ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how community organising as a practice mediates the relationship between religious groups and democratic citizenship and how demo - cratic politics enables different religious traditions to forge a common life. The chapter draws on ethnographic research from a 4-year study of London Citizens, a broad-based community organising coalition affiliated to the Industrial Areas Foundation, the oldest community organising network in the US, founded by Saul Alinsky in 1940. Community organising is a form of grassroots democratic politics that draws together different groups and institutions in an area to work together on issues of common concern such as safer streets, decent pay for low-wage workers or improved housing. Understanding the relationship between ‘faith’ and democratic politics is central to understanding broad-based community organising (BBCO) itself, as religious institutions are a key component of this kind of work, both in the UK and the US contexts that this chapter focuses on. This chapter assesses the ways in which the practices of community organising enable the mediation of a common life between diverse religious traditions in a highly contested and religiously pluralistic urban context. In doing so it develops a constructive proposal for conceptualising inter-faith relations as a civic practice.
