Loose The Chains

Loose the Chains is the faith organizing strategy of the New Georgia Project in collaboration with Faith in Action/PICO, purposed to break the chains of social injustice in Georgia by unleashing the collective power of faith communities in our state through organized civic engagement.

The theology of Loose the Chains rests on the conviction that faith and ethical religious values, so central to the history of the United States, can make an indispensable contribution to a better country and better world.

This conviction is motivated by the gospel imperative to love God with our hearts, souls, and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves. In order to truly practice this ethic of communal and self-love we must be committed to the pursuit of justice because justice is what love looks like in public expression.

As such we affirm scriptures like Isaiah 58:6 that highlight a social justice centered revolutionary piety.

We hold to the belief that the Scriptures speak to all levels of human relation and as a result have significant implications for public life. We hold that theology should cast a particular light on questions about justice, the common good, and the ordering of our lives in community. Therefore, every person of faith should have a functional theology of public life, whether church teaching directly addresses the subject or not and whether individual Christians are conscious of it or not. Because even our silence or indifference on social matters as the people of faith has political implications.

Our theology of civic engagement involves equipping believers theologically to exercise their responsibility for the public good.