Mission & Vision
We support local leaders seeking to build strong communities.
Our Mission
The Center for Social Flourishing promotes a decentralized vision for addressing social and material poverty grounded in the creative capacity of the human person. We engage leaders of civil society, businesses, and churches to promote the conditions for people to lead good and fulfilling lives.
Our Vision
Human and social flourishing depends on the health of certain institutions essential to human development including the family, the church, local associations, and businesses. Civic and political action should support these institutions, not replace them. Policymakers must be especially attentive to the health of these institutions in communities of need, where they are often fragile.
Many of the dominant humanitarian approaches to poverty over the last decades have been grounded in a mechanistic worldview that has treated social problems as technical difficulties to be solved through public policy and large-scale service programs. This approach has focused too narrowly on meeting material needs, often at the expense of deeper human needs.
The Center for Social Flourishing advances a decentralized vision for addressing social challenges. Through this vision, we seek to empower community leaders and encourage local agency in tackling the many social challenges facing Americans across the country.
Four Animating Principles
I. The human person is free and responsible.
At the center of everything we do is the Christian understanding of the human person. Every person is a unique, unrepeatable subject with reason, free will, and dignity. Even in the most difficult of circumstances, people have the capacity to make choices that better their own lives and those around them. Every question about poverty, policy, and community must begin with this understanding of men and women: They are the protagonists of their lives.
II. Subsidiarity protects the social fabric.
Flowing from each person’s capacity for self-determination and personal responsibility, the principle of subsidiarity provides a framework for determining the proper structure of help. Subsidiarity holds that it is a “disturbance of right order” to take from individuals, communities, or organizations what they competently can do for themselves or those they serve. Higher authorities, such as the government, have a duty to provide assistance (subsidium) when needed, but always with respect for personal autonomy and local competence. As it protects the dignity of individuals and smaller organizations, subsidiarity is relevant to all sectors of society but is especially important in addressing social and material poverty.
III. Charity seeks the complete good.
Charity is a hallmark of both personal virtue and a good society. The word derives from the Latin caritas meaning love. An act of charity is an intentional willing for the good of another. With respect to assisting people in poverty, charity is distinguished from paternalism and humanitarianism, which tend to deny agency, suppress autonomy, or focus primarily on material concerns. Authentic charity, by contrast, seeks the “complete good” of another person. This addresses material needs without neglecting higher social and spiritual goods. Authentic charity is the proper response to men and women, who are made in the image of God. Charity always communicates, “It is good that you exist.”
IV. Commercial and civil society are mutually reinforcing.
Work and enterprise are the ordinary means by which people provide for their families and build communities. Business can not solve every problem, but participation in commercial society is key for personal empowerment, upward mobility, and a complete human life. For “economic opportunity” to matter, a certain amount of “economic agency” must exist that depends on health, training, education, and mentorship. In other words, the quality of a community’s commercial society is intrinsically linked to the health of civil society institutions outside the marketplace, where personal formation happens. Likewise, a vibrant civil society depends on the energy and resources of a strong commercial society.
7 Pillars of Social Flourishing
Strong communities depend on a complex ecosystem of institutions and conditions. Our work highlights seven “pillars” that support the conditions for human and social flourishing.
PILLAR 1 — THE HUMAN PERSON
The Judeo-Christian tradition understands the human person to be unique, unrepeatable, and created with inherent dignity. Men and women are endowed with freedom: the capacity to act, to choose, and to take responsibility for their own lives and the lives of others. Each man and woman bears God’s image. Therefore, no person is simply an object to be managed or a problem to be solved, but a subject whose flourishing is the very purpose of economic and political life. All institutions, technologies, policies, and social trends and systems have value insofar as they serve the capacity of men and women to exercise their God-given freedom and responsibility.
PILLAR 2 — FAMILY
The family is a natural community and the primary setting in which human beings grow, belong, and thrive. The family is not a creation of the state nor simply a product of social convention. Rather, parental authority and responsibility comes from “within” the family. Family life teaches people to love and sacrifice; it is where values are passed down that bind communities together. It is the place where a person is never “replaceable,” but valued simply for his or her own sake. Social science research confirms what everyone today has experienced first or second-hand: when families break down, people suffer, especially children. The family is not simply one lifestyle choice among many. It is the indispensable environment in which people are formed.
