10th anniversary post: CR churches

 

Apartments across from Greene Square,
part of a surge of building in the core of Cedar Rapids

Ten years ago this month, I hosted two events featuring Charles Marohn, founder and CEO of Strong Towns: an evening public event at the Iowa City Public Library, and a meeting of the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization the next morning in Ely. Remarkably, I wrote nothing about those events and took no pictures; all I did was post a link to the video on Iowa City's website, which link has, alas, now expired. (A subsequent Iowa City appearance by Chuck, in 2019, can be found here:)

I did take pictures in July 2015, lots of them, of churches in the Oak Hill Jackson neighborhood. The idea was that there were a number of houses of worship remaining from the era when the core of Cedar Rapids was bustling and dense, and that when--as I anticipated--urbanism returned bustle and density to the city center, these religious institutions would be ready to support the new arrivals and be the basis for renewed community.

Since that post, three more churches have been started in Oak Hill Jackson, and I have acquired editions of Polk's Directory for 1953 and 1998 that show changes in the property uses as well as in the surrounding areas.

New Churches

Veritas is a non-denominational church that
hosts a coffeehouse on weekdays

Veritas Church, 509 3rd St SE

In 1953 this building was Nash Finch wholesale grocers (the folks who operated the Econo Foods and Sun Mart chains). There was a Sinclair station on the other side of 3rd. In 1998 there was no listing for the church's current address, while Cedar Valley Habitat for Humanity occupied the building across the street that is now their ReStore. The oldest Google Earth photo, from 2012, shows the Intermec company occupying this building.

Trinity Presbyterian Church, 1103 3rd St SE

This congregation was started in 2020, and is affiliated with the conservative Presbyterian Church of America. They hold services in the theater at CSPS Hall, a historic Czech and Slovak community center dating from the 1890s. In 1953, this block of 3rd Street had, besides CSPS, six single-family households, one duplex, and 11 businesses, as well as the Salvation Army at 1119-1123 (now Parlor City). In 1998, there were two households and five businesses sharing the block with CSPS.

Revolution Community Church, 1202 10th St SE

This congregation, along with the ROC (Recovering Our City) Center, is using the building that ten years ago was occupied by Oak Hill Jackson Community Church. The sign above the door actually says "Refuge City Church," which testifies to the versatility of the abbreviation "RCC." In 1953 this was St. George Syrian Orthodox Church, which built the church in 1914; they moved to Cottage Grove Avenue SE in 1992. In the 1998 Polk's Directory there was no listing on 10th Street SE between 12th and 15th Avenues.

Older White Denominations

First Presbyterian Church, 310 5th St SE

This venerable church was built in 1869, and occupies the same block as the also-historic YWCA, opposite Greene Square Park. "First Pres" is the first of the oldline Third Avenue Churches; now, with the departure of First Christian Church and People's Church (Unitarian Universalist) in the 2010s, it is also the only mainline church on the southeast side below 10th Street.

St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church, 1224 5th St SE

Built in 1904, this church long served the working class neighborhood around the Sinclair meatpacking plant. In 1953 just that block of 5th Street had 14 households containing 47 residents, as well as two vacant houses and the Sisters of Mercy at 1230 5th. In 1998, the block still had seven occupied residences, but all the older houses in the area were bought up and leveled after the 2008 flood. 

Historically Black Congregations

Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, 512 6th St SE 

Built in 1931, Bethel AME Church has, like St. Wenceslaus, has continued its ministry after losing many of its closest neighbors. In 1953, the 500 block of 6th Street had seven single-family homes and two duplexes with a total population of 45. By 1998 it was down to two single-family homes, two vacant apartments at 514 6th, and four residences "not verified." Today there is just a vacant lot between Bethel and 5th Avenue.

New Jerusalem Church of God in Christ, 631 9th Av SE 

This church was built by Hus Presbyterian Church in 1915; Hus moved to Schaeffer Drive SW in 1973, and then closed in 2021. The 9th Avenue block had seven single-family homes and four duplexes in 1953, with a total of 68 residents. By 1998, the New Jerusalem congregation was established in the building, and the block listed five single-family homes and two duplexes.

