Collaborations


The following projects are the primary groups with whom BCM staff and board are working with:

Sabbath Economics Cooperative:
Educating and Animating for Jubilee Justice

The Sabbath Economics Collaborative (SEC) grew out of a conversation between Ched Myers, Ross and Gloria Kinsler, and the staff of Jubilee Economics Ministry in San Diego. In two strategic consultations in Washington, DC and Los Angeles during 2003, some three dozen theologians, economists and activists explored contemporary issues of faith and economic justice, particularly through the perspectives of the Sabbath/Jubilee traditions of the Bible. As a result we decided to launch a national, membership-based network whose purpose is to facilitate cooperation and communication among those committed to:

  1. Proclamation: Developing and promoting an economic reading of the bible and a biblical reading of the economy that seeks to amplify the theological grounding and political relevance of the Jubilee/Sabbath tradition for our time;

  3. Pedagogy: Resourcing the work of economic literacy and popular education around domestic and global issues of economic justice in the faith communities, using Sabbath/Jubilee themes as a central lens;

  5. Practice: Advocating for and networking with faith-based experiments in alternative economic discipleship at all levels of the economy (land, labor and capital) and society (household and congregational life and structural engagements). This includes persons/organizations doing community investing, fair trade work policy advocacy, household auditing/covenanting, collaborative gifting, debt-reduction and predatory lending work, living wage and labor organizing, consumption reduction, cooperatives, community development, alternative employment schemes, and the arts.

The first annual conference was held in June of 2004 in Boston, in collaboration with United for a Fair Economy. The SEC will host trainings, conversations, and workshops; promote joint research, publications and educational modules of members, encouraging a team approach to educational activity; and facilitate collaborative initiatives. The primary communication vehicle is a dedicated website: www.sabbatheconomics.org.


The Greensboro Truth and Community
Reconciliation Project

Elaine Enns and Ched Myers have been deeply gratified to have worked with friends and colleagues in the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro over the last seven years. We have been privileged to serve in an advisory and supportive capacity with the BCC's most important and ambitious undertaking, the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project (GTCRP). We believe this effort holds profound and historic significance in and beyond Greensboro. The Project is addressing the tragic killing of five labor and community organizers and wounding of ten others that occurred in Greensboro on November 3, 1979. Two subsequent criminal trials and a civil suit failed to clarify the issues and concerns of the entire community, or to lead to a full accounting of the relevant factors that were entered into the public record and the public consciousness. Thus the Project has facilitated the creation of a non-partisan commission that is investigating the lingering confusion, division, and ill feelings by engaging Greensboro's citizens with the truth of the past and with reconciliation efforts within the community.

We believe the project has the potential to strengthen the values of authentic community, racial and economic justice and comprehensive democracy while modeling a creative, non-adversarial approach to resolving deep human conflict. It represents the first time that the public "truth and reconciliation process" that has so impacted post-apartheid South Africa, and that has subsequently been employed in some 18 countries around the world, is being tried here in the U.S. BCM will continue to support this effort in whatever ways we are able over the coming two years, and urge you to look at the GTCRP website to learn more about how this historic process is unfolding.


Other Collaborations

BCM staff and board are involved in many other cooperative ventures as well, including supporting work by Latin American theologians and church activists; Pacific Presbytery; Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice; Sojourners magazine; Spiritus Christi parish in Rochester, NY, the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and other Catholic Worker ommunities around the state and country; Mennonite Conciliation Services; St. Mark's Episcopal School in Altadena, CA; Sycamores family resource center in Pasadena, CA; and many other groups.

See our Links page for more of the communities and organizations in our network.