This article originally appeared on Sacred Spotlight, a publication by Sacred Sector, an initiative of the Center for Public Justice.
By Chelsea Langston Bombino and Katie Thompson
On March 11, the World Health Organization officially declared the coronavirus (COVID-19) a pandemic. Virtually every corner of the globe is, or will soon be, impacted by the deadly virus. Nearly every individual and every institution of society is in some way being impacted. In the United States, families, houses of worship, schools, collegiate and professional athletic leagues, businesses, workplaces, and hospitals – just to name a few – are now intimately aware of how the virus will impact daily life. Federal, state, and local governments have been tasked with addressing the virus through policies and practices – some of which are unprecedented. It’s clear that the implications of the virus, and the ways in which these institutions are responding, are developing on an hourly basis.
It is important to say at the outset whom we, the authors, are not. We are not public health experts. We are team members of the Center for Public Justice, a Christian civic education and public policy organization that is committed to living out our three-fold purpose to serve God, advance justice, and transform public life. We believe that in this moment CPJ’s animating framework of public justice offers something unique to the global conversation surrounding COVID-19.
A culture of individualism in the United States at times tempts us to sometimes overlook the reality that, as human beings, we are very much connected to others and to institutions. Americans generally consider our individual needs, policy priorities, and desires. And yet, as Christians, we are called to recognize the very real needs of our neighbors, and the needs of the institutions that shape and form them. What COVID-19 has done in devastating fashion is to remind us just how dependent and interconnected we are – both as literal neighbors and as global neighbors. Our lives are disrupted not just because a novel virus exists, but because it has dramatically impacted the institutions within which we live our lives – the institutions that make up the fabric of our daily lives. Institutions like our families, schools, hospitals, workplaces, houses of worship, museums, and our government are all impacted. The very relationships and institutions that provide meaning, livelihood, connection, and joy to our lives are disrupted and leave us collectively wondering: what’s next?
This article will focus specifically on how people of faith and their institutions can rise to the challenge of loving their neighbors during this unprecedented time by instituting thoughtful and positive organizational practices. This will require diverse faith-based organizations to be both proactive and adaptive – responding to COVID-19 in ways that are appropriate in their context.
Public Justice Framework for COVID-19
We, as people of faith, have a responsibility both as citizens, and as active contributors to many of the institutions mentioned above, to love our neighbors through our personal decisions. This means not only calling upon our government officials to shape policies and practices towards flourishing, but also following the guidance – or making decisions – within the communities and institutions of which we are involved.
Public justice, as articulated by the Center for Public Justice, is the guiding principle for government’s work. It recognizes that government has a positive, yet limited role. Much of what contributes to flourishing is government’s task, and it has a unique role in promoting the common good through its policies and practices. In times of public health crises, public justice insists that government has an important and normative role to play, including partnering with employers and services providers (including faith-based organizations and nonprofits) in the provision of social safety net resources including paid sick and medical leave for workers, increased healthcare for vulnerable populations, and the distribution of basic material resources.
What COVID-19 has made abundantly clear is the importance of leadership, clear communication, and public policies from our government officials. Across the globe, world leaders have responded in a variety of ways to slow the spread of the virus – some of which have been championed, and some of which have been seriously criticized. Our public officials at all levels are necessarily making swift decisions with incomplete information, and public policies and official guidance will likely change quickly as the crisis unfolds. In these unprecedented times, public officials should adopt a posture of mutuality, meaning that new learnings, research, and data from public health experts and civil society institutions, for example, should continue to inform our leaders’ decisions and policies crafted in response to the crisis. Public officials must be willing to adapt as new information is collected. Likewise, citizens, and especially for Christian citizens, should adopt a posture of discipleship, meaning that we commit to walking with our public officials, being willing to adapt and accept new guidance and public policies as they arrive.
Another dimension of government’s responsibility is to advance “policies and practices that uphold the ability of other institutions and associations to make their full contributions to human flourishing.” Institutions of civil society – houses of worship, higher education institutions, and workplaces, for example – have distinct roles to play in promoting health in this challenging season, including adapting and advancing public health guidelines for congregants, students, workers, and services recipients. These are just a few examples of the ways in which civil society is responding to protect our neighbors – particularly elderly and immunocompromised neighbors – from the spread of the virus.