Historically Black Congregations (possibly shut)

Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, 1030 7th St SE 

This church was built in 1965, but it's not clear that it's still in operation. Their Facebook page last updated 2022, and they're no longer listed on American Baptist Churches website. The banner still appears on the building, and the lawn is cut, but a sign on the door says "Mask required to enter," which surely is a vestige of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020-21.

In 1953, this address was the home of John D. Malbrue, a factory worker for Collins Radio, and his family of five. The block had 13 homes for 45 people, as well as a grocery store at 1000 7th. In 1998, the block had three homes, the church, and a social service organization called Options; 1000 7th was vacant. (Today 1000 7th is the site of the charming Sacred Cow tavern.)

Southeast Church of Christ, 930 9th St SE 

A handsome "Church of Christ" sign has been added to the exterior since 2015, but the charming garden I noticed is gone. Its web and Facebook links are to churches in Texas. In 1953, the building contained the grocery store of William W. Krejci; the block had 10 single-family homes and five duplexes, with a total population of 68. The 1998 Polk's Directory lists the Church of Christ, nine homes, and two "not verified." It's still a well-settled block.

Here in 1998, but no longer

Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 824 8th St SE

Mt. Zion moved to the edge of town after the 2008 flood, after nearly a century in the neighborhood. Its location is now part of a parking lot for the MedQuarter. Before the move, that block of 8th Street, which once was home to 56 people besides the church and a funeral home, was down to the church and one vacant property. 

Church of Jesus Christ of the Apostolic, 916 10th St SE

In 1953 this address was the house owned by Mrs. Francis Leksa. It is now part of an apartment complex constructed post-flood.

Plenty of churches remain nearby: Harris Oak Hill Apartments

Holy Ghost Missionary Baptist Church, 1003 6th St SE

There is no listing for this address in the 1953 Polk's Directory, but 1001 6th was the home and store of grocer Milo Grubhoffer. What was probably the church building was for some time post-flood used for storage by the nonprofit Feed Iowa First. Something new is being constructed in its place even as we speak.

Construction at former Holy Ghost site

Ten years on, the church scene in Oak Hill Jackson is different, but similar. In the meantime, there's been a lot of building.

New Bo Lofts addition, across from St. Wenceslaus

Loftus Lofts, in the heart of New Bohemia

Will all this new construction be populated? Will the new residents find, or even look for, community in their neighborhood churches? Do the churches even want to play the role of community rebuilder, or are they focused on their present membership? To answer these questions, we would need data, which I famously don't have.

ORIGINAL POST (with more pictures): "CR Churches," 20 July 2015

Book Review: Doing Justice

Jacobsen, Dennis A. Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing. 

Minneapolis: Fortress, 2nd ed., 2017. xxx + 155 pp.

Doing Justice is a challenging book. Aimed principally at practicing Christians, it uses the words

of Jesus, prophets, apostles, and the author of the Book of Revelation to attack the status quo 

as ungodly and to provoke the readers into working to transform it in the direction of God’s 

justice. An epigram to chapter 1 concludes with Revelation 18:4: Then I heard another voice 

from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins.”

The test of this book is not so much how well it reads as much as how well it leads to 

constructive, collective social action. Its audience is rather niche: actively religious people who 

both are concerned about injustice and have a group with which they can join in acts of justice. 

For people who fit that description, Doing Justice is profoundly challenging (because my heart's 

in the right place but there are things I'd rather be doing), sympathetic (I'm also the quiet type at 

least in public), and encouraging (because wins are frustratingly few and far between).

 

Jacobsen, a pastor in the (mainline) Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, who spent many 

years serving an inner-city Milwaukee, sees justice as a broad context in which people have 

access to the goods of life, both material (e.g. enough to eat) and intangible (e.g. dignity, 

freedom). 

The world as it should be is in direct opposition to the world as it is. The world as 

it should be is rooted in truth, love, and community…. People are able to trust 

each other sufficiently to be transparent and exposed…. In a world where forty-

thousand children die of hunger-related causes every day, the world as it should 

be has an abiding concern for children and their right to have a playful present 

and a human future…. The world as it should be is God’s dream engaging the 

nightmare that the world has become. (2017: 11, 12, 15)

Those of us who live in a middle-class milieu may have little awareness of the nightmare that 

people outside of that milieu live on a daily basis. Some of Jacobsen’s parishioners’ personal 

nightmares are mentioned in the opening chapter. Vulnerable people are easily derailed when

their lives’ loads get one brick too many, and then the bricks just keep on coming. We are 

admonished to be aware of others’ struggles, and not to get too comfortable or too 

accommodated to the world as it is (what he calls “pseudo-innocence” (p. 16), citing Martin 

Luther King’s statement that love without power is sentimentality).

