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... of numerous groups in the various Southern states and what part played the SCLC in their development. Morris states that King had "the ultimate power in the SCLC" and he also describes his in founding of SCLC. King was moving force of the civil rights movement. Under his leadership the SCLC became the central movement. He was the leader, who could direct the community and its organizations for the progress of the civil right movement and towards the success of this goal.
It was the leading guidance of King that gave strength in the protests. He was the driving power of SCLC. The faith-based organizing groups have made great achievements in the practical improvement of communities. But these were not the most important aims. The main belief of these organizations was, that the developments of the community depended on its leaders. The leaders should devote their influence to the construction of powerful organizations that would solve the problems of their members and address the needs of those members.
The distinction of faith-based community organizations was the idea, that their members should personally take part in civil, political and social movements, not simply conduct charity acts. The members of these organizations are congregations, schools, unions and other organizations, not separate people. Such conduct gives base for the organization, which in its turn manage the institutions, which outline the life of people and provides a spread access to community members through pastors and leaders. Such organizations include already existing local organizations. Most of their members are churches and they work in close connection with other groups such as schools and unions. If the church is affiliated with such organization, members seek to reorganize relationships within that congregation in order to be able to express the economic and social situation, to seek the cause of that situation and act together to solve the problem.
Good leaders understand, that growing the great from miniscule is much more difficult, than transforming the already existing organizations. They re transform and develop the social connections that already exist in their member organizations rather than attempt to originate bounds between isolated people. The majority of the social strength is drawn from churches by such organizations. Wood tries to analyze the existent organizational and cultural structures of various congregations built the ground for political movements. The responsibility of the leader is to concentrate the attention of congregations simultaneously on religion and on the community work for social and economic success, and it would combine the progress of the society and holy work.
Various churches traditionally disagree on multiple problems of theology and practice, and even the origins and reasons for universal justice. But still, many of them agree, that the important degree of success for their communities would be correct the social and moral injustices around them. Such organizations as IAF and PICO, those balance between religion and politics, are close in moral ethics. The leaders of IAF and PICO develop an agreement of ethical democracy in contemporary society and politics.
That is the common denominator of social and economic injustice. For the IAF that common denominator is closely connected with the members private interests and goals. These organizations are usually in low-income communities, therefore, they search social and economic progress. Such organizations are strictly based upon social and economic interests of the community.
Thus, such organizations lack the traditional problem of various disadvantages caused by the synergy of politics and religion. The communities ruled by IAF and OCO have problems with evaluation of outer justice or agreement with it. Wood points out that the IAF and PICO would possibly resist developing their influence around issues such as an unjust war in the Middle East or national health care policy. These books highlight that both religiously affiliated and civil organizations exist in communities.
According to Wood, the civil organizations remained somewhat untapped. The IAF and OCO possess the policy, which are closely connected churches for grounding the progress of their movements. According to Wood twenty years ago PICO leaders changed their policy from the form of neighborhood organizations to congregational. The neighborhood organizations werent strong enough to draw forceful social bounds between the members of the community. The search for greater efficiency resulted in rise of congregation and change of the inner organizational form. The policy of such organizations like OCO and IAF lies not in founding of new organizations but in reforming and strengthening of the already existing organizations to satisfy the of each members needs separately and the community's needs as a whole.
The faith-based organizations such as PICO and the IAF are rather successful. They can be found in all Americas cities and towns in which they have great influence. Morris and Wood indicate, that the IAF and PICO organizations vastly contribute to American democracy. A key factor here is a specific religious culture's ability to confront the complexities and ambiguities of political engagement, while still remaining sufficiently coherent to instill meaning into the political process for its adherents.
Social movements work in two ways. They lead the governments to understanding of necessity for transforming the approaches and changing rules, that would complements the various influences in areas such as economy, social services and education. They can transform community organizations, such as churches, into effective cumulative developers of political conscious, social development and democratic. For cultural base, motivation and sustaining political organizational culture groups must engage community and its members in order to draw their communal commitment and engagement, to help develop the organizational and social stability, to offer means for understanding an ambiguous political reality.
The driving force political conflict and compromise in negotiation. Such cultural foundation layout is a very important feature. The religious culture tends towards such a combination, it provides powerful cultural resources for democratic politics. But, of course, not all religion does so. The ability of political leaders to construct such a cultural foundation depends not on them alone, but also depends upon cultural work done outside the politics. Given Americans high levels of engagement in religion, among the most important such sites are churches, synagogues, mosques, and other houses of worship.
Analysis of the political culture of democratic organizing must be done within the religious institutions in which many Americans participate. Vivid affirmation sometimes becomes simplistic interpretation, but not necessarily: a culture that understands good and evil complexly, as potentials in every person, lends itself to sophisticated interpretation of the political world, whereas conceptualizing good and evil in absolute terms as us and them tends strongly toward simplistic political interpretation. In this way, religious commitment to a transcendent dimension of human life may lead either to escapism or to strong ethical leverage against the status quota is, it may lead to political quietism or to motivation for political transformation. Some religious congregations construct the worship experience with otherworldly dimensions that eviscerate political engagement; but others tie that transcendent dimension back to this world in powerful ways, with different political repercussions. Third, each of the alternative Christian interpretations examined here (and by extension probably the major strands of the world religions in general) offers cultural resources for political engagement. But the historical importance of evangelical forms of religion in America has moved the religious marketplace shared by all American congregations toward more enthusiastic forms of worship (Butler 1992; Warner 1994).
This has led many religious leaders to be better at generating vigorous worship than at subtle social interpretation, political conflict, or compromise and negotiation. As a result, these religious traditions require significant cultural work to highlight those elements that can enable political engagement. For example, song, rhetoric, symbolism, and ritual that combine strong aesthetic appeal and rooted ness in the worshiping community's own traditions appear to contribute to full engagement in worship life and thus the intensity of shared culture. But these cultural elements must be presented and interpreted in ways that highlight not only their personal and psychological implications, but also their social implications; and the latter must be sufficiently complex to interpret a complex political world, and to encompass the full array of human political life.
In all these ways, religion in the modern world continues to penetrate deeply the key dynamic that Margaret Somers places at the core of the historic origins of democratic public life: the mutually constitutive quality of community associational life, local political cultures, and the construction of public spaces. In social contexts steeped in religious faith and practice and the global trend in this regard is up, not down social theory can only illuminate democratic life if it understands the complex interplay of religion and political culture in society. The achievement of the national significance is nonetheless demands the extension of the scope and in searching the means for communities to cooperate together, for societies to intercommunicate. In this way, faith-based groups can give the wider base that is required for national level approach. Americans possess a great number of commitments and express them in great variety. But the common base is the national political course and the acceptance and recognition of the world shared values of family integrity, healthy communities, social justice and economic fairness.
American democracy searches means for its people to express their outlooks and be able to establish the individual good and common success. These approaches are carried by faith-based community organizations. The contribution of these organizations is already evident in social reality and in the universal ideas and they add to the rebirth of American democracy. Bibliography Morris, Aldon D. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change. New York: Free Press. 1984.
Wood, Richard L. Faith in Action: Religion, Race, and the Future of Democracy. Ph. D. dissertation.
University of California at Berkeley. 1995.
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