Faith communities, regeneration and social exclusion: developing a research agenda

Churches as a Stock of Social Capital for Promoting Social Development in Western Cape Communities

“…In a nutshell, it is postulated that these traditions and their organisations are not only a necessary source of the social capital values of cooperation, social connectedness and trust that are required, but in some instances could also be regarded as the single most important factor 4 of social capital formation and activity in certain communities (see e.g. Bacon 2004;Brown & Brown 2003;Candland 2000;Farnell 2001;Hays 2002;Kennedy, Schorr, Warren & Wilson in Murphy & Cunningham 2003:211-213;King & Furrow 2004;Prins & Ewert 2002;Putnam 2002;Silverman 2002;Smith 2002;Uslaner 1997;Yeung 2004a, b;2003).…”

Christians, biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation: a potential synergy?

“…However, this represents a very large user group that is often under-engaged in relation to natural resource management. Studies have shown the huge contribution that Christian communities in the UK give to social development, for example, through the millions of person-hours given by volunteers towards projects in their local communities (Farnell 2001;WWF UK/ Social Development Commission 2005). Increasingly, a number of these projects are focussing on environmental themes.…”

Religion, Consumerism and Sustainability

“…Larger-scale religious organisations provide both historical frameworks for collective action and leadership around which such action can take place. Evidence from the UK has emphasised multi-faith and interfaith involvement in community regeneration (Harris et al 2005;Jackson and Kimberlee 2004), pointing to the potential of faith communities to engage in urban transformation (Farnell 2001;Farnell et al 2003) and to blur the boundaries between the public, the private and the personal through engagements with political and social governance (Dinham and Lowndes 2008). Broadly speaking, then, it can be argued from this evidence that faith can provide a context and a motivation for political involvement, and sometimes progressive political involvement.…”