Encampment, Greene Square, 2024

We know we are not the egregious bullies Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, sneering and 

mocking as Rev. Marianne Edgar Budde asked the administration to show mercy to gays 

and Lesbians in all families, and to vulnerable immigrant farmworkers. Yet we know we 

are not King, or Fr. Daniel Berrigan, or the Detroit pastor (Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman) who 

wrote the foreword to Doing Justice, ministering to the outcasts, and risking freedom and 

their very lives in the quest for justice. If working within the system is so accommodating 

as to give away the store, what then must we do?

Jacobsen argues churches and their members need to engage with the “harsh realities outside 

its walls” (p. 20). That requires more from the church than creating a peaceful sanctuary, or 

even engaging in charitable works if they don’t get at the people’s underlying (human) misery. 

“The Christians who are so generous with food baskets at Thanksgiving or with presents for 

the poor at Christmas often vote into office politicians whose policies ignore or crush those 

living in poverty. A kind of pseudo-innocence permeates this behavior” (p. 29). He turns to 

the example of Saul Alinksy (1909-1972), whose concept of community organizing sought to empower residents of impoverished neighborhoods to influence decisions that were being 

made elsewhere, like in company boardrooms and city governments. Congregation-based 

community organizing began in the Roman Catholic Church, but has spread throughout 

Christianity and even non-Christian faith communities. Six broad networks, profiled in 

chapter 4, provide leadership training as well as engagement in public action. Engaging in 

such action requires comfort with political power–Jacobsen notes dozens of references to 

“power” in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament–but also a willingness to share it 

(p. 67).

“Some fear the added responsibility that comes with power” (p. 61). Well, yeah.

Homeland Security Investigations office, southwest Cedar Rapids

As such, the first challenge, both for individuals contemplating their part in social justice 

and community organizers recruiting and challenging them (“agitation”), is to recognize their 

self-interest. This concept is at the core of modern social science, and a strong influence on

the worldview of pretty much everyone. Yet “[k]nowledge of one’s own self-interest interest also

cannot be presumed” (p. 75). Jacobsen argues in chapter 6 that for all manner of reasons, we

need an understanding of self-interest that lies between pure selfishness and utter self-abnegation (“selflessness”). The first leads us to “nearly soulless” (p. 78) transactional 

relationships with others, such as President Trump is supposed to have; the latter leads to 

getting taken advantage of, as in the cases of Christian women who stay in abusive 

marriages because they believe it's their duty.

The process of articulation might also involve distinguishing between short-term and long-

term interests (p. 75ff.). On any given day, I might prefer to relax and/or get things done around 

the house, and certainly to avoid confrontations. People like Jacobsen’s ex-con parishioner 

Jesse are so different from me that any contact is bound to be awkward. But over the long term 

I am better off living in “a liberative community in which people can live out their values, be 

connected to a network of significant relationships, and be agitated to summon forth their God-

given power and potential,” so it is in my self-interest actively to participate in the “weaving 

together” of such a community (p. 78). (If it sounds like urbanism, loyal reader–that’s because 

it is!)

Once committed to action, doers of justice are further confronted with defining and reading 

the field of play. In chapter 9, Jacobsen articulates a metropolitan conception, adding declining 

first-ring suburbs and well-heeled exurbs to the mission field of inner city-based organizing. 

Citing law professor Myron Orfield (Metropolitics [Brookings, 1997]), he argues: 

To counter the ghettoization of poverty, Orfield proposes regional strategies such as tax-

based revenue sharing, fair distribution of low-income housing, convergence of school 

districts, and equitable spread of transportation dollars to create access to jobs (p. 105). 

