The 5th Avenue doors will close at 12:30 p.m. as our Choir of Men and Boys present Christmas Carols on the historic steps of Saint Thomas Church. Visitors can still access the church via our 53rd street doors just around the northwest corner of the church. The 5th Avenue doors will reopen at roughly 1 p.m.
Today’s Theology Talk is led by Dr. Nicholas Hayes-Mota Assistant Director of Boston College’s Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy.
This talk will explore the historical connection between the Christian church in the U.S. and the Alinsky tradition of community organizing, from which contemporary “faith-based community organizing” derives. Starting from Saul Alinsky’s early work with immigrant Catholic parishes in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood during the 1930s, I show how community organizing began as a practice for engaging churches in pursuing the common good of their local communities–and beyond. I then trace how organizing has continued to develop as a church-rooted practice from Alinsky’s day to the present. In surveying this history, I focus on two main themes. The first concerns how organizing has “broadened” its ecclesial engagement beyond its original Catholic base to include other Christian (and eventually) non-Christian traditions. The second concerns how organizing has “deepened” its ecclesial engagement, by more fully integrating theology and concentrating more intensively on personal and congregational development.
The Adult Education program at Saint Thomas Church offers sound Christian teaching presented with intellectual vigor, teaching that is grounded in Holy Scripture, mediated by the catholic tradition that is the inheritance of Anglicanism and set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. For more information about our theology program and to receive links for weekly Sunday Theology Talks, please contact Fr. Gioia.
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