August 2010 Monthly Column - "Unity & Humanity" by Rev. Allison Farnum

As I write, friends and colleagues are headed to Arizona to witness the enactment of SB1070. Immigration has turned into a politicized, polarized issue. Yet friends and colleagues answer the call to Arizona, not to divide, but to hold up our unity and our humanity.

Once a month I get to bask in the hope that our future may not be so divided. I get to relish hope for humanity. Once a month I meet with clergy and senior lay leaders of most denominations (Muslim, Catholic, and various Protestants) to get to know each other.  From various class and ethnic backgrounds, we spend 15 minutes at each monthly meeting having one-on-one conversations with each other, sharing some juicy tidbt about ourselves and what matters to us. Once a month, our relational power grows. More clergy and religious leaders come and more money gets contributed towards the hope that this congregation-based community organizing (CBCO) group can hire a full-time organizer.  Someday we become not the Lee County Interfaith Sponsoring Committee, but a legion of a thousand who give yourself a new name.

And what is CBCO- Congregation-Based Community Organizing? According to the Unitarian Universalist Association:

Congregation-Based Community Organizing (CBCO, also called Faith-Based, Broad-Based, or sometimes Institution-Based) is a movement that seeks to establish inter-faith, cross-class, multi-ethnic and multi-racial grassroots organizations for purposes of increasing social integration and power in civil society and for making civic, regional and state-wide changes for social improvement.

So what is the Lee County Interfaith Sponsoring Committee?  At this point it is a group of clergy (or senior congregation leaders) who are planting seeds for a congregation-based community organization in Lee County. We are working and receiving support from DART. DART stands for Direct Action Research and Training Center. On the organization’s website they say the following about themselves:

The Direct Action and Research Training (DART) Center is committed to building powerful, diverse, congregation-based and democratically-run organizations capable of winning justice on issues facing the community. Since 1982, DART has built and strengthened over twenty locally affiliated organizations in six states and trained over 10,000 community leaders and 150 professional Community Organizers.

How Unitarian Universalist is this? Justice work? Democratic organizing? Community caring? Building relationships- yes! This is a place to work in solidarity with a diverse group of people and get the chance to see  each other as fellow human beings who care about Lee County. What better movers and shakers than people of faith? Hopefully many congregations will make financial commitments to this organizing coalition so that great work can be done in our larger community. More importantly is the investment of belief and energy that we can come together, in spite of theological and political differences, and work for common goals of justice in Lee County.