PILLAR 3 — CHURCH
Men and women have a spiritual nature. It is in relationship with God that each person is affirmed that he is “someone and not something.” In the Christian tradition, Jesus reveals God to man and “fully reveals man to himself.” Churches play an essential role where individuals and families are formed, supported, and oriented toward something beyond themselves. Just as no person is meant to live in isolation, no family can flourish alone. Faith communities have historically been the connective tissue of human society, binding individuals and families into communities of meaning, accountability, and mutual care. Through the power of grace and the support of a church community, people have overcome the most difficult challenges and been able to transform their lives and the lives of others.
PILLAR 4 — CIVIL SOCIETY
This is the genius of free societies: the habit of citizens forming associations to solve problems and build a common life. Between the individual and the state exists a rich ecosystem of voluntary associations, including nonprofits, charities, neighborhood organizations, schools, civic clubs, and cultural institutions. The health of both the market and the state depends on vibrant civil society and vice versa. Institutions of civil society are essential for developing the most distinctly “human” aspects of community life and culture, including service, education, sports, leisure, and the arts. It is also where personal formation happens outside the home. Local civil society is key to the development of personal agency and an expression of subsidiarity in action.
PILLAR 5 — COMMERCE & OPPORTUNITY
Work and enterprise are the ordinary means by which people provide for their families and build prosperity. Access to meaningful economic participation is not a luxury. It is a precondition for the kind of life everyone deserves the chance to live. Likewise, work is not merely the means of survival. It is a source of dignity, purpose, and participation in the broader life of one’s community. The normal path to prosperity for individuals, families, and neighborhoods runs through economic opportunity: the ability to start a business, find meaningful employment, trade freely, and build something of lasting value. A thriving community is one where people earn their way. This is not because charity is wrong but because self-determination is good and proper to free men and women.
PILLAR 6 — INSTITUTIONS OF JUSTICE
Functioning legal and civic institutions are the often invisible underwriters of thriving communities. These include rule of law, private property, enforceable contracts, access to impartial courts, and free association. They are easy to take for granted. Where they are absent or dysfunctional opportunity and dignity suffer, as does the ability to build, plan, trust, and invest. Just social institutions do not guarantee that an individual or community will succeed, but their absence makes it nearly impossible.
PILLAR 7 — GOVERNANCE & POLICY
Good governance serves and protects the common good. Government and policy are not the source of human happiness, but they do have special responsibility for guarding the conditions in which individuals, families, and communities can thrive. Good governance follows the principle of subsidiarity, respecting the freedom and responsibility of smaller communities and intervening only when lower authorities or institutions need the help. Government must be strong where it should be—in protecting rights, maintaining order, and ensuring justice—and restrained where it should be, leaving families, communities, and civil society freedom to flourish on their own terms.
Why is any of this important?
The technocratic paradigm of large-scale social services has disrupted the natural communities where people flourish.
Siloed programs designed to solve specific aspects of poverty have often been inattentive to the key role that the family, local institutions, and commercial society play in building a complete life. Poverty is a human problem that requires solutions rooted in relationship and reciprocity. Our mission is to promote a decentralized vision for building strong communities and solving social problems grounded in the creative capacity of the human person.
What do we do?
The Center for Social Flourishing promotes the animating principles and pillars of social flourishing through film, conferences, a partner network, and research. Our work supports and convenes local and regional leaders seeking to address challenges in their neighborhoods and cities.
Film & Media
Our team produced a feature-length documentary and creates other media about social and material poverty in the United States.
Research
Affiliate scholars employed by the center contribute to a growing body of knowledge about what makes individuals and communities flourish.
Conferences
Our conferences, lectures, and workshops form leaders and reframe thinking about poverty, shifting mindsets from combatting poverty to promoting the conditions for justice, flourishing, and prosperity.
Partner Network
We foster collaboration between individuals and organizations across sectors, convening and supporting leaders intent on building up their communities.
