Proactive Advocacy as Communications
What we advocate for and how we advocate for it reveals what we love most and to what degree we desire to attain it. As human beings we advocate everyday for something everyday through our actions. Advocacy is our vessel to communicate what we love. So the question is, how will we advocate? Will we only advocate when we see an injustice happening? Or will we be proactive in our advocacy? It is our answers to these questions that communicate how much we love equality and justice and to what extent we will go to see equality in the spheres we reside in.
Advocacy that is primarily reactionary tends to lack the racial and economic unity the Church strives for, rather the Church should be involved in advocacy that is proactive in its approach and that cares for the entirety of the human being within the context that they are living. The Church can and should be involved in not only stopping vicious cycles that we see all around us, but also be the initiators of virtuous cycles that allow communities to thrive. The Church should engage in advocacy that seeks to build the kingdom of God on earth. For the Church, to engage in advocacy as communication, it must be involved in shaping the structures that communicate to us. Such as, our built environments, political spheres, education systems, and environmental preservation efforts. It is our involvement in proactive advocacy that will build systems of equality that function to uplift everyone’s voices and needs.
Jerusalem and Babylon
Throughout Scripture God refers to two types of cities: Jerusalem and Babylon. Jerusalem is mentioned 669 times, and Mount Zion, which means Jerusalem is mentioned 154 times in the Bible. These numbers overwhelmingly prove that the Lord believes Jerusalem is important to the Church. The Lord specifically mentions the Church’s role to care for the stranger and oppressed when he describes the city of God, Jerusalem. A few passages that describe Jerusalem like cities are Isaiah 56:1 which says “Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed”; Jeremiah 22:3 which says “Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor, the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.”; and Zechariah 7:9 “This is what the LORD Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.” The Lord calls believers to build Jerusalem up to be a city that functions as a sanctuary for all people. He calls believers to be active in making right the wrongs that have been done, and he calls his people to embed this in the culture of their cities. In fact the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah serve as prophetic letters to God’s people to remind them of their responsibility to get ready for the coming kingdom of God, where all justice and unity will be restored. The Bible references Babylon 280 times, and the majority of these references point to the destruction that “Babylonian-like” cities bring. Babylon is referred to by many different names throughout the Bible. Such as: Land of the Chaldeans (Ezekiel 12:13, NIV) Land of Shinar (Daniel 1:2, ESV; Zechariah 5:11, ESV) Desert of the Sea (Isaiah 21:1, 9) Lady of kingdoms (Isaiah 47:5)
Land of Merathaim (Jeremiah 50:1, 21) Sheshach (Jeremiah 25:12, 26, KJV) These cities were infiltrated by destruction, injustice, and immorality.
It is clear to see that cities and their health have a lot to do with equality and inequality in the world that surrounds them. It is from cities that culture is formed, which makes the Church’s role in it essential and simply inescapable. It is through the cities that we find ourselves in that we can bring heaven on earth. It is through our involvement in cities that we can display unity, justice, and equal opportunity for all.
Reactive Advocacy’s Role in the Church
Reactionary advocacy typically takes form in food drives, occasional volunteer efforts, fundraising for local initiatives, social media posts etc...Reactionary advocacy is not totally harmful, yet it is not holistically beneficial, and it fails to appropriately communicate true advocacy. While the intentions behind these efforts are well meaning, they fail to create sustainable change in communities. These efforts typically fail to communicate true advocacy from the believer, rather it communicates that fighting for equality is occasional and only pursued when convenient. Reactionary advocacy can also smother the voices of the marginalized, instead of enabling their own voices to be heard through creating opportunities for them to do so.
It is simply not enough to stop vicious cycles, but rather the goal should be to start virtuous cycles that gradually eliminate the need for surface level efforts. Although this is a lofty goal, it is a healthy one. As the Church we must analyze and be involved in the formation of structures all around, rather than reacting to them. While efforts like volunteering, social media posts, fundraising, and food drives are not an awful place to start, they are a harmful place to stay for the believer. The Church should only participate in reactive advocacy if it leads to efforts that go much deeper. Such as, proactive advocacy efforts which include education reform, architecture design, neighborhood development, urban farming, zoning, local government offices, etc...It is here where true sustainable change is produced, and it must be the believer's goal to infiltrate these spaces through the lens of the gospel. Again this is a lofty goal, but a healthy one.
