The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Connecticut group is rewriting the story of religion in politics
On Wednesday, the religious right moved closer than ever to achieving one of the movement’s key long-term goals. With the U.S. Supreme Court appearing on the verge of severely limiting access to abortion, a decades-long effort to rewrite America’s laws on public health is nearing a finish line.
The previous night in Connecticut showed a different kind of effort melding religion and politics. A celebration marked 10 years of work by a group of religious organizations in the state that, rather than try to impose its views on others, has been taking on some of the biggest societal challenges around, and winning.
Self-described as “intentionally interfaith, interracial, and economically and geographically broad,” CONECT, or Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut, long ago decided not to wait for the federal government to pass immigration reform or a health care overhaul. Instead, the organization is working from the ground up, starting with the concerns of people in the communities they serve, to make changes that matter in everyday lives.
“We hear directly from folks in our congregations on what are the concerns that they have that they’d like to see change around,” said Matt McDermott, CONECT’s lead organizer, in an interview.
That has translated to an impressive list of wins, including in-state college tuition for undocumented immigrants, a check on a local police department accused of racial profiling and, most famously, the Clean Slate law that automatically expunges criminal records in certain cases after several years have passed.
Each issue, along with many others, arose from people who shared their stores and worked together to make a lasting impact. Each one is too big for any person or small group to tackle, but by working across congregations, building relationships with lawmakers and seeing the process through the Legislature, the result has been something real.
It takes more than a moral stance. Arguments about policy rarely find success by convincing people it’s the right thing to do. There needs to be a practical benefit, or else legislators worried about their next reelection campaign will never get on board. That’s how a campaign to allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses was sold as a safe driving initiative, because it allows more drivers to be registered and insured, and Clean Slate was talked about in terms of economic opportunities otherwise squandered when formerly incarcerated people were left unemployable.
Some issues the group has tackled are bigger than others. They run the gamut from parking to gun violence. But all come from the same place — the people of the membership’s churches, synagogues and mosques. Turning everyday concerns into actionable issues is the hard part, but it’s where CONECT has found uncommon success in the last decade.
Its religious underpinnings are more than just happenstance. By bringing together people of different backgrounds and life experiences, CONECT’s organizing has become that much stronger and more effective. The Rev. Anthony Bennett, lead pastor at Bridgeport’s Mount Aery Baptist Church and one of CONECT’s founders, touched on this in his remarks at the group’s 10th anniversary celebration on Tuesday, which also featured appearances from the governor and other public officials.
“We need to look back at our meetings in the basements of our various institutions where we honestly wrestled with our cultural and doctrinal differences, yet realized that in order for us to build broad-based power, we needed to understand each other’s interest, and each other’s humanity,” Bennett said.
Their religion helps organizers see the big picture, McDermott said. “One piece that people understand is that this is hard work, and it takes a lot of time and energy. People come forward with problems that can just seem unsolvable or intractable. Having a rootedness in faith — not wideeyed, starry-eyed hope, but something that is based in their faith tradition — helps people to see it through.”
Another cause was the Bridgeport school board, where the group took a stance in opposition to the entire local political establishment. Following national trends, Bridgeport Democrats pushed a charter change to eliminate an elected school board in favor of one appointed by the mayor. CONECT, responding to local congregants’ concerns, opposed the measure, and an elected Board of Education remains to this day.
The future for CONECT includes growth, with new congregations joining all the time, but also more hard work. Health care, specifically mental health, is likely to take a priority coming out of the pandemic. Whatever the issues it focuses on, they will come, as always, from the bottom up.
The confluence of religion and politics is not a new story, but one that continues to be rewritten. The long fight against abortion (along with other topics the religious right now tries to downplay, like same-sex marriage and integration) gets outsized attention, but at the ground level, in places like Connecticut, it’s a far different story.
Rather than restrictions and abolitions, it’s a story of opening opportunities. It’s a story Connecticut should welcome.