Faith in Action
Savannah Community Memory Project 2024 Residency
"Faith in Action - Perspectives on Savannah's Inter-Faith Community"
The City of Savannah’s first Savannah Community Memory Project (SCMP) Residency Project, "Faith in Action: Perspectives on Savannah's Interfaith Community," was selected through a competitive process and focused on interfaith action across the city. Over time, the Savannah community has seen impactful efforts that have brought together Savannahians of different religions, races, classes, and ethnicities. These actions take shape in formal and informal ways, both individually and collectively, across houses of worship, groups of citizens, businesses, and not-for-profit organizations. The Faith in Action residency project recorded the oral testimonies of Savannah's inter-faith community with a wide diaspora of community leaders, historians, and citizens from different walks of faith and experience. The project aimed to illustrate for posterity how efforts toward forging these connections serve to bolster the Savannah community at-large and how doing so plays a major role in defining and redefining the character of our city.
The Faith in Action residency produced final products available to the public at Interfaithsavannah.org:
- Educational website, including teaching resources designed for 8th grade teachers and students in Georgia (teachers of other grade levels and the general public may also find value in the material):
- “In the Beginning” section supports GA Department of Education’s Grade 8 – Social Studies GA Standards of Excellence (GSE) [SS8H2]; after completing readings and videos in this section, students should be able to describe diverse faith landscape of early Georgia colony and a few key faith-related events and phenomena in Savannah’s history
- “Faith in Action” section explores current and past social initiatives
- “Common Ground” section weaves a rich tapestry of the interviewees’ insights into Savannah’s diverse and interrelated faith traditions
- “Teaching Resources” offers quizzes, essay questions, and additional reading suggestions
- Teacher training session (recorded February 2024): this recording reviews the educational website
In 2024, the project team produced and filmed interviews with 32 individuals. The entire archival collection of interviews is preserved and accessible online through the City of Savannah Municipal Archives (linked through the Interfaithsavannah.org site or directly through the Municipal Archives), including time-coded reference videos (MP4 format) and full-text transcripts (PDF files).
About the Savannah Community Memory Project: The Savannah Community Memory Project (SCMP) is a wide-ranging initiative of the City of Savannah's Municipal Archives to preserve and share a more complete history of Savannah's diverse communities in their own voices. Under the SCMP umbrella, the Municipal Archives: partners with neighborhoods to conduct community archiving events (visit our Voices of Savannah portal to watch oral histories that have been collected); partners with community organizations to preserve Savannah's LGBTQIA+ history through the Proud Savannah History Project; hosts a SCMP residency to facilitate the creative collection and interpretation of community memory; and trains communities to collect oral histories through the Memory Partners Program.