Proactive Advocacy via Human Ecology
Thriving Cities Group is a city developing team made up of believers varying in age and ethnicity. They propose a unique approach to holistic advocacy, one that involves what they believe are the six needs for human flourishing, they call it “The Human Ecology Framework.” Thriving cities writes “A human ecology approach sees cities as complex, asymmetric, and dynamic social systems that both empower and constrain the ways of life and life chances of their residents. The concept of human ecology encourages us to think about the shape, character, and normative purposes of actual places and people in culturally and historically interactive terms.” (Thriving Cities Endowment Brief) This framework is made up of six endowments that are centered around the wealth and well-being of all individuals. The six endowments are: The true, the realm of human knowledge and learning; the good, the realm of social mores and ethics; the beautiful, the realm of creativity, aesthetics, and design; the prosperous, the realm of economic life; the just and well-ordered, the realm of political and civil life; the sustainable, the realm of natural and physical health. The Thriving Cities Group proposes a unique form of city development, one that prioritizes these six endowments and seeks to attain a sort of organized complexity, rather than a machine-like city. The goal of this method of developing is to create an environment where all people can thrive. The six endowments focus on the core concepts of community and culture of a people. They are essential to the holistic health and wealth of our cities and creating just political structures that seek to uplift people rather than take advantage of them. This framework uses advocacy to communicate from the ground up that all physical and emotional needs of people are important, and each person deserves to be heard and uplifted in their own context of living. For sake of length I will only cover four of the six endowments that the Church is already being active in to encourage you to get involved as well.
Holistic Advocacy: The Endowments
The True
The endowment of the true concerns the priority of passing on knowledge through the education system and home life. The ability to know what is true is absolutely essential to growth and prosperity of all people. In discussing this endowment, I will briefly touch on the history of our education system, assessing what has notoriously been detrimental to the flourishing of all people and what has been prosperous for all people. Historically the school system has failed to show equality for all ethnicities and economic classes. This has much to do with property taxes and location of many schools, and this in itself is a whole issue that I lack time to unravel. Typically schools with the most funding and highest priority have been placed in suburban areas saturated with white middle class families, leaving the schools in more “urban” settings, populated by primarily black and brown families with inadequate educators and little to no funding to upkeep facilities. You can imagine the effects of this are detrimental and leave both parties under informed and ignorant of the other. While the more suburban exclusive schools suffer the knowledge of functioning in a diverse environment, the more ethnically diverse school in an urban setting lacks the appropriate funding to thrive, both lack a holistic education experience. Which further perpetuates the racial and economic gap as the two grow older. It has been nearly sixty years since the Brown v. Board of Education, yet the segregation of schools is still accelerating.
So what is the Church’s role in this? Tammy Doig seems to have an answer to this question. Tammy is deeply invested in proactive advocacy through the education system in the city of Chicago. Tammy is a principal at a private school (Daystar Academy) which prioritizes racially and economically diverse education in the west loop. Daystar Academy offers excellent education to students of diverse ethnicities and economic upbringings in an effort to offer a holistic education experience for their students by teaching them how to interact with one another in the classroom. Alongside this priority, Daystar seeks to cultivate a love in the hearts of the students for the city of Chicago, in hopes that they might stay in the city and make it a more beautiful place. They implement this love through what they call “Passion Projects,” that the students choose when they get to eighth grade. They encourage the students to look at the city around them and examine problems that need solved. The students then create a project to work towards solving the problem they see. Tammy believes in the proactive work of investing in students, in hopes that they may grow up and make a lasting change in their neighborhood, city and ultimately their world.
In an interview facilitated by Emanuel Padilla, Tammy says “You have to earn the right to be heard...It’s about playing the long game.” Tammy is emphasizing that it is all about a posture of humility, and becoming a student of the people you seek to invest in first before you take any action. One can do this by relying on the local knowledge, history, and tradition of the neighborhood. While keeping the maintenance of those elements at top priority. Tammy is an excellent example of proactively advocating through the education system to create lasting change. For more information on the endowment: the true, I have provided a link below.
The Beautiful
The endowment of the beautiful emphasizes the effects of place making through the arts of aesthetic and design of a person’s surroundings. This endowment functions off of the belief that beauty is a basic human need for all people. Proof of this is found in Genesis 2:7-9 which says “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” The first thing that God mentions about the tree is that it is “pleasant to the sight.” Why would this be God’s first observation of the tree if it was not necessary to its purpose? Beauty is necessary to human thriving. It is through beautiful things around us that we are inspired. As one of my professors, Emanuel Padilla has said, “Beauty begets beauty.” This is why it is important for all people to have a beautiful space around them, one they can grow and flourish in, and call home.
