The Center for Renaissance and Reformation provides research and development services for educational and cultural institutions; government entities; and non-profit organizations. Across the country, there is a growing recognition of the need for intermediary organizations offering technical and research support to increase the effectiveness and capacity of “front-line” human services of mercy, justice, mentoring, and education. This support helps connect community and organizational needs with resources, especially volunteers, ideas, etc. (i.e. human capital). We have been involved in such research analysis and consulting with local foundations, non-profits and government entities for several years.

      CRR directs a team of research interns (college and graduate students) to apply their academic training to meet real needs in the community. Young adults are not consumers to be catered to or engaged in passive consumption of information. Instead, they are resources of blessing to the city. We hope to include students from local colleges and universities, as well as graduate students from other cities to contribute fresh ideas and help us plow up the fallow ground and stir up the stagnate pools that, if left unattended, are apt to dry up the spiritual and cultural life of our community.

How is your research distinguished from that other of other urban renewal agencies?

Our research is guided by cultural depth. Much current social science research focuses on snapshots, opinion polls, and public relations for making decisions about how to allocate time, resources, and attention. CRR takes a longer view, focusing more on qualitative research, including the humanities, the art of daily living, and cultivating virtuous habits. Research with cultural depth must consider the more concrete, but sometimes hidden elements of culture, such as: preserving beauty and tradition in the physical or built environment of cities, creating a legacy of beauty in civic art and architecture, restoring healthy neighborhoods, and building the physical and cultural infrastructure for strong, sustainable communities.

What role can reading and discussion groups play for invigorating the culture of cities? 

As we have conducted these groups over the past decade, we find that they create an environment for exchanging ideas, stimulating creativity, and strengthening relationships for spiritual challenge and encouragement. These sorts of lectures and discussions provide participants with historical and biblical perspective for urban renewal and continuing cultural education.

Are you affiliated with or do you advocate any particular denomination or sectarian position?

No. We are an independent educational non-profit seeking ways to begin and nurture conversations, cultural engagement, and community involvement with a variety of individuals and groups who share an interest in the long-term well-being of our city and its cultural life.

Why, then, do you focus on the Protestant Reformation? Wasn't that a time of religious divisions and animosity?

The personal, theological, and societal questions which surfaced during the 16th century Protestant Reformation started a conversation which shaped many of our most common assumptions about religious, cultural, and political life. Most of the major denominations in North America can trace their historical roots to the Reformation as it took shape in Switzerland. The Reformed (and reforming) tradition of the church represents a largely untapped resource for uniting North Americans in a thoughtful, constructive, and hopeful approach to restoring the foundations for long-term cultural renewal.

What is the value of cultural, historical perspective for city life?

At the beginning of a new millennium, many of the proposed doomsdays and utopias of the last century are less plausible. None of them have really worked out the way they were set forth to capture the public imagination or the public fear. There is a growing awareness of our spiritual slumber and cultural potential. The growing desire among young professionals in Chattanooga to do something about it is a hopeful sign.

The vision for CRR’s research is to boldly and consistently ask: What can we learn from our culture’s servant-leaders of the past? (their creeds and confessions; their creativity, fidelity, and passion for the good news; and the cultural flourishing which flowed as a result of their reforming habits)

What was Urban Renewal? What can we learn from Urban Renewal today?

Their were notorious disasters in urban planning during the 1960’s and 70’s which bore the moniker “urban renewal.” One danger of overly comprehensive planning or applying top-down micromanagement to renewal efforts is that they rely too heavily on experts who, because of their resources, are disconnected or removed from unforeseen consequences of large-scale policy decisions.

Another common fault was to consider only economic, geographic, or demographic factors in cities while ignoring important cultural, religious, and historical realities which play enormous roles in shaping the problems, along with realistic proposals for solutions, in city life. This ignorance is de-humanizing and only further complicates urban problems.

Also ignored are mediating institutions and the organic networks of relationships which they facilitate. Churches, neighborhood associations, community-focused non-profits are often under-acknowledged resources for renewing civility, responsibility, and cooperation – not in a monolithic, utopian sense of absolute unity, but in an unplanned, often untidy, yet effective movement for the renewal of community life.

The bottom line is that enduring, healthy renewal depends on maintaining a balance of planning and technical expertise on the one hand and a thoughtful consideration of cultural factors related to human dignity on the other. “Renewal” is now used to describe these more positive, de-centralized, grass-roots efforts, as well as market-oriented incentives (i.e. tax relief) for businesses and homeowners to refurbish and re-populate blighted areas.

What is New Urbanism?

Begun in the 1960’s and gaining momentum over the past two decades, New Urbanism is a movement offering some hopeful alternatives to the older planning models rooted in reductionistic modernity. As with any movement defining itself in terms of something “new,” it is in continual need of long-term historical and cultural perspective.

Author Eric Jacobsen and others are offering an interesting perspective on how historic Christian theology can enrich these discussions and help the New Urbanist movement avoid some its historicist tendencies (simplistically elevating some quaint historical era as a model for contemporary neighborhoods and cities).