Update on our Justice Work: POWER Interfaith Goes "Big P"

In September 2011 Chestnut Hill United Church, along with about forty other congregations of different religions and cultures, brought the country’s newest faith-based community organization - POWER Interfaith - to birth. Initially created as “Philadelphians Empowered to Witness and Rebuild,” our work has jumped the boundaries of this city and moved across the state of Pennsylvania. We are now “Pennsylvanians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild.” (Good thing our city and our state both begin with “P”!)

Ten years later, POWER has become a model for social and environmental justice work that centers race while drawing on the rich religious diversity of our Jewish, Muslim, Quaker, Unitarian, Ethical Humanist, and Christian traditions. We quickly realized that to leverage the power necessary to create the needed changes education, jobs and living wages, climate justice, criminal justice and community safety, and more, that we would need to work at both the local and the state level.

POWER is now a statewide organization, working with faith communities in Southeastern and Central Pennsylvania to address local and statewide issues while simultaneously strengthening the life of our individual congregations. In the last five years, POWER has grown to over 80 dues-paying congregations with another 40 on the way. Our church is part of the Philadelphia Chapter of POWER. There are other chapters in Metro Philadelphia, Lancaster County, Lehigh Valley, and Bucks County.

Through POWER, we have been partners in critical, life-changing legislation and policies, including: passing living wage legislation for all Philadelphia subcontracted workers; rectifying racist distribution of educational resources by establishing a statewide fair funding formula; engaging almost 300,000 voters for turnout; passing resolutions to end unconstitutional police “stop and frisk” and create the Independent Civilian Oversight of Police Commission; and winning several rounds of protecting the moratorium on all utility shut-offs for people burdened by poverty during COVID; and more.

We are grateful for the leadership in these efforts by people within our own church community, including Beth Logue, who helps lead the education work, Priscilla Tennant, who currently works with the Live Free criminal justice and community safety team, and each person who has supported POWER financially, made phone calls, sent texts, written letters, or showed up to public actions. This is the power that bends the arc of the moral universe toward justice.

POWER’s path to creating a more just world involves teaching people of faith how to build and exercise their own power to address root cause of the daily injustices faced by all our communities. At the center this faith-based community organizing model is the belief in potential transformation – of people, institutions, and our larger culture. This belief stems directly from the shared principles of our faith communities and influences the way our leaders relate to public officials, to community members, and to one another.

POWER is non-partisan and is not aligned with any political party. We focus on issues that directly affect the quality of life in our communities such as education, economic justice, criminal justice reform, and health care. At a time when there is widespread concern about declining civic participation, community organizing offers a powerful tool to connect people to one another and to the institutions that influence their lives.