Times are Hard, But Faith Inspires

Times are hard, but faith inspires people to do stuff, anyway. 

In times of uncertainty many people lean on their faith: faith in the heavens, faith in family, neighbors, and durable institutions that call us into service and care for one another. Faithful people are often the ones who keep showing up to tend the need, heal the hurt, and try something new when “the way we’ve always done it” falls flat. 

The Center for Rural Strategies is embarking upon a new initiative that brings into relief the profound role faith plays in a community’s capacity to show up, with spiritual and civic-minded hope. Through storytelling and community connections, the Rural Faith Initiative will document and reveal how rural expressions of faith provokes hope-filled responses to some of the most intractable challenges, from poverty to climate change to addiction.

With this first newsletter, we hope you’ll be drawn into the complex and life-giving ways rural people of faith respond to the changes and challenges facing their communities. 

The Rural Faith Initiative unfolds against the very real backdrop of violent partisanship and counterfeit theologies, and that’s what makes it essential and important. Because we know many rural and small towns are leaning on their churches, mosques, and synagogues to mount responses to calls for justice, to bridge people across differences, tend what’s broken, and organize for kinder, more just, futures. 

For many, faith is a guide, a companion, a practice, and a story that inspires people to do things they would not do otherwise. 

Faith inspires people to do stuff, anyway.