By Cuyler Dunn, Kansas Reflector
Good Faith Network is only about three years old. But the group of Johnson County religious leaders is already five years ahead of schedule.
When members started pushing the Johnson County Board of Commissioners to create a crisis stabilization center before 2025, the county said it was unlikely anything would get done before 2029.
But the Good Faith Network kept pushing, and the center is now slated to open soon.
“That’s a big victory for us,” said Ali Haynes, a co-president of Good Faith Network and pastor at Indian Heights United Methodist Church. “The network really helped to get that conversation going, and really pushed it and said this needs to happen.”
Each year across Kansas, elected officials stand on stages and pledge to implement wide-ranging policy proposals in front of thousands of religious congregants, organized as part of the DART network.
DART, which stands for Direct Action and Research Training Center, has planted 31 advocacy groups across 10 states. It focuses mostly on laying the groundwork for local groups, which can choose the topics most suited to their communities.
There are five DART organizations in Kansas: Johnson County; Lawrence; Topeka; Kansas City, Kansas; and Sedgwick County. Members come from a range of faiths and denominations.
The groups have been a quiet force across the state, setting wide-ranging goals and often achieving them. The results include expansive housing projects, education initiatives, public transit upgrades and more.
“We are bringing proven solutions to public officials,” said Emily Fetsch, lead organizer for Justice Matters in Lawrence. “And the reason why we’re bringing it to public officials is because they are the ones who can implement things and get things funded.”
Advocacy to action
Tim Suttle, a pastor at Redemption Church in Overland Park, helped start Johnson County’s DART group. One of its first challenges was finding the right name. The Johnson County Interfaith Justice Organization didn’t roll off the tongue.
The group kept returning to one suggestion: Good Faith Network.
“It has a lot of meaning,” Suttle said. “Working in good faith with one another, but also good faith — the best of our faith — looks like this, looks like justice.”
DART network groups operate on a yearly cycle, starting with small meetings in which leaders listen to the concerns of congregants. Then, they form research committees that spend months diving deep into issues and connecting with experts.
“Our Sundays or Saturday nights look very different from each other, but it’s still grounded in the same value system,” said Eileen Stulak, associate minister of operations at Unity Church of Overland Park.
In recent years, Good Faith Network has moved much of its advocacy to the same subject as many other DART groups in Kansas: homelessness and affordable housing. Homelessness has recently risen across Kansas.
In Johnson County, city officials set a target of reaching functional zero homelessness by 2029. That means that cities provide services to prevent homelessness and ensure it is rare, brief and one-time in the community.
“We’re the richest county in the state,” Haynes said. “And so there’s absolutely no reason why anybody should go with nothing.”
Lawrence has spent the last few years debating how to best help a growing homeless population. Justice Matters, the DART network group in Lawrence, has been at the center of the issue.
Its initial interest was in providing a warm place for people experiencing homelessness during the winter, spurring funding for a shelter. But members knew their work needed to be broader. Justice Matters pressed city and county leaders to pledge to reach functional zero homelessness by 2028.
“We didn’t want to just manage homelessness,” said Ann Spangler, co-president of Justice Matters. “We wanted to end it.”
After DART groups finish their research, the cycle culminates with an assembly, where members present their findings and call on those in power to make changes. This year’s annual gathering in Johnson County drew more than 1,500 people.
Justice Together, a DART network group in Wichita, got its start two and a half years ago with a meeting of 20 congregation leaders. In May, the group held its first assembly with about 1,400 people. Rabbi Andrew Pepperstone, a Justice Together co-president, said growth has been rapid and produced real results, citing Kansas’ jump in rankings of mental health care access.
As Justice Together grows in Wichita, Pepperstone hopes to see an even bigger multi-faith coalition. DART network groups can avoid debate on more controversial issues by focusing on areas of consensus.
“Faith communities can broadly get behind these issues,” he said. “We’re giving each other a lot of grace and understanding.”
Pepperstone said DART groups make clear to elected officials what they are researching and preparing to advocate for, trying to avoid surprises at the annual assembly.
“We’re not coming to them protesting the problem,” he said. “We’re coming to them with research and effective solutions. … It’s never going to devolve into booing or jeering. It’s good. It’s going to be professional and persistent.”
Mike Kelly has witnessed this persistence first hand, serving as chair of the Johnson County Board of Commissioners since 2023.
