Browsing by Author "Wood, Richard L."
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Item Achieving and Leveraging Diversity through Faith-Based Organizing(New York University Press, 2017-06) Fulton, Brad R.; Wood, Richard L.After a perceived hiatus of several decades-"perceived" for reasons discussed below-religious progressives have reappeared in the public eye in recent years. Though mostly very marginal players in the Occupy Wall Street movement that made inequality a prominent public issue in American life by framing it as a struggle between "the one percent and the ninety-nine percent; religious progressives have been prominent participants in the subsequent debates over house foreclosures, banking reform, racial inequities in law enforcement and sentencing, and comprehensive immigration reform (Sanati 2010; Waters 2010; Wood and Fulton 2015). Even before the Great Recession, religious progressives had been among the crucial sectors articulating why access to healthcare was a fundamental moral issue (Wood 2007). Their advocacy helped lead to renewal of the State Children's Health Insurance Program that was twice vetoed by President George W. Bush before being signed by President Barack Obama; their subsequent moral advocacy was crucial to the passage of national healthcare reform in 2009-and particularly to its inclusion of significant subsidies for healthcare for the poor and lower middle class (Parsons 2010; Pear 2009).Item Civil Society Organizations and the Enduring Role of Religion in Promoting Democratic Engagement(VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 2018-02) Fulton, Brad R.; Wood, Richard L.As Tocqueville observed the emergence of democracy in the USA, he noted the central role religion played in undergirding democratic life. Nearly 200 years later, it is unclear whether religion continues to possess sufficient capacity to promote democratic engagement. This study links organizational theory with research on the structural and cultural characteristics of civil society organizations (CSOs) to assess the current impact of religion on democracy. It analyzes original data from a national study of politically oriented CSOs to determine whether drawing on structural characteristics of religious congregations and cultural elements of religion helps the organizations promote democratic engagement. The analysis finds a positive relationship between organizations that incorporate structural and cultural forms of religion and their organizing capacity, political access, and mobilizing capacity. These findings suggest that religion, mediated by congregations and religious culture, retains sufficient civic vitality to help politically oriented CSOs foster democratic engagement.Item Critical Standpoint: Leaders of Color Advancing Racial Equality in Predominantly White Organizations(Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 2019-08-30) Fulton, Brad R.; Oyakawa, Michelle; Wood, Richard L.Organizations are often core sites for the production and perpetuation of social inequality. Although the U.S. is becoming more racially diverse, organizational elites remain disproportionately white, and this mismatch contributes to increasing racial inequality. This article examines whether and how leaders of color within predominantly white organizations can help their organizations address racial inequality. Our analysis uses data from a national study of politically oriented civic organizations and ethnographic fieldwork within one predominantly white organization. We draw on institutional work research, the outsider-within concept, and insights from critical whiteness theory to explain how leaders of color can use their position and “critical standpoint” to help guide their organization toward advancing racial equality. The qualitative analysis shows how such leaders, when empowered, help their organization address race internally by 1) providing alternatives to white-dominated perspectives, 2) developing tools to educate white members about racial inequality, and 3) identifying and addressing barriers to becoming a more racially diverse organization. The qualitative analysis also shows how leaders of color help their organization address race externally by 1) sharing personal narratives about living in a white-dominated society and 2) brokering collaborations with organizations led by people of color. This research has implications for organizations seeking to promote social equality: Organizational leaders from marginalized status groups can help their organizations address social inequality, if those leaders possess a critical standpoint and sufficient organizational authority.Item Interfaith Community Organizing Emerging Theological and Organizational Challenges(International Journal of Public Theology, 2012-01) Fulton, Brad R.; Wood, Richard L.Interfaith work in the United States takes diverse forms: from grass-roots collaboration on projects such as feeding the homeless, to locally-sponsored interfaith dialogues, collaborations sponsored by national denominational bodies and shared work on federal ‘faith-based initiatives’. This article profiles the characteristics and dynamics of a particular type of interfaith work, done under the rubric of ‘broad-based’, ‘faith-based’ or ‘congregation-based’ community organizing. For reasons detailed below, we term this form of interfaith and religious-secular collaboration ‘institution-based community organizing’. By drawing on results from a national survey of all local institution-based community organizations active in the United States in 2011, this article documents the significance of the field, its broadly interfaith profile, how it incorporates religious practices into organizing, and the opportunities and challenges that religious diversity presents to its practitioners and to North American societyItem Introduction: Exorcising America’s Demons, Building Ethical Democracy(University of Chicago Press, 2015) Wood, Richard L.; Fulton, Brad R.Three demons bedevil American society today. The fi rst is obvious: We suffer levels of economic inequality not witnessed in the hundred years since the Gilded Age, with stagnant or falling wages for the large majority of American families. The second is often misdiagnosed: Political pundits decry the polarization within national political discourse and institutions, but the real problem is not generic “polarization.” In the context of such high economic inequality, polarization is to be expected, for its absence would simply represent acquiescence to