The Role of the Faith-Based Sector
It would be impossible to holistically respond to COVID-19, or other similar public health crises, without the contributions of civil society institutions that not only provide material and social resources, but also shape and nourish the soul. Faith-based organizations, from diverse faiths and all spheres of service, share the common goal of living out their missions in their communities, in times of prosperity and in times of suffering. The sacred sector refers to the wide range of faith-based organizations that conduct community activities or provide goods and services, and are places of work for employees, contract workers, and volunteers. For faith-based organizations to comprehensively embody their missions to the fullest, an innovative and integrative approach is vital. This multi-dimensional approach must focus on mission advancement at the intersection of organizational practices, public policy, and positive public perception. The three P’s framework recognizes that an organization’s public policy engagement, organizational best practices, and public positioning are interconnected and extremely vital to fulfilling its mission. We believe this integrative approach can provide a helpful framework for thinking and acting through complex and challenging situations as they arise, including public health crises like COVID-19.
Public Policy
Many faith-based nonprofits are confused and overwhelmed by the ways in which COVID-19 is impacting their organizations, both their employees and the people and the communities they serve. Faith-based organizations need to support and promote the structures and systems that enable them, and the neighbors they serve, to thrive. These faith-based organizations (FBOs) have varying religious identities and varying mission areas, but a central question faces them all: what public policy structures (laws or regulations) — on a local, state or federal level — provide an environment where diverse institutions can provide creative and distinctly faith-shaped solutions to our most pressing societal challenges? Faith-based organizations should become familiar with, and advocate for, pluralist public policies that create space for organizational diversity and innovative approaches to solving complex community issues so all can flourish. This is especially true in this moment, where FBOs are on the ground seeing the direct impact of COVID-19 on their communities. To help faith-based organizations navigate key, relevant issues, CPJ’s Sacred Sector initiative provides educational resources. One resource, the “Advocacy Toolkit on Public Policy”, offers the following checklist for FBOs:
Be aware of how federal, state and local laws and other policies affect how your organization can carry out its faith-based mission, its employees and how it serves.
Recognize those public policy areas in which your organization’s distinct expertise is particularly relevant.
Carefully deliberate the means by which you will pursue your advocacy and lobbying goals.
Prioritize advocacy efforts that address public policies with potential to make the greatest impact.
Have a strategic plan that outlines your approach to public policy advocacy.
In the current pandemic crisis, federal, state, and local government officials are acting on an accelerated basis that necessarily is not as transparent and easy to understand and influence as policymaking in calmer times. Yet, the decisions that are being made--such as in the congressional discussions about H.R. 6201, the second coronavirus emergency spending bill--may have a distinct impact on faith-based organizations. The bill explicitly includes positive measures for nonprofit organizations and not just for businesses, and there is no language to exclude faith-based organizations. However, without additional protective language, faith-based organizations that accept federal financial assistance, for example, to help pay for extended paid leave for coronavirus-affected staff, may discover they are now subject to new religious restrictions. A multi-faith coalition of faith-based service organizations, spearheaded by the Faith and Giving Coalition, is working with Congress to ensure that the final bill not only does not inadvertently harm religious organizations, but includes appropriate positive supports for the unique contributions these organizations make in our society..
Organizational Practices
Faith-based organizations ought to consider not just the legal or reputational challenges that they face if they do not respond to COVID-19 prudentially, they should ask themselves what their faith calls them to incarnate in their own institutional practices. This is why houses of worship and other faith-based nonprofits should consider how their spiritual beliefs call them to proactively prepare for times of crisis and disaster, including, but not limited to, COVID-19.
Workers will be faced with several enormous hurdles in the coming months: the challenge of unemployment or the challenge of parents working from home amidst school and childcare closures. The former will require the best of all parts of our society to support one another financially and spiritually through a period of unemployment. In an article called Work and Pastoral Care, as part of the “Faith, Family and Future of Work” series for Public Justice Review, the Reverend Irwyn Ince provides helpful insights on the church's multiple responses to unemployment. Reverend Irwyn lays out a framework of:
Prayer, promotion and provision as part of the ways pastoral care is exercised by the church when people are facing the trauma that comes with unemployment and underemployment...They overlap and intertwine. They are necessary because the aim of the church’s spiritual care for those who are unemployed or underemployed is more than a job or a paycheck.
Also important to note, Families Valued, an initiative of CPJ, has recently developed a resource called Family Supportive Workplaces: Resources for Sacred Sector Employers. Employers and employees alike will find helpful sample practices and policies that equip workplaces to align their mission and values, and build strong families in the process. For workers who find themselves suddenly tasked with both working and caregiving, this resource also includes some top line best practices for teleworking and other flex work arrangements.
In addition, to help faith-based nonprofits build their capacity to incarnate their sacred beliefs and missions, Sacred Sector offers resources through Standards for Excellence® Institute as a replication partner. The Standards for Excellence® Institute promotes the highest standards of ethics, effectiveness and accountability in nonprofit governance, management and operations, and they offer specific guidance in times of crisis.
