Supporting and organizing faith and community leaders has always been central to the Kairos Center’s work to help build a movement to address racism, poverty, and numerous other social issues. Over the last several months, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, the center’s executive director who founded it more than two decades ago, has taken that work on the road. She and other members of the Kairos Center team led an organizing tour, visiting small towns, medium-sized cities and rural communities in ten states across the country that included Wisconsin, New York, Massachusetts, Alabama, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Mississippi.

In Lancaster, Pennsylvania – one of the many areas Liz visited during the tour – she describes a “tale of two cities.” On one side, religious extremists have taken over nearly every aspect of life in the community, with local churches becoming a stronghold of the Dominionists of the New Apostolic Reformation, a Christian Nationalist group. On the other side, grassroots organizations, like Lancaster Chooses Love, are working to provide an alternative vision of society, as well as material and other support for people impacted by multiple hospital closings, assaults on immigrants, and other matters of survival.

Traveling from one rural community to another and meeting with local organizers, the Kairos Center was able to learn about and share strategies for pushing back against extremism, while also making connections to create a larger network of grassroots leaders who are “hungry for unity.”

Hear more from Liz about this work and how her relationships through the Solidarity Collaborative have helped to support it.