Opposition to metro-wide approaches is likely to be “entrenched” (p. 106), but the strength of 

the opposition should not be exaggerated, nor should wealthy and powerful opponents be 

considered permanent enemies: Metropolitan organizing offers a chance to end the warfare

against the poor and to heal the divisions of class and race that separate this sick society 

(p. 114, emphasis mine). It’s like Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton (The Regional City:

Planning for the End of Sprawl [Island, 2001]) meet the authors of Numbers and Luke!

 

Succeeding at this level has a promising payoff but requires “meticulous organization, militant 

mass action, and, above all, the willingness to suffer and sacrifice” (p. 115, quoting Nelson 

Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom [Little Brown, 1994], p. 104). “There’s drudgery in social 

change, and glory for the few,” sings Billy Bragg. The mess is huge, and that can be 

discouraging: Death claims urban America for itself…. The death of decaying neighborhoods. 

The death of decimated families. The death of joblessness. The death of dreams. (p. 133)

 

No wonder I quail at the struggle! Now, to “take part in her sins” may seem an attractive 

alternative. But many hands make light work, or at least make the workload lighter: Into 

the courtyard of such death, congregation-based community organizing proclaims the 

resurrection of Christ, the unbending hope in the power of life, the unyielding belief that 

God, not death, has the last word (still on p. 133). It is the "holy catholic church," discussed in chapter 11, that impacts the mess, not lone toilers. It is group action that not only says

“‘no’ to social injustice… but a prophetic ‘yes’ to life” (p. 139). In the face of oppression

and misery, the church not only engages the community with patches but with affirmation

and joy as well. And dancing–towards the end of the book he quotes Emma Goldman: If

I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution (p. 141).

 

In the same song quoted above, Billy Bragg also sings, “A poet with all the answers has never 

yet been built.” Apparently that goes for bloggers as well. My posts this year have been, I 

recognize, teeming with frustration and anger. All the MAGA pillaging (cf. Wilson 2025, 

Zipper 2025, or any day's post by the indefatigable Heather Cox Richardson) has certainly 

served to highlight the fragility of progress, and how much easier it is to break things than to 

build them. But there are people out there who carry on building, and they have room for me, 

and you. As long as they don’t mind that I dance like an arthritic cow.

10th anniversary post: Homes, home churches, and hometowns

 

After Hours Denver is still going!
(Source: afterhoursdenver.org)

We have big holes in our social fabric.--RICHARD WEISSBOURD, Making Caring Common (Shaer 2024)

Ten years ago, a pastor's reference to an unconventional church in Denver, Colorado, that meets in bars and focuses on feeding hungry people, led me to reflect on the concept of "home" as applied to houses of worship, living spaces, and towns. But by the end of the piece, I had pivoted to talking about connection: Does the way we create homes of all types, in this era of suburban development, exclude others and isolate ourselves? Belonging is important, but so is connection, and maybe connection is essential to belonging.

Recently there has been a lot of attention to individual loneliness as a public problem, as opposed to a personal one. Loneliness has negative effects on physical health comparable to serious cigarette smoking including raising blood pressure, high cholesterol, and even risk of Alzheimer's disease (Magen 2018, Birak and Cuttler 2017); perhaps this is because connection to others encourages more healthy behavior, but also possibly because the presence of other people can mitigate stress which has its own negative health effects (Holt-Lunsted, Smith and Layton 2010). This goes for mental as well as physical health: loneliness is associated with greater risk of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts (Fu 2020). 

Besides preventing harms to individuals, interactions of various types--ranging from intimate to random--benefit the whole community. Jane Jacobs's landmark The Death and Life of Great American Cities is rooted in her observation that it's all those random human interactions that form the basis for community ties: 

The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts. It grows out of people stopping by at the bar for a beer, getting advice from the grocer and giving advice to the newsstand man, comparing opinions with other customers at the bakery and nodding hello to the two boys drinking pop on the stoop, eyeing the girls while waiting to be called for dinner, admonishing the children, hearing about a job from the hardware man and borrowing a dollar from the druggist, admiring the new babies and sympathizing over the way a coat faded. ([1961] 1993: 73; cf. also Calthorpe and Fulton 2001: 32-34)

For cities, the walkable design and third places that facilitate interactions also support economic activity and financial strength. "Walkable places are thriving places," said Jeff Speck at Cedar Rapids's City Services Center in March 2015. A 2015 study of three cities found:

