Save America’s sacred places for civic purposes

Most of the 356,000 churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious congregations in the United States conduct worship services on weekends but supply social services all week long. Sadly, the older sacred places that serve civic purposes, often in disadvantaged urban communities, are disappearing. Their membership rolls are shrinking, their coffers are sinking and their landmark historic buildings are crumbling into disuse.

Public action combined with private energy is urgently needed to save these iconic religious properties and all the good works their leaders, members and volunteers do for needy people of all faiths (and of no faith). The civic stakes are high.

Seven in 10 older urban congregations are actively involved in their communities, with more than half hosting four or more outside groups like food pantries, credit unions, recovery groups and daycare centers. One-third host activities from youth anti-violence initiatives to health screenings and home-based eldercare services. 

They are also venues for town hall meetings, issue forums and polling places. 87 percent of their beneficiaries are people who aren’t members of the congregation that serves them. Each sacred place generates, on average, $1.7 million in annual community-wide economic “halo effects.”

For example, St. Vincent de Paul in Philadelphia is not only a beautiful Roman Catholic Church from 1851, but also home to a nonprofit that serves unhoused neighbors with food, laundry services, healthcare and youth education.

Touro Synagogue in New Orleans, founded in 1828, is the oldest Jewish congregation outside the original 13 colonies, with a Beaux Arts building and vertical garden that supports food banks, integrates refugees and houses four charter schools.

Alrasool Islamic Center in Utah, established by Shiite men fleeing Iran, is housed in a chapel from the 1800s built by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Alrasool has helped more than 10,000 immigrants settle in the U.S.

East Mount Zion Baptist Church in Cleveland broke segregation barriers by relocating to Millionaire’s Row on Euclid Avenue in 1955 and served as a bedrock of the civil rights movement, while providing clothing and resources to over 100,000 families.

As Harvard’s Robert D. Putnam has observed, religious congregations “build and sustain more social capital … than any other type of institution in America. Churches, synagogues, mosques and other houses of worship provide a vital institutional base for civic good works and a training ground for civic entrepreneurs.”

Indeed. The annual national survey of volunteering in the United States we helped put in place after 9/11 shows that most Americans volunteer through faith-based institutions. In a nation polarized by politics, volunteering through faith-based institutions helps build rather than burn bridges among civic-minded souls of every demographic description and socioeconomic status. 

Last month, Partners for Sacred Places, a national, nonsectarian nonprofit dedicated to helping religious congregations maintain their properties and serve their wider communities, brought together more than 100 leaders from government, business and religious groups to examine existential threats facing older local churches, synagogues and mosques that are iconic contributors to their communities. 

What’s needed is a National Endowment for Sacred and Civic Places — a congressionally chartered nonprofit like the National Trust for Historic Preservation — that attracts private support for preservation projects. By creating a national institution that can garner significant national resources, historic congregations could use catalytic funding to spark further local investment to maintain these sacred places. In turn, congregations serving public purposes, such as those helping the poor and needy, could apply for public support from a range of programs at the federal and state levels. 

Of course, any public support would need to follow three basic church-state separation rules: no use of tax dollars for inherently religious activities, such as religious worship, instruction and proselytization; no discriminating against beneficiaries or requiring them to profess or practice any religious precepts; and no discrimination in hiring on religious grounds, except as already expressly permitted under the “ministerial exemption” clause of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and related federal laws and Supreme Court rulings.

Benjamin Franklin was an agnostic, but he preached and practiced the power of civic-minded houses of worship. His motto for the Philadelphia Library Company said it all: “To pour forth benefits for the common good is divine.”

So it is. When we worked with President George W. Bush to create the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, we envisioned government doing more to promote robust public-private partnerships while recognizing and rewarding faith-based institutions that “pour forth benefits for the common good.”

Will the next presidential administration and Congress make a National Endowment for Sacred and Civic Places the centerpiece of a faith-based initiative focused on saving the older sacred places that serve civic purposes? We pray that they do.

John Bridgeland was director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President George W. Bush and serves as executive chairman of the Office of American Possibilities. John DiIulio was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under President Bush and is the Frederic Fox Leadership Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.