Through this partnership with Standards for Excellence, Sacred Sector offers faith-based leaders and their organizations resources that could be especially helpful in this moment in shaping organizational practices that steward the well-being of board members, employees, volunteers, congregants, those receiving services, community partners, and their larger communities. These resources include, but are not limited to, “A Charitable Nonprofit’s Guide to Remote Work,” a “Model Employee Handbook”, and resources packets and supplements on Crisis and Disaster Planning. The educational resource packet on Administrative Policies provides nonprofits with guidance on the benefits and components of strong policies as they relate to crisis and disaster planning, including the guidance to: “Define the Purpose, Priorities, and Principles: Start your plan with an explanation of why and how the crisis and disaster plan is relevant to your organization, its mission, and the people you serve. This communicates the organizational commitment to addressing crisis situations in a focused and efficient way that safeguards the mission and assets held in the public trust.” For more on these resources, see references at the end of this article.
Public Positioning
Faith-based organizations and congregations should be aware of the negative associations many Americans have with religious institutions. In this moment, it is especially imperative for faith-based organizations to engage in communications strategies that will strengthen their public witness. One resource, Sacred Sector’s “Positive Engagement in the Public Square Toolkit- Public Positioning”, offers a the following checklist for FBOs:
1. Develop a communications strategy that includes guidelines on how to persuasively present your sacred mission, services, religious beliefs, and engagement in the public square.
2. Foster positive relationships with policymakers, reporters, and community leaders to earn their respect for your work.
3. Clearly communicate your sacred mission, services, religious beliefs, and engagement in the public square on your website and through social media.
4. Assess the nature of your engagement in the public square by asking for feedback from service recipients, board members, employees, and donors.
5. Demonstrate your consistent adherence to your religious beliefs by reflecting these beliefs clearly through your website, social media content, job announcements, and recurring times of communal worship or prayer.
A response to the COVID-19 crisis that is perceived to be based on something other than on advancing human flourishing puts all religious institutions at risk. For example, a religious organization failing to cancel a conference or other gathering in the midst of a public health crisis may be perceived as protecting its own economic security over the health of community members.
This challenge of public positioning is true of the larger nonprofit sector. As the Standards for Excellence® educational packet on Administrative Policies states:
Nonprofits also hold a unique place in the public trust and often come under intense media scrutiny. Crises such as financial or ethical impropriety on the part of any member of the organization can seriously damage its reputation or ability to continue providing services. Even irresponsible actions by others in your field or in the larger nonprofit sector can have a negative spillover impact on your organization. A proactive approach to addressing these issues will help you come out on top after a crisis.
An Invitation to Engage Further
The Center for Public Justice is committed to acting as a resource for you, as an individual citizen, as a faith-based leader, and as an image-bearer in every other sphere of responsibility God has given you to steward. Specifically, Sacred Sector has resources that may be of use to you or your faith-based organization in navigating how to incarnate your most sacred beliefs in faithfully responding to COVID-19. We do not have all the answers, but we do have a community that is committed to mutual learning and strengthening. Faith-based organizations may want to consider developing holistic, integrated responses to COVID-19. Faith-based organizations should prayerfully consider what they might learn and how they might prepare in every aspect of their organizational lives: understanding the public policy context, adopting best practices to reduce the risk of exposure to COVID-19 and considering their public witness is crucial.
We are a community and we want to hear from you about the strengths, challenges and opportunities your faith community or organization is realizing as you navigate responding to COVID. If you would be interested in sharing your story with our team, or with the larger Sacred Sector community, please email Chelsea Langston Bombino at chelsea.langston@cpjustice.org.
Chelsea Langston Bombino is the Director of Sacred Sector, an initiative of the Center for Public Justice. Sacred Sector is a learning community for faith-based organizations and emerging leaders within the faith-based nonprofit sector to integrate and fully embody their sacred missions in every area of organizational life. Chelsea also serves as an Adjunct Professor for Pepperdine University and serves on the board of several nonprofit organizations, including First Amendment Voice and Young Leaders Institute. If you are interested in learning more, please contact Chelsea at chelsea.langston@cpjustice.org
Katie Thompson is the Program Director and Editor of Shared Justice, the Center for Public Justice's initiative for twenty and thirty somethings who are passionate about exploring the intersection of faith, justice, and politics. In 2015 Thompson co-authored Unleashing Opportunity: Why Escaping Poverty Requires a Shared Vision of Justice with Michael Gerson and Stephanie Summers. She also serves on behalf of CPJ as a steering committee member of Faith for Just Lending, a coalition dedicated to ending predatory payday lending.
For more information on how to access Sacred Sector’s portal of resources, including original Toolboxes on Public Policy, Organizational Practices, and Public Positioning, as well as Standards for Excellence resources, please sign up to become a Sacred Sector participant or contact Virginia Creasy, Sacred Sector Program Manager, at virginia.creasey@cpjustice.org.
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