[S]treets with a mix of old and new buildings have [both] greater population density and more businesses per commercial square foot than streets with large, new buildings... [T]hese areas also have significantly more jobs per commercial square foot... [N]eighborhoods with a smaller-scaled mix of old and new buildings host a significantly higher proportion of new businesses, as well as more women and minority-owned businesses than areas with predominantly larger, newer buildings.... [O]lder, smaller buildings house significantly greater concentrations of creative jobs per square foot of commercial space. ("Older, Smaller, Better" 2014: 4)

Jan and Ingrid Gehl noticed the same phenomena in their observations in Italy during the 1960s, which came to inform Jan Gehl's designs for Copenhagen (Montgomery 2013: 146-150). Kim Samuel (2015), McGill professor and founder of the Belonging Forum, argues that by contrast cities designed around cars inhibit social connection, especially (but not only) for people with disabilities and the elderly.

Building for belonging can mean designing cities for the varied dimensions of people’s lives, with mixed-use environments that integrate opportunities to shop, work, learn and relax; where neighbourhoods are walkable, people of different ages and incomes are mixed together, and natural prospects for connection exist, from pedestrian zones to public parks to farmers’ markets. (Samuel 2015)

Samuel also commends attention to the quality of housing, and respecting local knowledge. (See also Montgomery 2013: 56-58; he titles this section "The Lonely Everywhere.")

But people can also experience urban areas as hideous parodies of belonging and connection, where the bad effects of loneliness are even magnified. When Olivia Laing (2016) first moved to Brooklyn, she found no sense of belonging and only intrusive connections:

I wanted very much not to be where I was. In fact part of the trouble seemed to be that where I was wasn't anywhere at all. My life felt empty and unreal and I was embarrassed about its thinness, the way one might be embarrassed about a stained or threadbare piece of clothing....

Outside the window, people threw dinner parties. The man upstairs listened to jazz and show tunes at full blast, and filled the hallways with pot smoke, snaking fragrantly down the stairs. Sometimes I spoke to the waiter in my morning cafe, and once he gave me a poem, typed neatly on thick white paper. But mostly I didn't speak. Mostly I was walled up inside myself, and certainly a very long way from anyone else. I didn't cry often, but once I couldn't get the blinds closed and then I did. It seemed too awful, I suppose, the idea that anyone could peer over and get a glimpse of me, eating cereal standing up or combing over emails, my face illuminated by the laptop's glare. (14-15)

As Laing's experience suggests, cities aren't automatic solutions for loneliness, and can even aggravate those feelings. Loneliness exists in multiple forms and has numerous external as well as personal causes, and a recent New York Times Magazine article manages to survey the whole scene without once mentioning suburban sprawl (Shaer 2024); the "holes in the social fabric" referenced by Richard Weissbourd in this post's opening quotation may or may not be surface parking lots. 

Improved design is a necessary but not sufficient condition for connection. A survey of Americans finds connection improving after the coronavirus pandemic, but still down long-term, particularly among nonwhites, the working class, and those with less than college education; for example, college-educated respondents spend more time in public and community spaces like parks and coffee shops (Cox and Pressler 2024). At least one analysis found social isolation so strongly correlated with demographics that more walkable older neighborhoods actually had more social isolation because they had more elderly and poor residents; it's worth noting the study was done in Korea, where even the newest developments are nothing like American suburbs (Kim and Kim 2024). 

However, design done right can facilitate social connection. Andres Duany and colleagues focus on the public realm, the existence of which requires places to which people can walk, narrow streets to slow the cars, a sense of enclosure (from street trees and right-sized buildings), and visible signs of other people (2010: ch 4; for a fuller treatment see Speck 2012). Jane Jacobs highlights the need for stores, but not too big as to be impersonal, and accommodations like benches in public parks (among other trenchant observations about what works and what doesn't work for sidewalks, parks, and so forth. 

Besides complete streets designed to human scale, Jay Walljasper (2011) commends housing built around common space, whether semi-private neighborhood squares or residential pedestrian streets. Happy Cities (2024) has a multi-unit housing design toolkit with plans for designing common amenities, circulation spaces, and outdoor areas. A 2018 post in The Conversation looks to "third" places where people can gather informally and interact, like community gardens and space in a park for tai chi classes (Matthews and Dolley 2018). In Shanghai, retired people, particularly singles, have been gathering at People's Park and the Ikea cafeteria (Stevenson 2024). 

