Religious Education

The official journal of the Religious Education Association

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/urea20

Transforming Communities: How People Like You

Are Healing Their Neighborhoods
by Sandhya Rani Jha. St. Louis: Chalice, 2017. 144 pp., $15.99 (paperback).

Lindy E. Desciak

To cite this article: Lindy E. Desciak (2020) Transforming Communities: How People
Like You Are Healing Their Neighborhoods, Religious Education, 115:5, 551-552, DOI:
10.1080/00344087.2020.1711580

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2020.1711580

Published online: 20 Jan 2020.

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RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
2020, VOL. 115, NO. 5, 551–552

BOOK REVIEW

Transforming Communities: How People Like You Are Healing Their

Neighborhoods, by Sandhya Rani Jha. St. Louis: Chalice, 2017. 144 pp.,
$15.99 (paperback).

As readers of Religious Education seek to integrate belief and action in the face of today’s
injustices, Sandhya Rani Jha provides a dose of realistic hope. Transforming Communities:
How People Like You Are Healing Their Neighborhoods is true to its title; the intentional use
of the active and continuous verb tense of transformation announces the soothing balm of
conversion. Jha’s book, which she describes as “equal parts inspiration, education, and DIY”
(5), tells tales of people—often people of faith—who seek to bring peace and justice to their
local community. Indeed, each chapter shares how people are employing particular research
and models of communities organizing and neighborhood development to invigorate their
local context. Jha simultaneously weaves a manageable list of additional resources for the
reader’s later explorations into her prose.
The book opens and closes by looking back at how two European clerics confronted the
horrors of war and financial devastation in the early/mid-1900s through education and eco-
nomic cooperatives. The chapters in between take the readers on a journey—primarily
across the United States—showcasing how strength-based assessments, asset-based commu-
nity development, listening sessions, one-to-one organizing meetings, restorative justice,
effective campaign messaging, interfaith collaboration, truth commissions, community gar-
dening, participatory research, budgeting, and policy practices are effectively utilized today.
While the meat of how Jha practices faith-rooted community action arrives in chapter nine,
her lens as a religious educator and emphasis on local collaboration is visible throughout.
Transforming Communities provides a useful distinction between community organizing
that is faith-rooted versus faith-based. Faith-rooted practices focus on identifying the com-
mon good, collaborating across diverse religious traditions, and boldly incorporating the
rich symbolism and practices of traditions (for example, prayer, candles, distinctive religious
dress) into community organizing (129). It seeks to embrace nonviolent approaches and
fight traditional power structures with spiritual power structures that extend throughout his-
tory. There are some discussions started in chapter nine exploring the role of salvation,
unity, and solidarity in faith-rooted community organizing that could have been explored
more fully. However, the chapter provides a good starting point for future discussion and
debate about how faith-rooted organizing can be understood and practiced.
Jha is explicit about her own situatedness as a Christian pastor, activist, and community
organizer as well as the inherent messiness and failures that are inevitable with this work.
This book gives the feeling that you’re glimpsing a compilation of Jha’s sermon outlines,
activism speeches, and classroom lecture notes. While this mashup is at times experienced
through repetition and explicit Christian terminology, it serves as a palatable appetizer to
those new to community organizing and development.
The book’s design enables the reader to take one particular chapter and sit with it, engage
in further research sparked by the chapter’s topic, and discern how the described practices
can be incorporated into their own work. For those wishing to expose students to a variety
of avenues to engage the local community, they will find this book can be easily broken into
separate themes, lessons, or research projects. While each section could stand alone, the
entire book provides a rich meal which leaves the reader with a grounded optimism that
each person can work to heal and transform their neighborhood. This encouraging and
552 BOOK REVIEW

easy-to-read work combines practice and belief in a way that equips, inspires, and calls the
reader to action.

Lindy E. Desciak
Fordham University
lemerson1@fordham.edu

# 2020 The Religious Education Association

https://doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2020.1711580