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A Second Look at the Industrial Areas Foundation: Lessons for Catholic Social Thought and Ministry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
Abstract
This article revives consideration of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a network of Alinsky-style community organizing institutions supported by the Catholic Church, as an object of theological and ethical reflection. After describing the IAF and its organizing practices, it advances two claims. First, the IAF offers Catholic social teaching a concept of power that can sharpen its understanding of social change. Second, the IAF offers a promising model of parish social ministry. Specifically, it offers a pedagogy and praxis of political agency that enhances the parish's ability to live out its calling to be the church, and to be a mediating institution of public life. Such a model integrates evangelical impulses into the “public church” framework for conceiving Christianity's relationship to civil society.
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1 I am grateful to Rev. Bernard Lee, SM, John Sniegocki, Michael Cowan, and the journal's referees for their valuable comments on a draft of this article. I am also fortunate to have learned a considerable amount about the IAF from friends with whom I have worked in IAF organizing at my parish, Saint Francis of Assisi in San Antonio, Texas, and from Karen Ball, who attended the 2008 IAF national training in Mundelein, Illinois. Doug Greco, an IAF organizer for San Antonio's COPS/Metro Alliance from 2004 to 2006, was generous in giving me a window on IAF training and organizing. I also thank Sr. Consuelo Tovar, DC of Austin Interfaith for speaking with me about her experience as a woman religious in this work.
2 Chambers, Edward T. with Cowan, Michael A., Roots for Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action and Justice (New York: Continuum, 2003), 63.Google Scholar The IAF has spawned other entities usually considered part of the trend of faith-based organizing in the U.S., such as PICO, DART, and Gamaliel.
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12 There are approximately sixty five IAF organizations in the U.S. involving almost three thousand member institutions. Gecan, Michael, Going Public (Boston: Beacon, 2002), 4Google Scholar; Warren, , Dry Bones, 255.Google Scholar
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57 As expressed by Dr. Joseph Incandela in his talk “Education for Justice: Stitching a Seamless Garment,” given at St. Mary's College (Indiana) in the fall of 1999.
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75 Ibid., 52.
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92 Ibid., 163.
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