Montgomery, whose book fuses city design with findings from neuroscience research, notes that certain places draw people and encourage them to linger, long enough to connect. The Project for Public Spaces is credited with the discovery of triangulation, "in which external stimuli are arranged in ways that nudge people close enough together to begin talking. In its simplest form, triangulation might mean positioning a public telephone booth, a garbage can, and a bench beside one another, or simply giving a busker permission to perform near a set of stairs--anything to slow people down in proximity" (2013:165). Things that alienate people are sharp architectural angels (light up the brain's fear centers), long dead facades like blank or smoked glass walls, painful or no seating, dark areas, parking lots, and closeness to high-speed or high-traffic roads. "No amount of triangulation can account for the corrupting influence that high-velocity transport has on the psychology of public space" (2013: 168).

Tiffany Owens Reed of Strong Towns argues that proximity does not produce connection unless there are common projects, and suggests cities outsource tasks community members can do, like playground cleanup and sidewalk snow removal (Owens Reed 2022). After Hours Denver may be onto something with its assembly line of congregants constructing peanut butter sandwiches. Jacobs, however, cautions that people want most of their connections "without unwelcome entanglements, without boredom, necessity for excuses, explanations, fears of giving offense, embarrassments respecting impositions or commitments, and all such paraphernalia of obligations which can accompany less limited relationships." Faced with the choice between too much "togetherness" and no contact at all, many people will choose solitude; "either has distressing results" ([1961] 1993: 81-82).

I remember when I first read The Great Good Place and, while I was enthusing over Ray Oldenburg's depiction of third places, I was also reflecting that without prior experience I wouldn't know how to act in such a place. Once at a train station in England, Laing was chatted up by an old man until she finally succeeded in freezing him out and he walked away (2016: 25). She felt guilty afterwards, but no one wants to be the unwelcome old man in that story! When everyone else seems to how to mix (or not) in public, it can cause people to turn in on themselves, adding feelings of incompetence and inadequacy to the already-toxic personal stew. I wondered after reading Oldenburg "whether after 70 years out of practice we still know how to behave in [third places]." Maybe there are sets of lessons we could take? Or is there an app for that? Apparently the late Dr. Ruth is on the case!

SOURCES

Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton, The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl (Island, 2001)

Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (North Point Press, 10th anniversary ed, 2010) 

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Random House, [1961] 1993)

Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (Picador, 2016)

Charles Montgomery, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2013)

Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place (Paragon House, 1999)

Jeff Speck, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2012)

Now we can all sing along... (5:15):

Project 2025 and Our Common Life

Heritage Foundation, Washington DC,
on a cloudy day in 2012

The first thing you notice about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's massive policy book for the next Republican administration, is not its content but its tone. Considering it's ostensibly about public policy, it has a lot about who it targets rather than how it proposes to solve public problems. The foreword, by Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts, is barely underway before it throws blame for today's problems on "wholesale dishonesty and corruption" of "the ruling and cultural elite today" (p. 1). Nothing happens unless it's someone's fault?

Contemporary elites have even repurposed the worst ingredients of 1970s "radical chic" to build the totalitarian cult known today as "The Great Awokening."... Most alarming of all, the very moral foundations of our society are in peril. (1)

Fevered, ad hominem attacks and name-calling continue throughout the foreword. 

In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatural ones (2).... The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children (5)... Bureaucrats at the Department of Justice force school districts to undermine girls’ sports and parents’ rights to satisfy transgender extremists (8)....

...and on and on. References to the "global abortion industry" (261) in a chapter on foreign aid, and "the grotesque culture of violence against the child in the womb" (642) in a chapter on veterans, aren't going to gain you allies for the policies you advocate, either. 

Given the Heritage Foundation's own massive endowment and presence, one could be forgiven for thinking that they themselves are part of the ruling elite. Perhaps "ruling elite" is defined here as "smart people who disagree with us." 