Many people in this world today live in neighborhoods or communities that lack beauty, thus they lack inspiration. I would like to propose that it is the Church’s responsibility to advocate on behalf of all those who are destitute, through the designing and creating of beautiful architecture. It is important to keep in mind the posture that was presented in the true endowment. When seeking to advocate through beautification of a neighborhood, it is important to keep the people in mind, “Earn the right to be heard.” as Tammy would like to say. Understanding that true beautification comes from the heart of the people, which makes listening top priority in any beautification efforts the Church seeks to participate in.
There are many successful and unsuccessful examples of beautification initiatives. A negative side effect to beautification would be gentrification. Gentrification, defined by Lexico is The process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process. This is why listening to the marginalized is of top priority when seeking to advocate through beautification efforts. Realizing that it is not about what we as individuals think is best for the people, but rather what the people vocalize to be their needs. It is important to note that being a voice for the voiceless is not speaking over them, but giving them the opportunity to speak.
An example of successful beautification efforts is David Doig who is married to Tammy Doig. David serves at Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives, a non-profit community development corporation located on the far southside of Chicago. Their goal is to revitalize and invest in neighborhoods for the community to offer hope, jobs, and opportunity for all people to thrive in their neighborhood. One primary way the Chicago Neighborhood Initiative is advocating through the beautiful is the investment in public green space in each neighborhood. David and his team plant flowers and upkeep many parks in the city of Chicago from Pullman to Humboldt Park, and their work has seen excellent results, like the lowering of crime rates in these neighborhoods.
The Sustainable
The sustainable endowment emphasizes the active management of the city's resources to benefit and prosper the people through wise use of space, food, energy, and the economy. Michael Lor defines the sustainable as “ the process of developing and redeveloping urban areas in a way that will improve the urban environment and economy and promote equity or social justice.” Based on this definition you can see that there is more to sustainability than just energy or management of waste, but it also includes things such as food, land, and the economy. The Church can and should find it our responsibility to think critically about our role in all of these areas, but for sake of space I want to focus on the food aspect of sustainability and how it can be used to advocate for equality.
In recent years cities like Chicago, New York, Seattle, and many others, have taken the opportunity to initiate urban gardens within cities. This has been done primarily in parts of the city where there is a lack of access to fresh produce. (ie. a food desert) One example of this is the Farm on Ogden, defined by their website as “a multi-use facility located in Chicago's Lawndale neighborhood. It supports and sustains a healthy urban community by bringing food, health, and jobs together in one location. Windy City Harvest, the Garden’s urban agriculture program, in partnership with Lawndale Christian Health Center take a “whole person” approach to community health and wellness.” The Farm on Ogden seeks to care for the community in a sustainable way that allows people from the community to come learn, participate, and grow alongside one another, while providing for their community's physical needs. While this initiative is beautiful, there is more work to be done, and more food deserts to be eliminated in our country today.
The Just and Well-Ordered
The just and well-ordered endowment described by the Thriving Cities Project “refers to the manner in which the institutions and practices of political and civic life contribute to or hinder the capacity of all citizens to thrive.” This endowment focuses on the balance between the just which is the moral equity of the systems which ought to be well-ordered. It is when we find the balance between these two that we adequately advocate for the marginalized and destitute in our cities.
There are several things we need to keep in mind when it comes to finding a balance between the just and the well-ordered: first, one must fight the excess of urban renewal and allow a community to be ordered yet organic. An image that I tend to refer to when describing this, is a trellis and a vine. The trellis is a structure that allows the vine to grow freely within it, without completely overriding the vine’s natural growth on it’s own. Jane Jacobs, a journalist and activist in urban studies and economics, proposed the idea of an “organized complexity,” which is the idea that I am getting at with the vine imagery. It is not beneficial or healthy for a community to be over or under structured, it is the sweet spot of the two where a city and a people can thrive. Second, is the need to yet again to listen. Listen with a posture of humility that acknowledges and uplifts the voice of your neighbor. Third, assess history. It is important that as the Church we look at our own history in implementing just and well-ordered systems. Were they helpful? Or were they a hindrance? It is crucial to our advocacy attempts as we move forward to rightfully assess what has already been done. Fourth, we must engage our political systems to create sustainable change.
