Valley Interfaith Action

Our Launch

On March 21, 2023, we launched the Valley’s first broad-based citizens power organization, Valley Interfaith Action. 

We brought together:

  • 561 Rockingham and Harrisonburg residents 

  • 26 member and discerning institutions, representing over 10,000 residents of Rockingham and Harrisonburg, and 30 visiting institutions

  • Leaders of Sentara-RMH, James Madison University, corporations including Perdue, Pilgrim’s, Shenandoah Valley Organic, and Virginia Poultry Growers Cooperative

  • State and local elected leaders including Senator Mark Obenshain, Senator Emmett Hanger, Delegate Tony Wilt, Board of Supervisors Chair Dewey Ritchie, and Mayor Deanna Reed

  • 104 new leaders committed to taking a next step with VIA

Together, we began not in protest, but in relationship. 

Together, we committed to crossing political, race, faith, and city-county divides to take measurable action on our priorities and support Valley families so that we can all live and thrive here.

Together, we committed ourselves to building a powerful organization so we can be co-creators of the Valley. Now and 20 years from now. 

This was the result of the hard work, perseverance, and vision of VIA leaders - ordinary people who share hope and belief in the power of ordinary people and their institutions to move the world from the way it is towards the way it should be. 

As Pastor Wilson West of The Church of the Incarnation invoked a world-weary Moses, he asked us, “Tonight, did you catch a glimpse of the promised land?” 

That evening, packed together at Bridgewater Church of the Brethren, on top of the hill looking out to the Allegheny Mountains, under a pink and gold streaked sky, we think we did.