Beyond the fantastic quality to this screed that seems remote from anyone's actual life, I think the tone detracts from the substance they are trying to promote here. Joe Biden comes in for a lot of criticism, as does Barack Obama, while Donald Trump gets none until page 722 relating to the Export-Import Bank. (Anyone who does appear to criticize Trump, like U.S. international broadcasts discussed in chapter 8, get roundly flayed.) I realize I'm not the target audience for Project 2025, but if I were to pick up a paper on, say, climate change, and it began with a lot of attacks on Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell or capitalism, it would lead me to question the credibility of the policy thinking that accompanied them. Are we even trying to solve public problems here, or are we just trying to elect Republicans and shout down people we don't like?

This is a problem because, whenever Project 2025 stops screaming about elites, it discusses some rather serious problems our society faces, like challenges to the family, from China, and for government budgeting, as well as the loss of separation of powers in the government. I feel I'd like to talk with these (mostly) guys, about these problems individually, or better yet as common symptoms of some deeper dysfunctionality, but the authors in Project 2025 prefer to reverse engineer their approach based on crushing their enemies. In reality, our American/human destiny is a common one, and we need to hear from all perspectives. Conservatives certainly have important perspectives, but there needs to be more engagement and less of what Daniel Pink (2024) called "authoritarian revenge porn."

The 30 chapters that follow contain some valuable practical advice. Chapters 1 and 2, by Rick Dearborn and Russ Vought, respectively, provide a basic introduction to the Executive Branch of which any citizen should be aware, and certainly anyone undertaking to work therein, whether or not their principal motivation is "combating the Left’s aggressive attacks on life and religious liberty, and confronting 'wokeism' throughout the federal government" (38). Chapter 7, by Dustin J. Carmack, gets 17 paragraphs into a careful analysis of the challenges facing intelligence in the post-9/11 world (201-204) before he suddenly seems to realize he hasn't attacked "woke culture" yet. There are interesting exchanges on trade in chapters 23 and 26.

I certainly don't have the policy expertise to evaluate the many recommendations in Project 2025. Nor do I have the resources to evaluate the truth or falsity of its numerous claims. (For responses to chapters 11 on education, and 8 and 28 on communications technology, see Perera, Valant and Meyer (2024) and Muenster (2024), respectively.) Project 2025 contains a lot of inside baseball, or #iykyk, nearly all of which goes over my head. A seemingly obvious proclamation like "To fulfill its mission, USAGM should also aim to present the truth about America and American policy— not parrot America’s adversaries’ propaganda and talking points" (235) is certainly a red flag that the writer is grinding some axe or other. I will say it is sobering to read how much investment there needs to be in the military (ch. 4) so quickly after condemnation of the national debt (chs 1-3) while we are also expecting to cut taxes (ch. 22). 

From the perspective of our common life, which is what we're all about here on Holy Mountain, there are reasons to worry if Project 2025 becomes the blueprint for the next administration its contributors clearly hope it will be.

1. Public problems that are inconvenient to the ideology of Project 2025--like climate change, access to health care, the legacy of racism, agricultural chemical runoff causing a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, gun violence, pedestrian deaths, threats against local officials, exploitation of workers, and inequality of wealth and opportunity--are either ignored or dismissed as unbelievable. Climate change doesn't appear until chapter 9 on foreign aid, when the very idea is described as "radical" and "extreme" (257). One page later the text attacks gay rights as "bullying" and "partisan" (258) while alleging "Past Democratic administrations have nearly erased what females are and what femininity is" (258-259). Chapter 5, on homeland security, doesn't even bother with an analysis of immigration problems; it wants control centralized so the border with Mexico can be "secured." (For some ways this approach to border security might implicate current residents, see Krauze 2024.) The Department of Homeland Security "has also suffered from the Left’s wokeness and weaponization against Americans whom the Left perceives as its political opponents" (135). We're outraged by phantoms and other points of view while we ignore the most serious public problems.

