Miriam Waters says the church is her life. It instructs her, nurtures her, helps her to be more caring. She feels comfortable there. The people share her values. When they need help, she helps them. When she needs help, they help her.
The church Miriam Waters belongs to is not in some sleepy little town where elderly ladies gather on Thursday afternoons to make quilts. It is located in an affluent suburb of Knoxville, Tennessee. The people who go there are busy professionals. Miriam's husband is a middle-level executive in a large electronics firm. She herself is the director of a prospering day-care center.
For centuries, the Christian church has been the mainstay of community life in Western society. In the Middle Ages, people lived within walking distance of the church, woke to its bells, took their animals to it to be blessed, and followed its calendar. After the Reformation, people formed their own churches and hired pastors who lived as they did. In our own history, the church was first an integral part of the colony, then of the town, and later of the neighborhood.
But now our society seems to be at a loss for community. Critics say that we have become a nation of individualists, obsessed with our jobs, our bank accounts, our feelings - our selves. We live in anonymous places, jealously protecting our personal privacy, and whatever hopes we entertain of finding a warm, supportive community are threatened by our incessant moving about and the pressures that impinge upon our time.
The question that faces us, then, is whether the church can still be a vital source of community or whether it, too, is beginning to succumb to the impersonal forces that fragment our society. Students of American religion have begun to debate this question with increasing interest but as yet remain divided. Some see continuity with the past and even a rebirth of interest in the communal value of religion; others envision a declining role for the church. The evidence that can be pieced together from surveys and from talking with people like Miriam Waters provides many indications of the vitality of American religion as a facilitator of community but also points toward some worrisome signs for the future.
The Varieties of Community
The church's role in sustaining community can be understood in several different respects. Within the Christian tradition itself, the word koinonia has always received special attention. It always received special attention. It connotes a group of believers who constitute a community of support - support both of one another's commitments to the faith and of each other's physical and emotional needs. In addition to this theological meaning, the concept of community has also held historical connotations in relation to the church. Because the fellowship of believers exists in space and time, it is of necessity related to their broader surroundings, particularly the village, town, neighborhood, suburb, or city in which its members reside. Finally, there is also an ethical meaning to the relation between church and community. The fellowship of believers is expected to be of service, not only to one another within their own group, but to the needs of others, whether this be the immediate neighborhood or the wider community of humankind. Each of these meanings of community - support,
...
Read Full Article
|