While these propositions may be daunting, they are necessary to the proactive advocacy that will help mend the racial and economic disunity in our country today, and I believe it is the Church that should be at the front of this movement for the just and well-ordered. It is the people of God who serve the king of ultimate, life giving justice, that should infiltrate the structures of our cities.
Why Does this Matter?
Inequality is embedded into our country and for years many members of the Church have participated in what I would call reactionary advocacy, an advocacy that simply reacts to vicious cycles of inequality through social media posts, occasionally volunteering, or even worse completely disengaging with injustice happening in their political and social spheres because it is the politician's issue. Rather than initiating a virtuous cycle, through listening to their communities and getting involved in the education system, being a part of city-developing and re-developing, and participating in urban farming, or things of the like that create sustainable change from the inside out.
This proposal of proactive advocacy can only be accomplished when the Church falls in love with the overwhelming need for justice in all of our systems. In James A.K. Smith’s book Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology, He notes that our political structures are in fact liturgical, he further complicates this point by suggesting that humans form their liturgies by what they worship, and they worship what they love. Smith writes “If you want to see what a people loves, look at what they worship, what they devote themselves to. Hence a critical analysis of civic virtue is a liturgical analysis of the rituals that train a people’s loves. The liturgies of a culture are the embodied scripts that form our loves and shape our devotion.” (Smith, pg.27) Smith not only encourages the believer to be involved in political life, but also challenges the believer to analyze his/her loves before doing so. What is it that we as believers love? Is it tradition? Is it our own imagination of what the Church should look like? Smith suggests that if it is anything other than God’s love and justice, we are in trouble and we are bound to create Babylonian-like structures that take advantage of the weak and marginalized. Smith later states “Every society makes a people; every polis (a Greek word for city) breeds a character. Laws function as nudges that are habit forming” (pg.34)
If Smith’s propositions are correct, and I believe they are, it is abundantly clear that the Church cannot simply “tap out” or hand off the baton to someone else, but rather it is our responsibility to participate in the facilitating of heaven on earth as best we can. Knowing that we will not be perfect until Christ comes, but still pressing on to bring about just and well-ordered cities that seek to prosper all people, the immigrant, widow, stranger, and marginalized alike. Smith writes “Our eschatological orientations should change our expectations not our goals. We should not shrink from hoping to bend our policy and public rituals in the direction of rightly ordered love, not so we can “win” or be “in control,” but for the sake of our neighbors, for the flourishing of the poor and vulnerable, for the common good.” (pg.34) Smith is getting at something rather important with this point. He is saying that the believer ought to order his/her loves in a way that puts the justice of the poor and vulnerable over the expectation of winning policy, yet he is not discouraging involvement with the political sphere either. In fact he is encouraging the believer to be involved regardless if their chosen candidate wins or loses, or if their policy is passed. Rather let it be said of the Church, that regardless who is in office, or what policies are in place, that we are a beacon of hope for the hopeless and a place of refuge for the homeless. May we be a people who will advocate on behalf of those who are hurting at all times, not when it is convenient or expected, but when it is necessary, and that is in every waking moment. Let this be the structure for the Church’s participation in public and civic life.
Proactive advocacy matters because it is in our proactive action that we will truly see equality come to fruition. It is in our devotion to laying an appropriate, equal, and sturdy foundation that will allow just and well ordered systems to thrive, and it is here that we communicate to all people, “You matter.” Our advocacy as the people of God cannot and should not be limited to the reactionary. When we subscribe to a reactionary based advocacy we settle for a complacent lifestyle that communicates to the world that seeking justice for the believer is occasional and primarily initiated when it is convenient not when it is necessary. Historically there are quite a few examples of christains being on both ends of this stick. William Wilberforce is an example of what it looks like to be a believer at the forefront of a movement for justice in the political sector. Wilberforce viewed the call to justice and the call to Christ as inseperable. Wilberforce studied at Cambridge then became a member of parliament for Hull in 1780 shortly after his years at university. He often professed that it was his christian faith that prompted him to get involved with social reform and it was his faith that urged him to initiate the abolitionist movement, as well as improvement of factory conditions in Britain. He spent virtually the entirety of his life fighting for slaves to be free in the political sphere. In fact he spent 18 years of his life in parliament lobbying for anti-slave reform, but it wasn’t until 1807 that slavery was finally abolised in Britain. Wilberforce is an excellent example of what it looks like to fight for justice in political realms with persistence and sacrifice. I reckon this was not the most convenient lifestyle choice for Wilberforce, but it was the necessary one. Cambridge University offers an in depth analysis on William Wilberforce, for further exploration of his work.
