In more detail
A community is a group of people with a shared interest and an identity. Faith communities are communities in which members share a religious faith or spiritual outlook. They matter for at least three reasons:
- all communities matter – community planning depends on widespread and active involvement. About one-third of people has some sort of regular connection with a faith community. About the same number of people regularly attend a mosque, Anglican church or Catholic church in England. Significant numbers of people regularly attend other types of church including Baptist, Pentecostalist and Charismatic churches as well as Sikh gurdwara and Hindu temple. You can find how people in your neighbourhood describe their religious faith from the census information at the government’s neighbourhood statistics website.
- faith communities (like sports clubs) frequently create links between other communities – the overlaps that stitch local society together. Not everyone who goes to a church is rich, or poor, there is usually a mixture. Not everyone who visits a local place of worship necessarily lives in the area, but they still use it and have links to people who do live locally. The links between communities within neighbourhoods and across them that faith communities can make means they are often particularly important.
- members of faith communities share values and often these values have a lot in common with what you might call ‘civic values’: good neighbourliness; ‘helping out’; charity and compassionate etc. Community planning isn’t an appropriate vehicle for faith communities to spread their faith, but there is no reason why members of faith communities who get involved as participants and volunteers etc shouldn’t feel that they are living their faith – putting their values into action - by becoming involved.
Aren't Most People Not Active Believers?
More people in England are not members of a faith community than those who are. Likewise, there are many more people who are not members of sports clubs than those who are. If you want to use community networks as a way of involving people in community planning, however, you can only work with communities that exist. Your target should be to try to involve faith communities, sports clubs and every other kind of community which exists in your neighbourhood.
| Key Facts:
Faith communities are often large communities which own local assets including a meeting place. Involving them is a way of involbving more people in community planning and matters because: every local community matters; faith communities may act as 'glue' between other communities (young and old, for example); and faith communities frequently share 'civic values' which are close to those behind the impulse to work together to make better places to live. |
Page Links from here
Engaging Faith Communities in Urban Regeneration - from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation website
Have a look at the Faith Based Regeneration Network, the Faithful Neighbourhoods Centre and the Nehemiah Foundation
In this toolkit:
OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.
BIRMINGHAM COMMUNITY PLANNING TOOLKIT DEFINITION SHEET This sheet may be reproduced in paper or electromic or any other form but please mention it was made by Chamberlain Forum Limited for Birmingham City Council supported by Department for Communities and Local Government.
| created: 2016-06-23 12:45:57 | by: admin | status: f published |