stagnant wages and the resultant decline in the quality of family life. Rather, the real problem results from strategic polarization from above, that is, from the manipulation of political sentiment and democratic institutions to produce paralysis within national democratic institutions. Thus the second demon is policy paralysis: our national political institutions’ inability to foster any shared prosperity or good society in the American future— their failure, in the context of strategic polarization from above, to effectively address a broad variety of crucial realities undermining a shared American future. Those issues include economic inequality and stagnant family wages, the underclass status of a large immigrant sector, the ballooning national debt, the corrosive influence of unregulated money on elections, and the unsustainable rise of health care costs despite recent policy reforms.Item National Study of Community Organizing Organizations(Duke University, 2011) Fulton, Brad R.; Wood, Richard L.The organizations in the National Study of Community Organizing Organizations (NSCOO) are located throughout the country and share a similar structure and mission. They operate as community-based organizations that bring together individuals from their member institutions to address social, economic, and political issues that affect poor, low-income, and middle-class sectors of U.S. society. Each organization has a board of directors consisting of representatives from its member institutions, which include religious congregations, nonprofit organizations, schools, unions, and other civic associations. The board members function as the organization’s core leaders and meet together on a regular basis to lead the organization. These commonalities enable the analyses to hold the organizations’ form relatively constant, while allowing their social composition, internal dynamics, and organizational outcomes to vary.Item Representative Group Styles: How Ally Immigrant Rights Organizations Promote Immigrant Involvement(Social Problems, 2019-08-21) Yukich, Grace; Fulton, Brad R.; Wood, Richard L.Why are some organizations more successful than others at involving socially diverse groups of people? Previous research emphasizes the role representative leaders play in recruiting diverse constituencies. This study extends that research by analyzing how an organization’s group style—its customs that shape everyday interactions—influences constituent involvement by either bridging or reinforcing social divides. Our multi-method approach examines ally immigrant rights organizations to assess the relationship between their group styles and their ability to involve immigrants. Ethnographic data reveal that divergent levels of immigrant involvement in two organizations can be explained by differences in the organizations’ group styles—specifically, differences in their religious, class-based, and linguistic practices. Original survey data from a national sample of ally organizations demonstrate the generalizability of our findings. Our analysis shows how having an immigrant-friendly group style can promote immigrant involvement, indicating that an organization’s style is associated with its social composition. Having representative leaders from immigrant groups, though positively associated with immigrant involvement, is insufficient for sustaining immigrant involvement; group style can moderate the effect of having representative leaders. This research suggests that organizations seeking to recruit and retain a diverse social base could benefit from cultivating a representative group style.Item The Role of Bridging Cultural Practices in Racially and Socioeconomically Diverse Civic Organizations(American Sociological Review, 2014-06) Braunstein, Ruth; Fulton, Brad R.; Wood, Richard L.Organizations can benefit from being internally diverse, but they may also face significant challenges arising from such diversity. Potential benefits include increased organizational innovation, legitimacy, and strategic capacity; challenges include threats to organizational stability, efficacy, and survival. In this article, we analyze the dynamics of internal diversity within a field of politically oriented civic organizations. We find that “bridging cultural practices” serve as a key mechanism through which racially and socioeconomically diverse organizations navigate challenges generated by internal differences. Drawing on data from extended ethnographic fieldwork within one local faith-based community organizing coalition, we describe how particular prayer practices are used to bridge differences within group settings marked by diversity. Furthermore, using data from a national study of all faith-based community organizing coalitions in the United States, we find that a coalition’s prayer practices are associated with its objective level of racial and socioeconomic diversity and its subjective perception of challenges arising from such diversity. Our multi-method analysis supports the argument that diverse coalitions use bridging prayer practices to navigate organizational challenges arising from racial and socioeconomic diversity, and we argue that bridging cultural practices may play a similar role within other kinds of diverse organizations.Item Secular Evangelicals: Faith-Based Organizing and Four Modes of Public Religion(Sociology of Religion, 2019-11-27) Markofski, Wes; Fulton, Brad R.; Wood, Richard L.We present four modes of public religion—secularist, generalist pluralist, particularist pluralist, and exclusivist—and discuss conditions under which white evangelicals employ these different modes. Ethnographic research on white evangelicals participating in multifaith initiatives in Los Angeles, Portland, Boston, and Atlanta indicates that they prefer the secularist mode that avoids religious expression. In addition, the research indicates that when white evangelicals do participate in multifaith contexts where religious expression is encouraged, they prefer the particularist mode that uses faith-specific language rather than the generalist mode that invokes interfaith language. Quantitative data from a national study of community organizing organizations confirms that white evangelicals are more likely to participate in multifaith initiatives that operate in the secularist rather than a religious mode of public engagement. We anticipate that our analytic typology describing four modes of public religion will be valuable for future studies that examine the public engagement of religious actors.