During his term, he’s met with leaders of Good Faith Network a dozen times. He said the goals of the commission and Good Faith Network often overlapped during his term, and he appreciated its support and policy solutions as the county works to serve vulnerable populations.
Kelly, who is a litigator for his day job, said he doesn’t mind the direct approach but knows it has rubbed some commissioners the wrong way. He encouraged Good Faith Network to focus on the aligned goals of the two groups and continue supporting the county’s work.
“These problems are not easy ones to solve,” Kelly said. “I think that recognition of the work and the passion on both sides of the issue is important when we come together.”
Topeka JUMP was the first DART network group in Kansas, starting 12 years ago. Co-chair Melodene Byrd said justice work has roots in her family. She is the youngest of 12 children and watched her dad fight for justice in the 1950s and 1960s.
Because Topeka JUMP has been around the longest, it has tackled the most campaigns. The group has pursued multiple mental health efforts, erected housing for those battling addiction, expanded access to public transportation and provided thousands of students with mental health care access.
“Knowing that the work that I do is not in vain,” Byrd said. “It’s helping others to have a better life because I believe in common unity for all in the community.”
Building bridges, not divides
As Suttle and other early leaders of Good Faith Network picked their name, they weren’t just focusing on what the group would do, but what it would stand against.
Despite most Americans strongly favoring the separation of church and state, data from the Public Religion Research Institute says that about one-third of the country supports Christian nationalism, including about 40% of people in Kansas.
Christian nationalism, the belief that the United States is inherently intertwined with the Christian religion, has become the topic of news coverage, books and documentaries tracking the rise of political movements and networks leveraging Christianity for political gain.
Suttle said while Good Faith Network’s focus is local issues, it offers an alternative vision of how religious groups can interact with politics.
“Bad faith is really, really distracting,” Suttle said. “I mean, look around. Bad faith is wreaking havoc on our world. And we don’t want to leave the world to bad-faith actors. A documentary about really boring committee work, you know, this is never going to happen. But it’s happening. This is not flashy.”
The Mainstream Coalition is a nonpartisan political organization founded in the 1990s aiming to protect against growing extremism and uphold the separation of church and state.
Laurel Burchfield, advocacy director at Mainstream Coalition, said she has seen the work of Good Faith Network in defining a view of Christianity opposed to Christian nationalism.
“They are people deeply in the faith community who are looking inward at the way that organized religion has and can impact our communities,” she said. “And they’re using that power for good to oppose the way that religion can be twisted to attack people.”
Both the Mainstream Coalition and the DART network are faith-based organizations encompassing multiple belief systems. Burchfield said this allows the groups to bring many perspectives to important conversations.
The combination of faith and justice has shaped some of the country’s most important history. But history also highlights a tension that still exists today: Justice means different things to different people.
“Jesus was political,” Spangler, a Justice Matters co-president, said. “I think he bucked the system and held people accountable. And it made people uncomfortable. That’s the Jesus I follow, and so, therefore, we’re not partisan, but we are political.”
Christopher Koliba, a professor at the University of Kansas, has researched civil society, divisions of church and state and political accountability. He said the history of religious groups and justice movements in the United States has deep roots, reaching back to the country’s founders setting clear separation between church and state.
Religious groups in the 19th Century both justified slavery and were integral to the abolition movement. More recently, religious groups have taken vastly different stands on issues such as abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Koliba said he thinks climate change could be an issue that drives this tension in the future.
Koliba said Christian nationalism has added a new element to the integration of politics and religion by directly promoting candidates, which many religious groups have long avoided. DART network groups do not endorse candidates.
“It’s a wrangling within the New Testament interpretations of what Jesus’s intent was in his preachings,” Koliba said. “So really, at the heart of this is a deeper understanding and kind of the soul of Christianity.”
Suttle said when he looks around at a polarized political landscape, he’s comforted by the hope he feels with Good Faith Network.
After spending the last few years hosting its annual assembly in Church of the Resurrection’s 3,500-seat sanctuary, leaders say they want to see Good Faith Network outgrow the space.
Its strength, after all, comes in numbers.
“This is slow work and you can’t always see the progress,” Suttle said. “So you need a network of people locking arms going, ‘Don’t give up. We’re walking. We’re going this direction. Let’s keep making slow progress.’ ”
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