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And that has continued with the faith-based movement.

When I look around the United States and see what places are digging in and rekindling the vision of beloved community and doing the work of justice, mercy, and building community in distressed places, I see that being played out daily in this quiet, intentional way among Christian communities, often called faith-based communities.

Let's not forget that it has its historical origins in the radical work of John Perkins in Voice of Calvary. It's arguably the most interesting example of working out the unfinished business of the civil-rights movement.

This happens under the radar screen of the national media. I think one of the problems with our whole faith-based debate has been that we haven't really listened carefully to what the people doing the faith-based work are actually saying about themselves. It doesn't lend itself nicely to partisan loyalties. There are things that cut against the grain of the Right, and cut against the grain of the Left.

Could you trace the faith-based movement back to the work of John Perkins?

The question after 1968 when the whole civil-rights movement disintegrates is who's going to take the baton and carry it the rest of the race. If that's going to happen, it's going to be because local black and white people took the initiative. Perkins is the most dramatic example of an African American who after the civil-rights movement rekindled the moral and spiritual vision of the civil-rights movement, but did so in a way that was more explicitly evangelical.

What's interesting is that the Voice of Calvary community becomes a training center of a younger generation of faith-based organizers. It's similar to the way that Freedom Summer Project Mississippi 1964 became a kind of training period for a generation of student activists in the '60s. Over the period of 1970-1989, which is when the Christian Community Development Association was born, there were hundreds and thousands of white and black Christians coming in to Mississippi and then to Pasadena learning the three Rs: redistribution, relocation, and reconciliation. They worked alongside Perkins and got the vision and went back to Baltimore, or Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Oakland, all over the nation, and planted the seeds of what has become the most compelling example of the faith-based movement. These places provide services, they organize communities in campaigns for improving conditions, but at the end of the day, what makes these places exemplifications of beloved community is that they offer redemptive space in which one can stand and share fellowship.

Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The Beloved Community is available from Christianbook.com and other book retailers.

More information is available from the publisher.

More about Marsh is available from the Project on Lived Theology.

Other Christianity Today articles on civil-rights include:

Hope Deferred | Christians are uniquely positioned to further racial equality. (June 29, 2004)

CT Classic: Confessions of a Racist | It wasn't until after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death that I was struck by the truth of what he lived and preached. (January 17, 2000)

Martin Luther King, Jr.: A History | No Christian played a more prominent role in the century's most significant social justice movement than Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 17, 2000)

CT Classic: The March to Montgomery | Christianity Today's coverage of King's historic voting rights march, from our April 9, 1965 issue (January 17, 2000)

Catching Up with a Dream | Evangelicals and Race 30 Years After the Death of Martin Luther King, Jr. (March 2, 1998)

She Has a Dream, Too | Bernice King talks about her father's death, her call to ministry, and what the church still needs to do about racism. (June 16, 1997)

Billy Graham Had a Dream | American revivalist preachers have been evangelical Christianity's most visible spokesmen over the centuries. What does their record on race relations show? (Jan. 12, 1998)

An excerpt of The Beloved Community is available from our sister publication, Books & Culture.

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February (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49