The Faith Community's Role in Promoting Regional Vitality
The Very Rev. Tracey Lind, Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland
Reprinted from The Plain Dealer, January 18, 2009

Creating regional and metropolitan vitality is a complicated, multi-layered undertaking. While many organizations and collaborations are hard at work and making exciting progress, our region's citizens are not well-informed or engaged with the work that is being done. There are deep silos in the region, and often only the people at the top communicate horizontally between sectors. Moreover, the region of sixteen counties of Northeast Ohio includes three major cities and two distinct metropolitan areas, making regionalism difficult for the citizenry to grasp.

Many people are overwhelmed, frightened and disheartened, and these fears have been exacerbated by the nation's financial crisis. Additionally, as a metropolitan area, we in Greater Cleveland don't communicate well across geographic and municipal boundaries (i.e., the East/West Cuyahoga River and North/South I-480 divides). We tend to make geographic and municipal boundaries into false dichotomies, adopting an us vs. them mentality toward other communities and people in the region that reinforces our sense of perceived scarcity. We believe that if we share what we have, especially between city and suburb, we will lose it or be sacrificed to the lowest common denominator.

However, it's not too late. We still have a chance to turn our metropolitan area, our region and even our city into a once-again wonderful, exciting, and sustainable place to live, work, and raise our families. In fact, the current economic downturn, the growing energy crisis, and the new political climate might work in our region's favor, encouraging our citizenry to support significant paradigm shifts in public policy, private investment and most importantly, in our sense of shared enterprise for the region's common good. But we have to act.

The faith community has the ability to act. We can cut through much of our region's confusion and despair and inspire our people to work together. Almost 40% of Ohio's population attend a house of worship at least once a week, and another 35% worship several times a year, thus suggesting that almost three-quarters of our region's population are affiliated with a church, synagogue or mosque. Not only do we have pulpits for proclamation, but we also have classrooms for teaching, coffee hours for conversation, newsletters and web sites for communication, volunteers for service, and a degree of moral authority. Moreover, many faith communities are connected on a metropolitan and regional basis through judicatories, denominations and clergy associations.

We may not agree about theological and moral issues, but we are united by the desire to see our congregations thrive. Therefore, we need to be united in our desire and efforts to see not only our own communities but also our entire region--city and suburbs--thrive. Digging deep into our common texts and beliefs, we can lift up the principles of the abundance and stewardship of creation, loving neighbor as self, repairing the breach and restoring the streets, seeking the welfare of the city, and demonstrating compassion for the least among us. We can, in short, articulate a public theology for the rebuilding of our metropolitan region. And in doing so, we can set aside our differences and parochialism and show the region what abundance can be achieved when we work together for the common good.

How can we undertake this work? We need a new conversation about the place we call home - a conversation that acknowledges the past and present problems without blame or shame, and really attempts to consider and encourage best practices, new solutions and strategies based on sustainable, collaborative and creative economic development, public policy and social capital. This new conversation will require collaboration and cooperation between people who haven't talked with one another, people who don't even know one other, and people who might not even trust one other. As leaders in the faith community, we have the ability to inspire, organize, and convene this conversation.

Building upon the work of A Fund for our Economic Future and other established and emerging civic initiatives, our conversation needs to articulate a unified vision for Greater Cleveland. And then, working with our colleagues in the civic sector, we can create a curriculum for use in houses of worship, PTA's, book clubs, public libraries, civic organizations, and other places where people gather to help our citizens understand the assets, deficits, and opportunities for overcoming our divisions and fear of scarcity. We can use this curriculum for conversation in a regional effort to build community consensus based on the work of existing civic initiatives. Community consensus can help promote efforts already underway and encourage new policies and action steps (i.e. individual, corporate, civic, educational, and governmental) required for regional vitality based on the common good.

Greater Cleveland and its residents have the resources to rebuild a great city and region for the 21st century and beyond; we need the will and enlightened self-interest, common sense, and spirit to do it. As leaders of the faith community, we can inspire this spirit and the gifts that it will bring. Let us begin now.