With God on Our Side

Chapter 5 Religion and Social Movement Practices

1 Introduction

Practices define social movements. Movements are what people hope, dream, and plan for, but above all they are also what people do. We cannot understand social movements without examining different practices, the meanings they hold for activists, and their relations with other aspects of movements, such as ideologies, overall strategies, and outcomes. A systematic, comparative analysis can help illuminate the reasons faith-based activists do what they do, including things that appear to have no practical significance, such as praying before the start of a demonstration, or the ways that activists link acts of charity, such as feeding the homeless, to larger goals of structural ...