What motivates you to change the world?
An innate sense of fairness? The values passed from an inspiring parent or teacher? Maybe a personal faith or a devotion to living out the tenets found in religious scriptures?
Some of the world’s most-admired and influential social innovators were moved to action – against steep odds and at grave personal danger – in response to their deep-seated faith.
Mohandas Gandhi drew inspiration from his Hindu faith to confront colonialism with non-violent protest. When faced with doubts and disappointments, he turned to the Bhagavad Gita for strength and solace.
William Wilberforce gathered from his Christian faith the relentless energy and moral indignation to dismantle slavery in England. His sense of justice was grounded in his reading of the Bible.
Faith permeates an individual’s worldview and works at the personal level, but it also moves powerfully within the collective. Throughout history, communities of people who share a common faith have banded together for social good. Muslims established the first facilities dedicated to caring for the mentally ill. Jesuits built world-class universities around the globe.
Today, conversations among the cognoscenti in social change tend to focus on replication, sustainability, impact, growth, and any number of buzzwords — but left largely untouched are the spiritual dimensions of personal motivation and community transformation. For our faith tradition of Christianity, we started Praxis to step into that void.
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