At a Political Crossroads: Introduction

Saints & Citizens Report.pdf (180pp./380k PDF)

The following essays are the fruit of a two-year project designed to understand the character and quality of Christian civic education in the United States at the turn of the century. A brief explanation is required.

The Research Project

The Center for Public Justice in Washington, D.C. and the Center for Christian Studies at Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts discovered several years ago that they shared a desire to educate and motivate Christians to become wiser, more diligent, and more effective citizens. As the two organizations explored possible ways to cooperate in such an effort, they were encouraged by The Pew Charitable Trusts to focus first of all on learning what is actually being done along these lines today. Accepting this challenge and a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, the two centers initiated an investigative research project. Harold Heie, director of the Center for Christian Studies, and James Skillen, president of the Center for Public Justice, consulted with a variety of educators, research scholars, and Christian organizational leaders to define project aims and a research process.

Because of the diffuse manner in which Americans receive their civic education, we concluded that it would be all but impossible to uncover and sort out all the influences that shape the civic understanding, disposition, and motivation of individual Christians across the United States. By contrast, we hypothesized that it would be possible to discover and assess the educational aims and methods of a representative sample of Christian organizations whose purposes include the aim to influence citizens in one way or another. And by means of such a study, we could learn a great deal about why Christians think as they do about civic responsibility and how they are motivated (or not motivated) to act in their civic capacity. Consequently, after two exploratory consultations, the project organizers decided to proceed with a careful study of a representative sample of Christian organizations that are active in civic affairs, orienting the study around in-depth personal interviews with leaders of the selected organizations.

What is Civic Education?

But what is civic education? This, of course, is the big question and it leads to others: What is civic responsibility? What does it mean to be an informed and responsible citizen? Trying to formulate appropriate questions to get at this big question was one of the first difficult tasks we faced. For some Christians, a good citizen is simply a person who behaves well in society. For others, citizenship has a much more focused meaning, referring to voting, paying taxes, and participating in politics. For some Christians, furthermore, civic duties stand in contrast to Christian discipleship, since the former are secular and the latter are religious in character. For others, by contrast, civic responsibility is a dimension of, or even the heart of, Christian discipleship. In the end, we decided to let the interviewees explain what they understand by the phrase "civic education." We would simply try to discover whether an organization, in speaking about its civic education efforts, is aiming to promote

1) knowledge/information,

2) intellectual skills,

3) participatory skills,

4) a general disposition, or

5) some combination of the first four.

Selecting the Organizations

The organizers of the project then sought simultaneously to recruit a small research staff and to begin formulating the investigative methods that would allow the researchers, eventually, to make comparative judgments about the diverse organizations. Jerry Herbert, director of the American Studies Program of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, agreed to serve as the project director and he recruited Josh Good, a recent college graduate, to help in the early stages of the study, particularly with the interviews.

The organizations that were finally selected are listed in the Table of Contents. Essays about each one follow as the main body of this study. Given the diffuse nature of American civic life and its political processes, the preliminary list of organizations had to be very diverse in kind, including churches and church-affiliated organizations, schools, think tanks, lobbying groups, community development organizations, and more. To be representative, the organizations selected for closer study had to include Catholic and Protestant, white, black, and Hispanic, liberal and conservative, relatively old and relatively new, and qualitatively diverse organizations. Using a grid that helped to sort organizations into these and other categories, a selection was finally made of 20 organizations for in-depth study. [After all the interviews were completed, we decided to combine the research gathered on two or three organizations into a single essay. Consequently, there are 18 essays in this volume.]

One of the early discoveries of the project was a non-discovery. We could find no Christian organization whose sole or chief purpose is the conduct of civic education. Aiming to educate Christians about civic responsibility appears to be a secondary aim at best or an indirect effect of the work that Christian civic organizations do. Consequently, the essays that follow have to make inferences and draw tentative conclusions based on an assessment of the organizations or their programs as a whole. Many other organizations could have been selected, of course. But we are confident that the organizations chosen for this study present a significant snapshot of Christian civic education and action across the United States today.

Under the rubric of schooling we could have focused on other networks of Christian schools, such as those of the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church or those of the Reformed tradition represented in Christian Schools International. We could have interviewed some Christian home schoolers, or Christian teachers in public and non-religious private schools. For sampling purposes we chose to engage two of the largest Christian school networks, Catholic and Evangelical Protestant, selecting a particular group of Catholic schools in Seattle, on the one hand, and the leaders at the headquarters of the Association of Christian Schools International, on the other. In both cases, we were concerned to understand their approach to civic education.

When it comes to churches, there are hundreds of types of education carried out by tens of thousands of churches throughout the country, only some of which can be qualified as civic education but all of which have civic implications. There are Sunday school classes and adult discussion groups, ministries to college students and sermons on Sundays, and so much more. We decided to look at how four different nationwide churches direct their "voices" and "teaching" toward the conduct of political affairs in the country as a whole. In each case, the United Methodists, the Anabaptist churches belonging to the Mennonite Central Committee, the Southern Baptists, and the Roman Catholic Church organize such efforts in particular offices or programs.

Another natural place to look for expressions of Christian civic education is in the halls of Congress and state legislatures where lobbyists do their work. This was a very difficult arena in which to select a sample. Many churches have lobbying offices in Washington, D.C. and some state capitals. Moreover, there are Christians who work as lobbyists for a variety of organizations. We have chosen two organizations, Bread for the World and Network, to illustrate the ways in which lobbying organizations contribute, even if indirectly, to the civic education of Christians.

There are dozens of organizations in Washington, D.C. and around the country that can be identified in part or as a whole as "think tanks." Many of them, such as the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, deal with religion or attend to the policies and moral teachings of churches, but are not Christian organizations. There are very few think tanks that exist chiefly for the purpose of doing public policy research and/or conducting civic education programs on a Christian foundation or from a Christian point of view. The Center for Public Justice is one such organization. For the purposes of this study, we have chosen to study two organizations--The Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan and the Interdenominational Theological Center's Faith Factor in Atlanta. These are only in part think tanks. Both see civic education as an important dimension of their work. Both are outside of Washington, D.C.

The Christian Coalition, founded by Pat Robertson, is currently in decline from its high point in the mid-1990s. Its purpose is very explicitly to mobilize citizens to influence elections. Call to Renewal is a broader movement, focused less on elections and more on influencing the media and legislators to deal with poverty. In both cases, these independent organizations aim chiefly to mobilize citizens for action.

Hundreds of Christian organizations exist for primary purposes that have little or nothing to do with political and governmental life. They are professional organizations of scientists, educators, scholars, counselors, and so forth. Or they have been formed to address specific social, economic, and psychological needs. The Christian Legal Society first took shape as a professional fellowship of attorneys, yet for many years now it has supported a Center for Law and Religious Freedom and a law student ministry that have done much to educate citizens as well as attorneys about the religion clauses of the First Amendment and about law and government in general. Focus on the Family, whose president, James Dobson, is known by millions of Americans for his books and radio programs, was founded to help counsel families. Yet now, his radio advice, magazines, and other influential programs include a very explicit civic and political aim. These two organizations have been selected from among others that could also have been chosen, including Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship, Christians in Social Work, Christians in Political Science, and many others.

Finally, we have taken into consideration organizations that are known generally as community development corporations. Each of the organizations we examine is different. Two are African-American, one Latino, and the other racially mixed. There are now hundreds of members of the Christian Community Development Association across America, any number of which we could have selected for this study. The four we have chosen--Allen A.M.E. Church and its affiliates in Queens, New York; The Ten-Point Coalition in Boston; the Industrial Areas Foundation, mainly in the Southwest of the United States; and Nueva Esperanza in Philadelphia--exhibit many diverse characteristics that can be found among the thousands of Christian community organizations that work to build up neighborhoods and educate citizens.

The Questions

In order to conduct interviews with the leaders of these organizations, we formulated eight questions or question clusters. Our aim was both to uncover some of the "best practices" of Christian civic education as well as to discern the dominant assumptions about government, politics, and civic responsibility with which the organizations operate.

1. What is the organization's purpose, philosophy, and strategy for civic education?


2. What programs, methods, and approaches does it use to implement its purpose, philosophy, and strategies?


3. What is the primary target audience of its civic education efforts?


4. What activities, if any, does the organization undertake to influence directly or indirectly the political debate and public policies of concern to it and its membership?


5. How does the organization go about evaluating its own civic education programs and the quality of political participation among its constituency?


6. What if any plans does it have for changing or improving its current civic education efforts? How will it go about doing so?


7. What outside publications, organizations, media, and individuals does it look to or depend on for materials, insights, and assistance in conducting its civic education programs?


8. What is the organization's perspective on current political and social structures within American society, and to what extent does the organization's civic education efforts seek to work within those existing structures or to change them?

The essays that follow aim to present an accurate description and assessment of each organization as that organization perceives itself. The writing depends closely on the interviews and on the publications and other materials produced by the organizations. In most cases, those who were interviewed read and corrected the first drafts of the essays that follow. The writing is chiefly that of James Skillen, based on published materials and the interviews conducted by Jerry Herbert and Josh Good. Each chapter, prior to the Conclusion, aims for accurate and sympathetic representation, not for critical evaluation.

Conclusion

The primary purpose of this report is to alert and educate a wider public on the aims, purposes, and best practices of the organizations studied. Many churches and Christian organizations know relatively little about one another and the contribution each is trying to make to civic life. We hope this report will help to remedy that ignorance and promote more extensive interchange among organizations.

Beyond the descriptive assessment contained in each of the following essays, the report concludes with an additional contribution. The concluding essay begins a process of evaluation that we hope all of the organizations and many readers will continue. Without presuming to be exhaustive or definitive, the primary author of the report offers some preliminary judgments, both positive and negative, both commendatory and critical, of the state of Christian civic education in America today. In our judgment there is a growing crisis of civic ignorance and apathy in the United States that Christians should do more to address. One aim of the Conclusion is to point readers to examples of constructive work that is being done and from which they can take inspiration and instruction. Our hope is that as a result of this study, Christian civic education in America might deepen in a profoundly Christian way, might expand on the best practices that are already bearing fruit, and might draw Christians and their fellow citizens into more intensive dialogue and debate about how to strengthen the republic through the diligent, cooperative pursuit of justice for all.

James W. Skillen

Annapolis, Maryland

Labor Day, 2001

Saints & Citizens Report.pdf (180pp./380k PDF)