The Idea and Practice of Community

January 15, 1967
Plainfield

(and November 16, 1980, Lakeland)

The Idea and Practice of Community

David and Jonathan, Roland and Oliver, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were examples of the idea and practice of community. That is, they were persons who shared goals and [were] united [in] activity. The Children of Israel were a community welded by a covenant. The early Christian fellowships were communities created by common allegiance to the one they believed to be Lord and Messiah. Robinson Crusoe had Friday. The Lone Ranger was not alone for he was always part of a small community which included the ever-present, though inarticulate Tonto.

Too easily we forget that community is an absolute necessity for human living. In a staggeringly complex and demanding culture such as the one we share, we may fail to recognize the full implications of the idea and practice of community. I seek your reflection on these realities because unless our goals and practices have a positive effect on difficult problems, human institutions may collapse under the accumulating weight of neglected and unsolved issues. Whether your list of problems begins with air pollution and ends with the zero moment of world destruction, or is more abbreviated, the difficulties and possible solutions cannot escape the idea and practice of community.

I – What is community? The unabridged dictionary defines community as a “body of individuals organized into a unit or manifesting itself with some unifying trait.” A community is a group of persons linked by common interests. A true description of community would seem to include such characteristics as conscious sharing of purpose by the individuals without sacrifice of individuality.

Community is a necessity, not an option. "To be is to be with." (Gabriel Marcel) Community is not the ingenious social invention of some ancient Egyptian, Babylonian or Cro-magnon man but the universal, necessary condition required to be human. The main distinguishing characteristic is personhood. Essential to human living is a self-image. This image of self emerges in community – family, play group, school, occupation, civic life. The person, the "I", is developed by the variety of relationships that are encountered from birth onward.

Because I believe that experiences and insights applying to us all are described, let me paraphrase roughly the analysis used by Carroll Wise in his stimulating little book, PSYCHIATRY AND THE BIBLE (p. 23-4):

Every child goes through the stage when the expectations of his own age-group friends about hours kept, clothes worn, etc. are more important than the rules established by parents. The growing child, the developing young person wants to belong to his own age-group fellows and wants therefore to be like them.

To verify this comment, just observe the manner in which most young persons acquire the same general appearance – haircuts (or lack of them), miniskirts, dungarees, just to name a few characteristics. When styles change, one may count on most persons adopting whatever new look is "in."

Such behavior does not mean that these children and young people will grow up homeless conformists. If growth is healthy, the day will come when they will be strong enough to express individuality in ways that contribute to the group, rather than merely conforming to the group.

When growth is insufficient or maturity not fully achieved, the adult, who fully conforms, always, may be dominated by anxiety, conforming because of fear. On the other hand, the stubborn, incessant non-conformist is likely to be motivated by hostility, feeling compelled to force his ways on the group.

We cannot become persons unless community life – in family, school, church and later, fuller civic, occupational, and political relationships – defines for us the kind of person we should be. One cannot know himself except in community.

Paul Tillich understood this when he wrote (SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Vol. 3, p. 40/41), "Personal life emerges in the encounter of person with person and in no other way. If one can imagine a living being with the psychosomatic structure of man complete outside any human community, such a being could not actualize its spirit .... Therefore the self-integration of the person as a person occurs in a community within which the continuous mutual encounter of centered self with centered self is possible and actual."

II – But our lives as growing persons have become far more complex than the lives of those who lived in earlier ages. There was a time when community was knit together and the person's role fully defined. On the self-contained family farm expectations were clear, tasks well-known, responsibilities defined. Life was not easy, but one's personal growth occurred in a homogeneous community. This same unified set of community expectations remained true, largely in small-town America up to 70 years ago, more or less.

But whereas in earlier times, community was unified in its make-up and expectations, our communities are fragmented and multiple expectations are confusing. Most of us are members of many communities, beginning with family and job and extending into the diversified, and many times, contradictory expectations in various groups and organizations. There is no one community – family, church or job – where a life of meaning and developing personhood can be achieved in separation from many other communities. Self-contained living within one unified community is just not possible.

Not only is this true, but also we do not respond identically in the different communities of which we are a part. If a person is a church member, member of a service luncheon club, a director on the board of a civil rights organization, he measures his responses differently in these unlike situations. To demonstrate a different attitude, depending on which of his communities one is with, is not necessarily an indication of transient convictions or unprincipled behavior – although there are some who shift with every breeze. Rather, the communities in which we participate represent fields of force wherein differing vectors shape our attitudes, at least to a degree.

How can we build lives where meanings will develop and where actions will be effective in the absence of the certainties of an homogeneous community? William Birmingham, an informed Catholic layman and an editor, recently commented that the crisis of our time is in the civic order. He went on to put his finger on a condition which is a soft spot for many of us. He said that "a-moral familism," that is, judging goals and situations solely in terms of what is good for my family or what is bad for my family, is a primitive ethic. Yet that is the full measure of social ethics for many. Others would combine this “a-moral familism” with judging in terms of whether actions and attitudes are good for one’s job. This is hardly a less primitive ethic. Of course it would be unrealistic to ignore the community value and necessity of family and job. The primitive ethic description applies when community feelings stop with family and job.

