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FAITH IN ACTION

Three major religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - all incorporate actions of charity and justice in the practice of their faith.  Other religions and humanitarian groups base their faith on the presence of the Divine in each human being, or the innate dignity of the human person.  Moving this faith into action is usually done in one or more of three ways:  Charity, Advocacy, Work for Justice

Charity is responding to need.  We give of our financial or personal resources to aid persons who do not have enough of these resources.  We are all familiar with this, especially at holiday time.  We are able to respond because we have the means to do so.  It is important to recognize that charity is a necessary "stop-gap" measure, and that further work is needed to address the causes of human deprivation and misery.

Advocacy is the exercise of power, authority or influence on behalf of others when they are without the power or the opportunity to do it themselves.  Advocacy is often exercised in the legislative arena, although it is also done in our inter-personal family, community, church or business relationships.

Work for Justice is work to redress what is unjust in the present forms of our social and economic systems.  Work for justice requires perseverance and study of issues.  It also requires a willingness to endure misunderstanding and hostility from those who don't want to hear about realities that, if accepted, would call for change in their lives or their financial arrangements.  It requires opening up to an alternative way of thinking and acting.  It is basically a conversion event that begins with ourselves, and is on-going throughout our lives.  It call us to move beyond individualism to concern for the Common Good.

CREA'S FAITH BASIS

When CREA uses the phrase "faith-based" we are not talking about one specific religious tradition over another, but rather our faith as the foundation for what we do and how we do it.  There are underlying principles that comprise this faith-basis.

1) All human beings are made in the image and likeness of God.  This means that there is an inherent dignity to the human persons and to the communities that human beings form.  This dignity does not come from the work that the person does.  Nor does it come from the financial value of the work. 

2) Each human being is made in the image and likeness of God.  It is easy to talk about ALL people, lumping everyone together so that we do not have to recognize how we are alike and how we are different, how we are similar and how we are unique.  As soon as we talk about EACH person made in the image and likeness of God, questions arise:  What about those who look different? Or talk differently? Or have different customs than we do?  When such questions are raised, they bring to light the unspoken conviction that how the questioner looks, lives, believes, etc. is serving as the norm for evaluating how other people look, live or  believe.

In anger, some may demonize other human beings, or label them as less than human.  We are all familiar with words that have been used to do this.  On a large scale, demonizing or labeling usually has ulterior motives, as history has witnessed.  Slavery, persecutions, war and genocide are tragic examples of this.

3) The human condition of individuals, groups, or communities is not pre-ordained by God.  God does not decide which communities should be poor and which should be rich.  God does not pre-ordain who should be healthy and who should be sick.   

4) Time is linear, not cyclical.  In the cyclical understanding of time, time repeats itself in a never-ending pattern.  Things do not change. "It has always been this way."
Linear time implies that time moves forward, not so much in a straight line as in a line moving forward, coming from somewhere and progressing towards somewhere.

We spend our lives in a mixture of cyclical and linear time events.  Summer-fall-winter-spring, or the rainy-dry seasons.  Seasons come and go with the garden not planted this year still possible next year.  Yet our lives move forward in time, and the years of our lives gone by will not be repeated.

By understanding our time as linear, we grow in our awareness that by what we do and how we do it, the future can and will be different.  Even more important, the future needs to be different, so that those who suffer can know that their burden of enduring can, and should be lifted.

5) Our analysis, in order to be valid, must start from how any program , policy or practice affects those persons and communities who are economically poor.  This is not because we believe that poor people are better or more important than others.  Rather it is simply that our analysis must include the majority of the world's peoples...and these people are poor.

6) Charity is not enough.  Advocacy and Work for systemic justice are needed.
The focus of CREA's work is systemic change for economic justice. 

© Center for Reflection, Education and Action, Inc.