Inclusiveness and justice: the pitfalls and possibilities of interfaith work

Interfaith organizations seek to bring together religiously diverse groups and individuals to build understanding and cooperation. This paper focuses on two questions central to the interfaith enterprise: Which groups and individuals should interfaith organizations target? And, what difference does building understanding and cooperation amongst these groups make? The first question deals with inclusiveness. The second deals with justice, which I will define broadly as increasing peace, creating equality, alleviating suffering and encouraging freedom.

Many scholars and activists in the interfaith movement will tell you that inclusiveness and justice are inextricably linked. We will point to the interfaith character of 20th century social justice movements like civil rights in the United States, Hind Swaraj on the subcontinent and the struggle in South Africa. We will quote from the savants of these movements--King, Gandhi, Mandela, Heschel--on the necessity of interfaith cooperation to create justice. We will highlight the pluralistic character of the contemporary world, and note that many modern injustices occur between religious communities. We might even say that the definition of inclusiveness includes justice because a diverse society must strive for some semblance of peace, freedom, equality and prosperity for its constituent communities. Conversely, the definition of justice includes inclusiveness because justice will never be achieved unless all groups are involved. But this understanding of the relationship between inclusiveness and justice fares better in books than it does in the real-life work of interfaith organizing. My purpose today is to explore the relationship between inclusiveness and justice in real-world interfaith organizing.

Let me begin with an example. Last year, the Interfaith Youth Core's high school leadership group, which we call the Chicago Youth Council, included a Mexican Catholic and several South Asian Muslims. When we discussed the relevance of the faith value of hospitality, these teenagers often talked about their own experience of not feeling welcomed in American society because of their immigrant backgrounds. The other members of the Chicago Youth Council also had some experience of immigrant issues, albeit a less visceral one than their peers. One white Catholic participant attended a church where a significant percentage of the parishioners were recent immigrants, and the two Jewish members each had some experience working with Jews who had recently immigrated to Chicago. Collectively, they decided that the Chicago Youth Council should focus its social action projects on the issues that immigrants face.

As immigrant issues have been a 'hot topic' recently, our funders at progressive foundations were pleased that the Chicago Youth Council was making some noise on this matter. But they often pointed out that we did not have enough African-Americans involved.

I began having conversations with African-Americans about getting involved with the Interfaith Youth Core's emerging campaign on issues concerning immigrants. Although not oblivious to the trials that immigrants faced, the African-Americans I talked to made it clear that their primary social action concerns were poor schools, few jobs, neighborhood violence and a juvenile justice system destroying the lives of an increasing number of black teenagers. And though none of them stated it directly, part of the undercurrent in the conversation was a concern that resources added to programs focusing on recent immigrants meant resources depleted from programs focusing on African-Americans.

Here was a clear example of the tension between inclusiveness and justice. If we maintained the current composition of the Chicago Youth Council, they could focus on making a difference on issues facing recent immigrants. If we invited African-Americans to join, we would either have to tell them that the focus for the social action campaign had already been chosen or we would have to begin the discussions over again and hope that we reached agreement on a social action campaign.

There is at least one glaring criticism to be made of the process I just described: Why weren't the African-Americans at the table in the first place? Here is my response to that criticism: This is real-world interfaith organizing I'm talking about--the world of extremely limited organizing resources and extremely busy student schedules. Even in an ideal situation, it is impossible to have all groups represented at the beginning stages. Moreover, the criticism of why X group wasn't at the table to begin with simply speaks to the tension I am trying to illustrate.

One of the first questions that groups ask when they are invited to participate in interfaith work is "How is this relevant to me?" One model of doing interfaith work is to choose a justice issue that many groups want to work on, and then create a space where they can work on it together. The benefit to the groups that this is relevant to is that they get to expand their forces and therefore increase their chances of winning on this issue. Chalk one up for justice. The downside is that it precludes groups that the justice issue does not speak to directly, and perhaps turns off groups that consider your position on the side of injustice. Subtract a point from inclusiveness.