On March 9, Samuel G. Freedman reported in the New York Times on the growing trend of Christian congregations’ closing their bank accounts at financial institutions implicated in the abuses that led to the mortgage crisis.  PICO National Network (People Improving Communities through Organizing) leads the campaign, which PICO estimates has motivated dozens of congregational organizations and their individual members to withdraw some $31 million from particularly complicit institutions, such as JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America, and deposit those funds in other institutions.  For more on this movement, please follow the jump. Read more