through our Civic Language Perceptions Project.
