Background and History

We live in a time of profound crisis, a time where virtually everywhere, nearly all systems and institutions fundamental to society — political, economic, social and religious — at best fail to meet people’s needs and at worst cause widespread suffering. Poverty and economic insecurity are widespread with nearly 1/2 of the world’s population—more than 3 billion people—living on less than $2.50 a day, 870 million people chronically malnourished, and millions of people without health care, housing, food, education, jobs that pay adequately. Climate change is wreaking havoc all over the planet, impacting the poorest and most vulnerable the most. There has simultaneously been a steady increase of war and conflict in recent decades.

The dimensions of the crisis not only are economic, political and social, but spiritual as well. Traditional organized forms of religion that long served as alternative sources of hope and shared values are losing their power.

While a crisis of this scale and depth poses severe challenges to the global struggle for human dignity and rights, it has also unleashed new and powerful possibilities for change.

In recent decades waves of mass movements – including the Saffron revolution in Burma, the Arab Spring, the 2011 Occupy protests, the Moral Mondays Movement, vigils for peace in the Middle East, land occupations and marches in Brazil, India, Philippines, South Africa, and struggles for democracy in the Ukraine and most recently Hong Kong—have given strong voice to widespread popular demands for dramatically better lives for all people. They have expressed an enduring desire for the common good and a belief that another world is possible—all through moral and transcendent language and action, drawing on but also transforming in dramatic new forms long-standing religious and cultural traditions.

These movements also have inevitably further exposed and mobilized powerful economic, political and social forces deeply opposed to change and prepared to do what is necessary to stop it. There have been stirring victories but also crushing defeats. This has led to widespread recognition of a pressing need to find ways to develop and sustain new forms of struggle.

Religions have long played a critical role in these struggles for dignity, freedom and social justice. Believers in religions are activists and often leaders in these movements, finding in their different religious traditions an inspiration and deep legitimacy for their demands and a source of great and lasting strength for the hard fight to realize them. At the same time opponents also often use religious beliefs to oppose change, to create divisions, justify inequality, oppression, and horrific acts of repression and terror and to fuel an antagonism between religions and human rights.

In 2013, long time participants in social movements and the fight for human rights came together to create a new center to take a fresh and hard look at the religious and spiritual dynamics of struggles for human dignity and rights. This was inspired by a renewed commitment to contribute to transformative movements drawing on the power of both religions and human rights and combating efforts to create a conflict between them. The Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice was named Kairos, an ancient Greek word for a time that calls for opportune and decisive action and a biblical term for a moment when the eternal breaks into history. A “Kairos” time is marked not only by the breakdown of unjust structures and systems, but by the breakthrough of new movements and awakenings that point in a radical new direction.

The Kairos Center was launched on November 15, 2013 with Rights and Religion: A Movement Breaking Through!, a day-long gathering of scholars and activists from struggles around the globe, analyzing enduring and emerging movements addressing a range of global human rights issues such as mass incarceration, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, gender equality, political repression, and poverty and their religious dimensions. The launch event signaled the future work of the Kairos Center and is documented in twenty-six videos from the gathering.

The Kairos Center and the Poverty Initiative

The Kairos Center incorporates, builds on, and expands further the work of the Poverty Initiative, its cornerstone program. Through its work over the past ten years, the Poverty Initiative has developed a theological framework that is grounded in Biblical and historical study, and driven by contemporary struggles for human rights. This framework asserts that poverty is not a permanent feature of society and that there is a moral imperative to end it. From the Poverty Initiative’s first National Poverty Truth Commission in 2005 – where it raised the contradiction of poverty in a time of plenty as a violation of human rights and a central focus of theological study – to its most recent publication and national book tour for “Pedagogy of the Poor,” the Poverty Initiative has maintained a singular focus on growing economic inequality in contemporary American society. It’s work has emphasized the twin roles of religion and human rights in combating this inequality and the need to combine critical analysis, coherent strategies, and a competent and committed core of leaders on the ground that can provide overall direction for a broader social movement, led by the poor and dispossessed, to end poverty and build a radically different society.

The Poverty Initiative has historically partnered with and provided leadership training and strategic support to organizers, and organizations leading successful campaigns (including the Campaign for Fair Food of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Domestic Worker’s Bill of Rights of Domestic Workers United and Caring Across Generations, Living Wages for Camden Yards of the United Workers, and Universal Health Care of the Vermont Workers Center) via gatherings, seminars, on-site trainings and consultations. By identifying, training, and uniting leaders through a series of Leadership Schools, strategic dialogues, Poverty Truth Commissions, programs and seminars, courses, cultural events and other activities, the Poverty Initiative has established a wide and deep network of nearly 1,000 leaders, spanning across 30 states and 17 countries. (Read more about our organizational partners here.)

The Kairos Center strengthens and expands this work of the Poverty Initiative by addressing the key elements that experience has demonstrated are critical to building a movement capable of ending poverty:

The power of religion to divide – by such means as the stigmatization of women, LGBTQ people, and other religions—or to strengthen and lift up a movement—by proclaiming the equality and dignity of each person;
The ability of human rights to bring people together across identities and issues and to show how myriad forms of social injustice, in particular racism, sexism and geographical isolation, increase and intensify poverty;
The connection of the U.S. to global poverty and U.S. movements to movements around the world.