Dove Power, Serpent Power

The Power of Faith-Rooted Community Organizing

March 11th, 2025 | One Collective

Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra is a Lutheran pastor and prominent figure in faith-centered community organizing and social justice. She is the co-author of three books - Faith-Rooted Organizing, Buried Seeds, and God’s Resistance: Mobilizing Faith to Defend Immigrants - and currently teaches at Fuller Theological Seminary in the school of Mission and Theology. She also serves as the academic dean for the seminary’s Centro Latino. Her areas of expertise include the church’s unique contribution to social transformation movements and encouraging churches to live out the call to holistic ministry.

Justice-Based Transformation

To say that community organizing is Dr. Salvatierra’s area of expertise would be an understatement; she has been intimately involved in grassroots movements for justice within the church for nearly 50 years. From a young age, she remembers feeling a strong sense of right and wrong, sharing, “I always felt very strongly about injustice, but I didn’t have any hope that true justice was possible… Coming to know Jesus at 16 changed that. I came to believe that if the power behind the universe cared about people suffering unjustly, then there was hope for justice.”

With a desire to help people, Dr. Salvatierra started studying psychology and social work in college. She notes that, “In these classes, I was being taught how to help suffering people adapt to their situation.” However, through an internship with a public housing development, she discovered a more specific passion. “I had an experience working with a young girl who had been sexually abused by a family member, and I remember thinking and feeling ‘I don’t want to help this girl adapt to her situation - I want to change her situation and prevent others from being in a similar situation.” From this experience, Dr. Salvatierra shifted to study community organizing, with a desire to help reform the systems in place that contribute to suffering and injustice. With this, she defines community organizing as “collective action for systemic change.”

What makes Faith-Rooted Community Engagement Stand Out?

From her wealth of experiences engaging in faith-based community organizing, Dr. Salvatierra has become known for developing a concept based on Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 10:16 - what she refers to as “serpent power” and “dove power”. She describes serpent power as exercising wise judgment that takes into account the brokenness and selfishness of people, planning and advocating accordingly. In her words, “To be wise as a serpent is to recognize that often, the dominant motivation of people is self-interest, because we live in a broken world.”

At the same time, dove power is an anchoring belief and hope in God’s grace to empower people act in ways that are selfless and others-focused. “Sometimes people do hold on to power for dear life, no matter the consequences. But that’s not all people can be. Everyone is made in the image of God, and with him capable of sudden acts of sacrificial love and moral courage. The art of dove power is bringing out the best [that God is working] in someone.’”

Dr. Salvatierra has seen the need for - and effectiveness of - both dove and serpent power in her decades of work. One example she emphasizes that showcases both is her experience in the Central American Sanctuary movement of the 1980’s.

During this time, she joined local churches in the United States offering sanctuary for Christians fleeing from Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador due to religious persecution. Nearly 1 million Central Americans fled to the U.S. asking for asylum and political protection, but were not granted protection from the government due to a myriad of political motivations. In the midst of this, local churches stepped in to offer sanctuary and shelter, protecting and preventing their fellow followers of Jesus from being forcibly returned to danger.

Dr. Salvatierra reflects, “when the churches both sheltered people and advocated for changes in the law, this was a visible sign of the church standing with and suffering with people who were being treated unjustly.” Over the course of the next decade, continuing to offer shelter and advocate for policy change led to successfully convincing the government to change their stance - again, through a combination of serpent and dove power.

A second, related concept that Dr. Salvatierra has developed and experienced living out is what she calls chaplaincy to power. She describes this practice as speaking truth to people in power and advocating for change, while also maintaining a desire for them to know and come to follow Jesus with their hearts and actions. She reminds us that, “there is a long Biblical tradition of God’s people moving the hearts and minds of leaders, and this comes through relationships.” She also notes that chaplaincy to power entails encouraging right action. “Encouragement,” she says, “is the art of giving courage. This means helping those in positions of power have the courage to stand for what is right even when it may be a risk or loss for them.”

Encouragement for Practitioners

Dr. Salvatierra also offers a few points of encouragement and challenge for those who work in community development or advocacy spaces.

First, she shares, “I would start with the reminder that you are not leading this journey but are instead being led by God. Being part of community development and transformation is part of Jesus’ mission - but you are being called to the whole mission, the whole world, and the whole church. You are not the center of things.”

Second, Dr. Salvatierra encourages those coming from Western and/or individualistic cultures to examine and resist their own individualistic impulses. She says, “For my Western friends, the impulse is to think you can control or predict something if you just have the right amount of knowledge. But that is not how faith-rooted community transformation works. Instead, it works by being formed in relationship with others who have been doing this work for a long time.”

She also warns that individualism can lead to feelings of despair when working against injustice. “Despair comes when you only pay attention to what you have accomplished, or what your friends have accomplished. Individualism blinds us to the broader story of what God has done throughout the ages.”

To combat this, Dr. Salvatierra encourages people to pursue intentional mentorship and practice decentralizing their own experience. She shares, “These practices help us learn how to do work without trying to be in charge, learning from and working in partnership with others. Both being up close and doing the work, and keeping your eyes on the big picture and on Jesus, is needed to combat despair.”

Finally, Dr. Salvatierra draws attention to the difference between every Christian’s call to work towards justice and individuals who have a spiritual gift of justice. She describes the spiritual gift as, “feeling injustice done to anyone, anywhere as if it’s happening in your own body - and not being at peace until you do something about it.” She emphasizes that those with the spiritual gift of justice, like other spiritual gifts, are not meant to shame others for not having the same vision, but instead are called to, “inspire and guide the church in living out its calling.” She concludes that people with the spiritual gift of justice, at their best, see the world collectively. “If you have the spiritual gift of justice, you see the pueblo - the whole community - both in the need and in the response.”