Rural Faith Initiative on Yonder Radio

Rural Faith Initiative project leader Whitney Kimball Coe spoke with Yonder Radio host Jared Ewy about the Rural Faith Initiative: what it is, how she became involved, and the challenges and opportunities for faith communities in rural places.

Listen to the whole episode, fast forward to Whitney's segment at minute 33:49, or read their Q&A below:

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Q&A

Jared
What is the Rural Faith Initiative?

Whitney
The Rural Faith Initiative is really the newest program within the Center for Rural Strategies.

I've been working for Rural Strategies for almost 20 years now. So, a few years ago, the Lilly Endowment approached Rural Strategies and asked us if we would be interested in accompanying them in their program that was geared toward rural faith and small towns and rural communities, and I really jumped at the opportunity, because about two years ago I decided it was time for me to go back to school and get my master's of divinity and aspiring to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church, so this felt like a marriage of my professional life, my spiritual life. What Lilly Endowment has asked of us is, “Could Center for Rural Strategies be a resource to a grantee pool of institutions that are working on elevating and amplifying how important faith communities are in rural America, so the rural faith initiative then is tasked with bringing kind of all the tools that we have at Rural Strategies through reporting, gathering people, telling stories to help amplify how important faith is in rural livelihood in rural communities?”

Jared
Well, this brings me to a point that is the struggle of faith communities right now in, say, small town America. There's some struggle going on.

Whitney
Oh, there is. We know that rural churches are really struggling, or a lot of them are, to keep the lights on, to maintain their buildings, to live into the community worship and community service that they feel called to do, and we know that rural church institutions are anchor institutions, in the same way that, like, a school system is, or in the same way that a public library or a YMCA is. Rural churches are often the places where people are getting a lot of their needs met, everything from food insecurity to attending AA meetings, church buildings are multi-use buildings, and faith communities themselves, the leaders and the laity within them are wearing multiple hats in their communities, so faith institutions in rural, whether that's an actual denomination or just, or a place of worship, or a community of people who rally around a shared belief that we can do work together, that's just essential.

Jared
That brings me to this great point about you in this interview, is yes, there are problems, but you have brought solutions in the fronts you're working on with the Rural Faith Initiative.

Whitney
I think we have some tools that can help people divine the solutions themselves, and sometimes I mean, Rural Strategies work for sure. A lot of what we do at Rural Strategies is to mirror back to people what we see them already doing, to mirror back to them the courage, the innovation, the creativity that we already see them enacting, and we do that by telling stories, by reporting on some of the exceptional moments. We can also provide them some facilitation to ask questions, to have conversations that can then start to move them into the direction of solutions. It's not just about building maintenance or about getting butts in the seats, right. It's about, it's actually about, like, how do we stay in relationship across this, you know, violent partisanship that we're seeing in this country, or how do we navigate conflict. So, the rural faith initiative, a place we're trying to meet people, is where are you getting stuck. Hopefully, we're creating spaces where people are growing in their imagination for how to stay in and how to stay faithful and how to stay proactive.

Jared
What are some of the stories you're going to bring back to Yonder Radio?

Whitney
Yeah, I mean, rural faith communities on the border are really wondering how they can best engage in ministries of welcome of immigrants and migrants. Another story that is bubbling up that I hope you'll hear more about soon is about rural affirming LGBTQ churches. Those absolutely exist all across the nation. We anticipate that there are going to be a lot of those really beautiful intersections between topics that are really important right now and in mainstream consciousness, and crossing those with what does it look like when faith is an active participant.

Jared
Whitney Kimball Coe, as you can hear now, inspires with everything she says as she becomes a mother within the Episcopal Church, her new name won't be Whitney Kimball Coe. It's always there, but Moco has already been applied to you.

Whitney
That's true. People have been joking with me that that's going to be my nickname now, Moco, which, you know, that's that feels. It,

Jared
oh, well, yeah. When whatever town you roll into, if you show up as Moco, there will be no argument. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us.

Whitney
Thank you so much.