Inter-Religious Organizing Initiative
(IOI)Working Table statement

Inter-Religious Organizing Initiative (IOI) Working Table*
A Statement of the IOI Planning Team**

Preface:

Congregation-based community organizing (CBCO) is a well tested and developed methodology for achieving
justice and strengthening congregations that is already being utilized in thousands of congregations throughout the
United States.  How might this methodology be improved and broadened to expand its success and to ensure its
utilization in as many congregations and religious institutions as possible?  How might this methodology help
denominations and religious bodies move their values of justice and racial/ethnic fairness into the center of national
public discourse?  How might the four organizing networks utilizing this methodology work closely with denominations
and religious bodies to address at the national level (in a partial or complete collective effort) issues like immigration,
healthcare, transportation, housing, education, or other issues where there may be a discerned convergence of
interests?  These and similar questions have moved a process over the past several years, which has led to the
formation of the Working Table of the Inter-Religious Organizing Initiative (IOI).

What is the Working Table of the IOI?

The Working Table of the IOI exists as a collective effort of committed denominations and religious bodies,
congregation-based organizing networks, and funders with two goals:

1.        deepening the institutional and congregational capacities of our faith traditions to be more powerfully
engaged in public life for the sake of justice and on behalf of all that God is creating; and
2.        developing processes and capacities for building power requisite to win on justice issues at the national
level                   
    
With regard to the first goal, the specific and distinctive methodology for engagement in public life of interest to the
Working Table is that of congregation-based community organizing.  The Working Table will not engage in partisan
politics and has no interest in becoming a progressive movement oppositional to the Religious Right.  The Working
Table is not interested in activist strategies.  The Working Table is also not an effort to get the organizing networks
to work together on national issues as a unified group. Our interest is in drawing on the skills and arts of CBCO as a
vehicle for training clergy and lay leadership at the congregational level, for deepening the capacities of our
denominations and religious bodies powerfully and faithfully to enter the national public arena for the sake of justice,
and for increasing the capacity of our voice in the national public arena.  The ability of the Working Table to realize
its objectives requires a deepened support and appreciation of CBCO at the highest levels of participating
denominations and religious bodies.  Given the disparate polities of participating denominations and religious
bodies, varying strategies will need to emerge, but we do anticipate a creative synergy and cross-fertilization of
ideas and approaches.

With regard to the second goal, the Working Table will discern a process for selecting justice issues to be engaged
at the national level.  The assumptions of the Planning Team are that national issues will be selected only among
those which arise out of the grassroots organizing efforts of participating networks, which converge with the interests
of participating denominations and religious bodies, and which are not divisive of the Working Table.  The Working
Table will decide which allies to engage in its efforts on a national issue.  While congregation-based community
organizing will provide the primary strategic resource for engaging national issues, the Working Table will also draw
on an array of technical experts as it shapes its public voice and national strategy, including media and
communications consultants, theologians, denominational advocacy offices, political analysts, and experts in
message framing.

Who is invited to be part of the Working Table?

For the Working Table to function effectively, we need to have representatives at the table who have the authority to
make decisions and vote on issues.  

Heads of interested denominations and religious bodies may each appoint one staff representative or bishop (or
religious leader of similar stature), and, if they choose, one practitioner of congregation-based organizing to the
Working Table.  In addition, heads of participating denominations and religious bodies are always welcome to attend
any meeting of the Working Table.

The Center for Community Change (CCC), Direct Action and Research Training Center
(DART), the Gamaliel Foundation, the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), and the PICO National Network may each
appoint one national level staff representative to the Working Table.  In addition, the directors of these organizations
are always welcome to attend any meeting of the Working Table.  

Funders who intend to help shape and to support fundable proposals for the Working Table are invited to be part of
the Working Table, one per participating Foundation.

The Working Table may decide to invite other parties to the Working Table.  Such decisions will be made with
regard to the two primary objectives of the Working Table, and with regard to preserving congregation-based
community organizing as the distinctive methodology of the Working Table.

    
*The Planning Team considers “Inter-religious Organizing Initiative Working Table” to be an interim handle.  

**The Planning Team members included:  Terry Boggs, ELCA; Dennis Jacobsen, ELCA; Charles Mock, National Baptist Convention,
USA, Inc.; Cris Doby, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation; Len Dubi, Archdiocese of Chicago; and Kathy Partridge, Interfaith Funders.

Revised August 1, 2007