Held in Common

Alone, Suburban and Sorted

Richard Beck has a most interesting series of posts on suburban living here. Granted, it’s written from a North American perspective, but he’s very incisive and creative in his thinking. Here’s a taster, but all the posts are worth reading…

Specifically, I want to highlight one major facet of contemporary life in America: We rarely encounter difference in any meaningful way. For two reasons noted thus far. First, we are alone. Our civic disengagement, particularly our lack of bridging connections, gives us fewer opportunities to encounter people who are different from us. Second, we are sorted. The migration patterns of Americans over the last 30 years have sorted us into communities of like-mindedness. Thus, even if I do mix with people in my community they are likely to be people very much like myself. People who share my voting preferences, my religious beliefs, and my skin color. Again, we fail to encounter difference in these homogeneous communities.

My concern with these trends is that we rarely get to practice the skills of welcome, debate, listening, inclusion and hospitality. We begin to find difference shocking, deviant, weird and effortful to live with. Worse, as the research on group polarization showed us, separated from difference we grow more extreme in our views, demonizing difference rather than listening and learning to make room for strangers.

Isn’t church (ideally, at least) just the antidote to this kind of fragmentation? There we may (if we are fortunate, and if the church hosts this possibility): connection, welcome, debate, listening, inclusion, hospitality and difference. And, as Beck suggests, these values promote the very opposite of extremism.

What price community? (2)

This follows from my last post on this subject…

From Beck’s second post on this theme:

Many theologians consider bourgeoisie existence to be a kind of spiritual failure. Its focus on personal discipline (e.g., piety, prudence, thrift, sobriety) and its role as the engine of market economies makes bourgeoisie existence a pale vision of what Christianity should be or aspire to. Thus, there are frequent theological calls to reclaim or rediscover an identity, ethic, or mode of living that pulls us out of bourgeoisie existence. Christian living is to be more than personal piety and self-control. The Kingdom of God should not be squeezed into the bourgeoisie work week. A Higher Time, a Liturgical Time, should rule our lives rather than punching the bourgeoisie timeclock.

But for over 200 years, from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution to this very day, these theological appeals … have had little effect…

Why is bourgeoisie existence so resistant to change?…

The bourgeoisie have been then most effective psychological and sociological innovation the world has ever seen in creating both social peace and freedom from debilitating poverty. Consequently, any alternative mode of existence or identity will have to be equally if not more effective in creating peace and prosperity…

What price community? (1)

[This is going to be a bit of a demanding read for some…]

There’s a very provocative set of posts, called Bourgeoisie and the Frustrations of Theology, over at Richard Beck's Experimental Theology. Here’s a taster, taken from the first of three posts so far…

Behind just about every theological call for community… or Trinity or anti-Empire ethics sits the problem of the bourgeoisie. In these posts I'd like to explain how the bourgeoisie are the rock theology is banging its head against…

Behind every call for church to be "community" or a reclaiming of the "Trinity" or for an ontology of "being as communion" sits a background assumption. Community, Trinity, and "being as communion" are preached over against a prevailing norm. And that norm is the Western notion of identity and personhood.

As most are aware, the Western notion of personhood stresses autonomy, individualism, and interiority. This view of the self is relatively new and many theologians have noted its pernicious impact upon both theology and the life of the church. The recommendation is to reclaim a more ancient and more healthy notion of self, where people are not isolated individuals but persons who gain identity through communion with others. For example, God's very being is defined communally. Thus, the Western notion of selfhood flies in the face of the very fabric of existence.

The point is, almost every pernicious spiritual practice we see today has its root in a notion of selfhood that prioritizes individualism over [relatedness], autonomy over interdependence, and interiority over community. So the question is: If this Western notion of identity is so bad where did it come from? And why is the Western identity so hard to exchange if such better options are available?…

...[Plato and (especially) Augustine of Hippo are the historical causes, he argues]...

...The question theology must ask is: Can the bourgeois ethic be replaced with anything of comparable effectiveness?

Christian and Marxist revolutions are often being preached at the bourgeoisie. But it is very unclear what the bourgeoisie are to do on Monday morning if they are to pay the rent. So they get up and go back to work. And that is the root dilemma of modern theology. People go back to work. If you want to change this, to offer a true alternative, you need to carve out a new mode of living, one not contingent upon participating in a bourgeois career. Few people lambasting the bourgeois identity actually make an offer of this kind. A few cults do.

So in the vacuum of this offer people head to work on Monday morning. And if they go back to work, church life is going to have to fit in around the edges of bourgeoisie existence. Church life or missional living is always going to be fighting over the scraps of what is left over from the bourgeois work week....

This coheres well with what I understand of current church practice and teaching, at least in my own setting. Richard Beck’s argument is that it is not good enough to speak about community and 'joined up' living, while people are still choosing, or needing, to live out an inherited individualist, technologically networked,  lifestyle, right down to the roots of their very daily earning practices.

Plenty to think about here. More, perhaps, on this in due course…

Neighbours with Faith

We held a rather special event on Friday 28 March 2008 in Epsom, at St Joseph's Roman Catholic Church. With financial support via the Diocese of Guildford and the government's Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund, we were able to hold an event called Neighbours with Faith.

You can find a collection of photos of the event here.

The evening was planned and delivered jointly by the Epsom Anglican Group Ministry and the Epsom and Ewell Islamic Society.

We gathered together about 140 local Christians and Muslims (and a Rabbi!) and held a meal (Western and Eastern food) together. People naturally mingled, across gender and faith commitment. Our MP, Chris Grayling was present and spoke supportively, as did our Mayor, Cllr Jean Steer. Our keynote speaker was Rabbi Danny Rich, Chief Executive of Liberal Judaism, chair of the Kingston upon Thames Interfaith Forum, chair of the Dittons Branch of the Council of Christians and Jews, and a local magistrate. Local police Community Support Officers attended.

The aim was simply to encourage local Christians and Muslims to sit down, chat, eat together and enjoy each other's company. It was a great success, and it was vastly appreciated by all.

We don't know whether anything like this has been tried before, but it was certainly a first for Epsom!

We plan to hold another local event like this, perhaps in the summer - probably a barbecue across the Muslim and Christian faith communities.

Sacred...

This is just to let you know about the excellent, free "Sacred" exhibition at the British Library, on until 23 September.

They've collected together all sorts of early and other manuscripts and other religious texts from the three main monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam....

Christianity and other beliefs

Becky, someone I know from outside the parish, has sent me an encouraging email, with some questions in it. Here's an excerpt (with her permission)...

I've been reading this blog, and I've found it very interesting. I don't currently consider myself to be a Christian, I have my own set of beliefs, but I've often thought that Christian spirituality isn't very far from my own. One of the main things that put me off Christianity was the idea that it was very 'set in stone' when it came to religious texts, and that it was very dogmatic. I admit I'm rather ignorant of the contents of the bible. I know the New Testament better than the Old, and what I do know is from my childhood. Anyway, its enlightening to find that my perceptions were short-sighted.  I always wondered what theologians studied.....

I can't say that I am a Christian, but definitely inspired to find out more. And so I have some questions:...