CTI Convenes Hybrid Event in Global Studio on Religion and the Built Environment
On December 4, 2024, CTI staff and associates gathered in the Global Studio for a hybrid meeting on religion and the built environment. We were joined by leading members of the broad-based community organization BUILD Baltimore, representing some 45-50 churches in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. The BUILD leaders, which included Rev. Andrew Connors, Bishop Kevin Daniels, and lay co-chair Leslie McMillan, shared of their efforts to address the problem of widespread vacancy and collapsed housing markets in select Baltimore neighborhoods. Subject to racially discriminatory, policy-driven disinvestment in the mid-century, these neighborhoods have organized to see their city blocks and the broader Baltimore metropolis rebuilt, neighborhood by neighborhood.
The goal, the organizers insisted, is not simply one of brick-and-mortar, but of the renewal and restoration of local communities. The charge is to invest in the people and communities that have been wrongly passed over. Thus, BUILD addresses a range of communal concerns, not only dealing with housing. There are, for example, jobs programs and initiatives focused on local schools.
In recent months, the organization has gained public backing from both the mayor and the governor, in recognition of the importance and efficacy of their work. A significant amount of public funding has been pledged for redevelopment. Distinctive among reinvestment efforts, BUILD ensures that residents are not displaced in the process of rebuilding. It is essential, Ms. McMillan stated, that people do not experience development as something that is done to them, but rather as something in service of the lives they lead and consistent with their values.
Several CTI Members from our 2020-2021 Inquiry on Religion and the Built Environment, Murray Rae, Elise Edwards, and Stephan de Beer, followed up the presentation with questions for the organizers especially regarding how theological commitments figure in the self-understanding of BUILD’s participants. Many see this as a work of justice and repair for historic wrongs, of speaking prophetic truth to power, but also as a means of fostering robust community. Woven into the DNA of many local churches is a commitment to the localities in which they are placed. The organizing efforts are not solely aimed at external results, but at a distinctive way of being a community, in which people feel they belong, they are supported, and their voices are heard. This rich opportunity for an exchange of knowledge among CTI scholars, practitioners and policy makers is emblematic of CTI’s commitment to going public with our research.
