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The civil rights movement started to the full in the mid- 1950 s and it was mostly a grassroots, bottom-up phenomenon, which was based in religious congregations rather than a movement initiated and supported primarily by outsiders - particularly white, Northern liberals. The various books written by political sociologists and social movement theorists expand our perception of how religious institutions contribute to expanding democracy. This work examines religious institutions as generators of religious culture, presents a theoretical model of how religious cultural elements are intertwined with social movements and form their internal political cultures, and discusses how this in turn shapes their impact in the public realm. In the book Origins of the Civil Rights Movement by Aldon Morris the author starts by picturing the essential aspects of the Southern black culture, which played very important part in the elevation of the civil right movement including the practices, ideologies, internal cultures, and significant political successes. The most important factor was the black church. Morris says, that: "the black church functioned as the institutional center of the modern civil rights movement. " (Morris, p. 4) The majority of the movements leaders came from church, the churches were the main source of financial support and funding, the churches were independent of the "white power structure [and] skilled in the art of managing people and resources" (Morris, p. 4).
The main idea of Morris book is the explanation of the political influence at various state and regional levels by combination of power of its local affiliates. Religion and freedom add much to shaping of American political and social philosophy. For many Blacks churches means religion, community, and home. Many churches were established in response to dissatisfaction with what white churches taught. The Black churches possessed power within the black community and represents the community in the white society. Since the end of nineteenth century southern states started applying Jim Crow laws that enforced separate facilities for blacks and whites.
Churches became the only place for Blacks to find refuge. As African-American Christians moved from slavery to emancipation their religious practices and houses of worship also changed. Inevitably, Black churches became sources for Black empowerment. Black used their authority to combine the teachings of Christianity with political manifestos. They motivated the members of the communities to oppose and overcome racial segregation. Community spirit inspired many Black Church members to struggle and overcome social, political, and economic hardships.
The Richard L. Woods book Faith in Action is also the observation of two distinguished kinds of community organizations: the church based organizations and multi-racial, which were founded around the country. The essence of this book is the comparison of each kind of organization. The separate organizing efforts by PICO and the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO) in Oakland, California (the Oakland-based organizations are called OCO and Pueblo). Within church based organizations the contemporary events were seen through the prism of the religious history and culture and was formed the political conscious. Within multi-racial organizations there was the same policy, which was influenced by racial conscience, which was the ground for political actions.
Both organizations had significantly contributed into the enhancing of the engagement of low-income and moderate-income urban residents in the public realm But the most important factor is that the church-based organizations were much stronger embodied with projects and had much more power on the political arena. The authors describes the organizing policy of PICO as greatly different from various other community organizations by its way of joining the idea of individual empowerment and social power. One of its means is the capability of forming the social outlook and conscience, the understanding of role of the community and its public power. The shared struggles, problems and emotions between people join them and such joint power is greatly important for community political interaction. The key organizing principle for the workplace of a faith-based organization is that it always explicitly acknowledges or insists that its members identify with a specific religious tradition. This organizing principle helps the members of the organization to acquire the common feature with other members.
This principle highlights their common background and mutual understanding and helps each member to feel the part of a whole. All the members of such organization understand their relations as close. The inter-community emotional interaction and strong relations with community members make the members controlled by outer influences, in greater and psychological. They seek advices, decisions of their problems by relation on their communities that, in their turn, participate in all public relations, because the influence of the community is greater and more successful, than the influence of a sole individual. Such organizing strategies can work, even in unlikely places.
If in some society people do not know one another well enough, if they do not trust each other, if they are ruled by individual, private passions and not common social and public wishes, such is not able to fully understand democracy as it is, to govern itself. Democracy depends not just upon the formal politics but also upon various organizations that join people in their will. The important feature of such organizations is to connect people in low- and middle-income neighborhoods to one another, to ground them and help them to act on political arenas. Each kind of organization possessed the ability to become an important factor of transformation of the country policy and democracy. But the author argued that that ability was rather limited within the multi racial organizations. The joined organization powers of religious bodies and the cultural sources provided by religious culture added to the church based organizing a significantly greater power for democratic transformation.
People, who are members of these church-based organizations, seek their strength in religious conviction and practice. In the United States there are more churches than in any other industrial country. A great part of the American strength is based on the religious belief. For many Americans religion is their way of life. A majority of people are members of a church or synagogue, and almost half say they attend church frequently. Despite any fears of too much religion in politics such power is used to influence the society.
The politics must find ways to appeal to religious commitments and institutions and not underestimate this ground. Wood contends that organizations like the IAF and PICO find success by politicizing religion and religious individuals to advance the causes of poor people. In his book Wood deeply explores the role of cultural resources by looking at how church-based organizations laid out the context of three quite different forms of religious culture in America. The most essential in authors analysis is the ability of a specific religious culture to confront the difficulties and ambiguities of political engagement, though, being still able to draw meaning to the political action. The author argues that different forms of religious culture are differentially capable of this crucial process, and thus some succeed and others fail to sustain civic engagement over the long term (Morris, p. 120).
PICO involves large numbers of quite low-income and racially diverse participants; unlike multiracial organizing, it also mobilizes large numbers of middle-class participants. This has given it sufficient voice in cities as diverse as Oakland, San Diego, Denver, New Orleans, and Camden to wield a powerful influence within official decision-making regarding policing, education, and economic development. Morris points out that it was natural, that most of the leaders of the civil right movement came from various religious congregations. Those people were greatly respected within the black community and had much influence on peoples minds and outlooks.
A great number of black ministers were independent from the influence of whites. The church was the heart of the civil rights movement. A great number of the leaders of the civil right movement were members of the NAACP organization, which was the leading force of the movement. A major part of the NAACPs leaders in the South were also members of the clergy. The firs important event Morris mentions is the Baton Rouge bus boycott in 1953 and the boycotts in many other major cities, which followed. Those events were managed locally.
And Morris underlines, that for bigger organizations it was not possible to understand the local problems and conditions to conduct such major events. After giving thorough description of the local centers, Morris pictures the regional organizations that arose to carry out the interaction between those groups. The most important was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. That organization "was the force that developed the infrastructure of the civil rights movement and it functioned as the decentralized arm of the black church" (Morris, p. 77). While picturing the historical events, that prompted the organizing of SCLC the author accents some of them. That included the importance of quick urbanization of blacks in the first half of the century, which led to rapid development of group consciousness and social alliance of black community.
Also were mentioned both world wars, in which fought a great number of black people. The SCLC organization, which spread throughout the South, very rapidly turned out to be the leader of the civil rights movement. In the middle of the twentieth century the historical events reached their apogee. The Second World War changed the attitude of blacks towards the current situation and constant oppression.
They struggled to change the surrounding reality and it led to the rapid civil rights movement. The earliest and the most influencing leader of this movement was Martin Luther King. His leadership forwarded the civil rights movement and fueled its characteristic non-violent, direct action approach, transformed into a national civil right movement and changed the American outlook forever. Morris depicts the organization...
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Research essay sample on Civil Rights Movement Religious Institutions