On the contrary, the Church has unfortunately neglected it’s responsibility in times of great need. For example, the many pastors who refused to stand alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his fight for civil rights, their reasoning was that race relations were purely a “social” issue and it is a political matter that should remain in the hands of politicians. As we can see through Wilberforce’s example this is no good reason to step aside, or stay complacent in the fight for justice. The fight for biblical justice in the political realm is cumbersome there is no denying that, but so is following Jesus. As believers we are a people living under heavenly authority, while also participating in earthly political structures, making our position as believers rather unique and complicated at the very least. Yet we cannot withdraw from our responsibility of holistic advocacy. A line in the Broadway show Hamilton comes to my mind “Dying is easy, young man living is harder.” Although Lin Manuel Miranda is not exactly referring to what I am proposing, the idea is there. The fight for biblical equality is hard and it promises no end until Jesus comes, but this is what true advocacy looks like. True advocacy is proactive in nature and it refuses to settle for simple reactions now and again. If you would like to read more on Dr. King and the believers who opposed his movement, Washington Post has an excellent article. For a more extensive explanation of this you can pick up the book Letters to a Birmingham Jail which is edited by Bryan Lorrits.
Advocacy as the Church’s First language
Proactive advocacy seeks to mend the root of the issue that is injustice and inequality. Proactive advocacy is holistic in its efforts to tend to the entirety of the human being’s surrounding and physical needs. Proactive advocacy should be the language of the Church’s communication to the world. For it is through our love for justice that our liturgies of equality will be formed, and it is through our involvement in our cities here on earth where we will see the justice of God’s eternal kingdom come to life. Let advocacy of equality be the communication of the Church to culture, that we are a people who embody grace and equality, because we serve a king who lavished such things upon us. You can help, you can choose to communicate proactive advocacy by what you choose to enable and get involved in. We should not settle for simply reactive means of advocating that are occasional and on our own time. We should seek to get involved through listening to our locals and getting involved in sustainable change making.
The question now is what will you do? How will you infiltrate your city and your community to be a living proactive advocate of equality where you are? How will you let justice roll on like a river in your life and your neighborhood? Where will you get involved? And how will you communicate advocacy through not only what you say but what you do, on behalf of all those who are destitute? The opportunities are endless, but will you choose to get involved?
For a practical outworking of the topics discussed in this article you can read this letter I wrote non-profit organization in my hometown.
Works Cited
Alexander, T. D. (2018). The city of God and the goal of creation. Wheaton,, IL: Crossway.
Cannon, M. E. (2020). Beyond hashtag activism: Comprehensive justice in a complicated age. Downers Grove,, IL: IVP, an imprint of InterVarsity Press.
Church History. (n.d.). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/church-history
Claerbaut, D. (1983). Urban ministry. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publ. House.
Definitions, Meanings, Synonyms, and Grammar by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.com. (n.d.). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://www.lexico.com/
Farm On Ogden. (n.d.). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://www.chicagobotanic.org/urbanagriculture/farm_on_ogden
Human Ecology Framework. (n.d.). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://thrivingcitiesgroup.com/our-framework
Loritts, B. C. (2014). Letters to a Birmingham jail: A response to the words and dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr.Chicago, IL: Moody.
Petrikin, J. S. (1995). Environmental justice. San Diego,, CA: Greenhaven Press.
Revitalizing neighborhoods through high-impact initiatives: CNI. (2020, October 27). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://www.cnigroup.org/
Smith, J. K. (2017). Awaiting the King: Reforming public theology. Grand Rapids,, MI: Baker Academic.
Stone, C. N. (1998). Changing urban education. Lawrence,, Kan: University Press of Kansas.
The story: ESV Bible. (2013). Wheaton,, IL: Crossway.
Thrivingcitiesgroup.com. (n.d.). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://thrivingcitiesgroup.com/s/Endowment-Brief-on-The-Good-v2-Hasselberger.pdf
Tisby, J. (2019, April 29). Analysis | Why so many white churches resisted Martin Luther King Jr.'s call. Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/01/15/why-so-many-white-churches-resisted-martin-luther-king-jr-s-call/
Wyld, H. C. (1963). Webster dictionary. U.S.A.: J.J. Little and Dues.