Writings

My vocation lies at the intersection of the church, the academy, and community organizing

I regularly publish popular writings addressing these topics. Thanks for visiting!

Organizing Visions: Social Ethics and Broad-based Solidarity Activism

A compelling new volume that bridges Christian social ethics, movement organizing, and the politics of deep solidarity.

This landmark volume brings together scholars and practitioners to chart the evolving terrain of Christian social ethics in relation to broad-based organizing. The editors demonstrate that social ethics is not an abstract discipline—it is deeply rooted in the struggles, tactics, and vision of movements for justice. Drawing on a wide range of contributors, the book argues that today’s ethical commitments must take seriously how faith, power, community, and solidarity intersect.

“I strongly encourage organizers and scholars of organizing to pick up this book and read it thoroughly, engage it, talk about it with a colleague, and use it to challenge and rethink and reframe your own experience.” — Ernesto J. Cortés Jr., national co-director emeritus, Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF)

Listening to the Spirit: The Radical Social Gospel, Sacred Value, and Broad-based Community Organizing

How sacred values and community organizing reshape the social gospel

In a time when civic life is fractured and institutional trust is waning, Listening to the Spirit invites us to imagine a different way of organizing: one rooted not merely in issue-campaigns but in what we hold most dear. Drawing from more than a decade of interfaith, broad-based community organizing (BBCO) experience, Stauffer argues that deep change happens not when communities win one battle after another, but when they build relational power grounded in sacred values.

“With intellectual agility and wisdom born of experience and faith, Stauffer develops a political ecclesiology of organizing based on God’s call to cultivate relationships of liberation and love. He argues that community organizing, at its best, begins with listening for the Spirit’s graceful movement in the world. Through organizing centered in sacred values, churches may build relational power for deepening democracy and countering racial capitalism. Organizers and faithful people seeking a more just world will relish Stauffer’s vibrant continuation of the radical social gospel tradition.” — Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Professor of Christian Ethics, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and Graduate Theological Union, Director of the Center for Climate Justice and Faith (PLTS), and author of Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation