Churches as agents of community change: An introduction to the issue

Abstract

Churches are enduring social institutions that play a critical role in the promotion of health and wellbeing. In this introduction, the function of churches as community change agents is highlighted. A brief history of the role of churches in shaping and transforming social systems is provided along with examples of recent church-based change efforts. Further, this issue presents six articles that explore church-based change efforts impacting relationship development, trauma response, wellbeing, pandemic response, and attitudes toward environmental justice. Each article identifies a specific social problem and examines how churches promote prevention and intervention efforts to address the problem. Overall, this issue suggests that churches continue to serve as a resource for community change and that helping professionals should seek to engage with churches when promoting health.

Keywords:

• Churches
• community change
• health promotion

Acknowledgments

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their help in editing this issue.