Of course this is not a recent insight. The traditions of the Christian New Testament report that Jesus had the vision of widened community. As he was speaking to some Galileans, the gospel of Mark reports that the mother and brothers of Jesus sent for him, called to him. Some members of the crowd advised him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you." Jesus answered, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking on those who sat about him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister and mother." (Mark 3/31/35).

III – But finding goals and actions which can be commonly shared among numerous communities is a formidable assignment. Dr. Sydney Mead in an essay on Church History dealing with the difficulty of locating common ground, gave two illustrations which are illuminating as well as amusing.

"The one-time chancellor of the University of Chicago defined the University as an agglomeration of entities connected only by a central heating system. The President of the University of California has defined a university faculty as a group of independent entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking." (THEOLOGY I, p.77).

How do we generate some sense of authentic community feeling and action when community does not exist, but only communities? Each separate community – commercial, industrial, religious, civil rights, professional, social and golf clubs, tax payers leagues and study groups speak of an infinite variety of political and other groups – each wants its own values upheld and its particular goals to prevail. Professor McDermott of the Fordham faculty remarked that the greatest obstacle to unity is liberty – yet both unity and liberty are necessary.

I would suggest to you that the basis for community in the midst of communities is the concept of the overlap. When I was a boy, sometimes I attended the carnivals which occasionally camped for a week or week-end in my city. There were gambling games or near-gambling games wherein one could win a prize if he won the particular game, risking his dime on the hope that he could guess the number in a wheel game, throw a hoop accurately, or knock a chunky bottle off a shelf with a baseball. One game I remember was an overlap game. A circle was painted on the oilcloth counter; for a dime, one was given five small discs. If one could completely cover the the circle by carefully overlapping the five discs, one would win some useless and trivial gimmick. The game was difficult; it could be done, but there were few who did.

A common base for community may be something like unto those overlapping discs. But the stakes are crucial, not trivial. In the game, there was a common area; although each disc had its unique area.

When the many communities of our lives meet, we need to search for the overlap, the common ground as well as understanding authentic distinctions. Such a community feeling is not handed to us; it must be achieved. There exists this overlap, I believe, even when one is tempted to believe there is only separateness.

In our distraught world, there is an overlap of common ground even when one attaches the most pessimistic interpretation to current human events. Among all peoples everywhere there is at least the common ground of a mutual wish and will to survive. There are much larger areas of overlap to be disclosed if we accept that minimum area.

Or consider the appeal made to you, seeking your support to encourage positive action on the part of our City Government in applying to be one of the model cities envisioned by federal legislation. While I sense there is opposition and some cynicism, I feel also that there is considerable support from many diverse communities within our city. The beginning common ground is the hope to improve our city by united planning achieved by wide-spread support. In my guess, the overlap of common interest will expand if closer attention is given to what people need to live on; and live in; and live for. The common ground is that the human enterprise must achieve decency and dignity for all persons, not alone in far-away places, but right where we are. With such a beginning overlap, I have confidence that areas of mutuality of interest and concern will expand.

Ruth Nanda Anshen, the editor of the book series, CREDO PERSPECTIVES, ties this quality of relationship to the nature of life itself, "Life itself then is seen to be a creative process elaborating and maintaining order out of the randomness of matter, endlessly generating new and unexpected structures and properties by building up associations that qualitatively transcend their constituent parts." (From Preface, THE BRIDGE OF LIFE, by Sinnot).

IV – This can be taken at least one additional step. It is by building on the common ground that one creates peaceful change; it is from the common overlap that we are properly positioned to exert the lever of influence. If ideals are not for the purpose of shaping that which is becoming real, of what earthly value are they?

Change has always been agonizingly slow. An astronomer observed that there was a lag of 150 years between the time of Copernicus and the acceptance of his theories. Or consider that item recently printed in the "New Yorker", 12/10/66, telling about an English celebration marking the anniversary of the Great London Fire in 1666 and the formation of the London Fire Brigade in 1866. We humans are too much like that everywhere, are we not? 200 years elapse between the Great Fire and the organization of the Fire Brigade. "The problem with good people is that they are seldom capable of getting together to form solid opposition to what threatens them." (source?) I like the definition of a liberal written by Max Ascoli, editor of the REPORTER, "a liberal is a man who cultivates the skills that make freedom operational. He is always a man on special assignment."

In conclusion, I repeat that six -word sentence from the writings of Gabriel Marcel, "to be is to be with." Many of you know that the theological term, "theophany," refers to the revelation or appearance of a deity to human beings. In ancient Greek religion, the predictions of the Oracle at Delphi were trusted because it was believed that the Gods appeared there and gave the truth first-hand. Many of the legends and myths of scripture are stories of theophanies: God meeting Adam in the cool of the evening; God appearing to Moses on the Mount of Sinai; the god-like strangers confronting Abraham; God's voice at the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, and so on. The late Martin Buber, the Israeli philosopher whose writings have made such an impact on modern thought, believed that our age was one when God was eclipsed. Shadow hid his presence. But Martin Buber expected that this shadow, like the eclipse of a sun would pass, but unlike the sun, not soon. Buber also wrote, "expect a theophany (that is the appearance of God) of which we know nothing but the place and the place is the community."

To develop authentic community – a linkage of shared goals and united efforts may not bring the presence of God, but if such efforts contribute impetus to the achievement of the dignity of all persons and a recognition that each person deserves minimum levels of decency, it will be a sufficient beginning.