2. freedom. This is a value popular among the contributors to Project 2025, as well it should be, though perhaps it is not as popular with them as "interests" or "values." Freedom is actually objective #1 under education policy (322). Freedom has a lot of meanings in political theory. Here it seems to mean exemption from liberal policies one doesn't agree with, and the right not to be exposed to ideas not your own. Either we get our way, or we take our ball and go home. Section III features attacks on "the irrational, destructive, un-American mask and vaccine mandates that were imposed upon an ostensibly free people during the COVID-19 pandemic" (283). That includes having churches closed on Easter 2020: "What is the proper balance of lives saved versus souls saved?" (456). Chapter 8 on quotes Thomas Jefferson (on government funding for churches) to justify its scorched earth approach to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (246). Conservatives--apparently including ex-President Trump and the January 6 rioters (285 and pretty much all of chapter 17)--should have autonomy from anything from which they disagree, but not so liberals who go in for "woke transgender activism" or "abortion as a form of 'health care'" (284, scare-quotes in original). We get the right-to-infect and freedom to discriminate against transgendered people, but not to be safe during a pandemic or to be transgendered people.

3. separation of powers. Vought cites James Madison on separation of powers, urging the President to be bold in clawing back discretionary authority from the bureaucracy (filled with elitists who are often woke!), while restrained in relations with Congress with which they share power. This would be a tricky balancing act under any circumstances, given the long-standing incentives for Congress to delegate power to the executive as well as the inability of the elected and appointed leaders to oversee the vast bureaucracy. Vought is heavy on coordination and direction, and light on restraint. Chapter 5 wants centralized control over immigration; chapter 6 wants centralized control over foreign policy. It is easy to read this, as many have, as empowering the President to do conservative things by overriding checks and balances within the federal government, with self-restraint reserved for inconvenient things like racism and climate change (p. 60).

4. love. This may be a weird criterion to judge a policy book, but the mountain on this blog is a holy mountain, after all. So much of this text is full of animosity. Even chapter 3 on the bureaucracy, analytically written by Donald H. Devine and co-authors, portrays federal employees not as human beings but as overpaid statistics. (How dare they have union representation and a pension plan! We like our workers hungry and scared?) Opponents are enemies, their motives portrayed with cynicism. (Chapter 4 on the military makes several mysterious references to "Marxist indoctrination" and the authors are obsessed with pandemic-era requirements for masks and vaccinations. Chapter 5 refers to the COVID-19 "vaccine" (scare-quotes in original, p. 156).) None of the contributors cites the biblical book of Revelation to advocate political opponents be thrown into a lake of fire, but the same logic prevails that other points of view must not be tolerated. Really? If you love this country, that means loving the people who live in it, including those with other perspectives than your own. Don't hate them, learn from them.

5. sinfulness. Maybe this is an even weirder criterion? If we take seriously that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23), we should proceed cautiously with policy change, especially if we're as angry as the Project 2025 contributors seem to be. One of the reasons I like Strong Towns so much is that founder Charles Marohn refers constantly to "humility" in their approach. Admittedly, the very comprehensiveness of Project 2025 may exaggerate the degree of instantaneous wholesale change being contemplated. Nevertheless, the ready-to-go-on-day-one war of good against evil that it is itching to declare assumes all of the sin is by Them, and that We stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord. This degree of presumption is frightening when you think about it, considering there are real human lives at stake.

Project 2025 has had a bumpy ride in 2024. Public opinion polls show that people who have heard of it by and large disapprove of it (Yang 2024). Former President Trump, the putative beneficiary of its thinking, has noted its unpopularity and thus renounced it (Hawkinson 2024). Vice President Harris, now the Democratic candidate, has been trying to frighten people with it, invoking it even when it doesn't actually contain the content she attributes to it (Dale 2024).

The megalith that is Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership is worth taking seriously; in the absence of alternative ideas in the Republican Party, this is the closest thing we have to a Trump campaign platform. It is full of serious ideas, though with a rich mix of partisanship, grievance, and score-settling. If the next Republican administration, possibly as soon as five months from now, pushes angrily "onward!" while denying the existence of key problems, it is likely to be alarming for advocates of common life.

SOURCE: Paul Dans and Steven Groves (eds), 2025 Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (Heritage Foundation, 2023)

SEE ALSO: "Religious Freedom for Whom?" 15 December 2020

Amber Phillips, "What is Project 2025," Washington Post, 30 June 2024

Will Sommer, "He Found a Project 2025 Duffel Bag. Then the Police Showed Up at His House," Washington Post, 16 August 2024