People of faith in Canada have a long history of engaging society as a whole in the search for the common good. The Faith & the Common Good Network sees itself as growing out of this context and experience. In this initiative, we draw upon the rich history of Canadian faith communities combining faith reflection and social analysis as a foundation for action.

At the same time - recognising the intercultural and interfaith society that Canada has become - we embrace new opportunities by bringing together the wisdom and experience from numerous faith traditions of the world in the continued search and struggle for the common good.

Beginning at the turn of this millennium (2000), the initial organizers of Faith & the Common Good recognized the diversity of religious and cultural perspectives that are now Canada and the need to find practical ways to work together on common good projects. We acknowledge our differences of culture and religious perspective but also our core beliefs that draw us together. This is represented in the Scarboro Mission’s Golden Rule poster and Faith & the Common Good’s Green Rule poster. Both suggest a basic human care for creation and each other as fundamental to who we are, and have been throughout history.

Since its inception, Faith & the Common Good has worked on issues of consumerism – how it impacts our spiritual, social, and economic ways of thinking – and on heath care as a basic right for all. In the “values” section that begins the Royal Commission on Health Care Reform, Roy Romanow attributes the input of the many religious groups that FCG helped organize and who participated at the hearings with influencing his recommendation that health care be considered a basic right of all Canadians with equal and fair access to all services.

Since 2003, Faith & the Common Good has focused on eco-sustainability (eco=economic, ecological, ecumenical) as a theme that embraces the ecological health of all and economic systems that support this well-being. Initially we did this through the theme of Renewing the Sacred Balance (RSB) as a way to emphasis that we need to return to a more balanced relationship with the planet so that all life can survive. This theme has been taken up more recently in our Greening Sacred Spaces theme. It both embraces this spiritual need to reimagine a different "cosmology" to understand our place in the cosmos and the practical ways that we can work to heal the planet and live in a new harmonious relationship to it. Our numerous Greening Sacred Spaces resources and links are available on this site.

As a final introductory word, it is important to see Faith & the Common Good as a network. We appreciate the variety of religious traditions that we relate to and don't seek to be a substitute to any of them. Rather, our task is to join with as many groups as possible in our common cause of seeking the common good. We recognize that we are one of many thousands of good groups seeking to make the world a better place. (For inspiration see Paul Hawkins’ Blessed Unrest website which demonstrates the ever-growing networks of justice-seeking organizations working in tandem to heal people and the planet.) Our efforts at FCG focus on the approximately 30,000 faith communities in Canada and the efforts these faith groups and individuals are making to live into a new faith/cultural ethic of eco-sustainability. This both honours the deep truths within each faith tradition while opening us to the value of forming and living in true community - small and large, secular and sacred.

Faith & the Common Good is intentionally interfaith and intercultural in its organisation and objectives because this is Canada now, and the Canada (and world) of the future.

To live interfaith/interculturally and with an eco-sustainable ethic is our vision.