THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN COMMUNITY

The Church in local community is key to social change and social demonstration. The Church involves those absolutely crucial dynamics without which there can be no community. I use the word "church" to talk about two things: the sociological forms and the undergirding human dynamics. For the former I also want to use the term "local religious institution." For the sake of this talk, it does not really matter what your particular religion is, or whether you think you have ever participated in religion or piety, theology or comparative religions. What really matters is that throughout history, the dynamics of the Church­­ and the concretion of those dynamics in local religious Institutions­­ has been absolutely critical in the history of society in particular and in genera . The issue for today is the recovery, the reforging of the local religious institution, not for its own sake, hut for the sake of the society.

I have made the decision to love the local religious institution. I do not like it at all, but I have decided to love and care for it. In pondering this decision, I realized that loving the local religious institution meant not only loving the Methodist Church of which I am a Dart, but the entire Christian Church; and then it shocked me to realize that this meant not only the Christian Church, but any and all religious institutions which have participated in forging history up to this point. This means that if I were giving this talk to Buddhists in Sri Lanka, or Hindus in India, or to Muslims in Egypt, I think I would give essentially the same talk.

1.

Bergson captured the essence of the role of religious institutions in history when he said that every time a "mystical awareness" comes into history, it permeates the fabric of society. It is held in being by sociological forms until a new mystical breakthrough emerges and then the old forms break down. Instead of "mystical awareness." I prefer the words image of humanness," or "new image of what it means to he society" for describing what comes into being. This new image then solidifies into social form and structure so that it can be sustained and guarded, and preserved for history. The social configuration I have chosen to call the local religious institution, or the Church, plays such a role­­ maintaining and communicating an image of humanness for the rest of society.

Religious institutions are as old as history itself. They are part of what history is. It is nonsense to believe one can somehow separate secular and religious history. A tour of the Museum of Natural Science makes that perfectly clear. From man's earliest dawning, the pot he made to carry water carried more than water, it carried the story of his life, the understanding of his origins, destiny and vocation. He implanted the stuff of his life on the sides of the not used to carry the mundane stuff called water from the river to the fire pit. Throughout history, man has always found ways to carry his meaning with him in artifacts, ritual, rites or stories learned at the feet of a guru. Through such forms, man has expressed the meaning being the sustainer of human community, being the guardian of what it means to he man or woman, tribe or nation­­ a people before the Mystery in life.

How religious institutions are temporal, public, historical happenings. They come into being under the rubrics of a particular world view, the objective thereness of the times. A particular social setting -- perhaps the desert, mountains or river valley - shapes the way in which the encounter with what it means to be human is imaged, remembered and preserved. Once this happens, that world view literally determines the social structure that will exist.

Confucian ethics serve to illustrate. It literally expressed how one was to act as a human being in China; it articulated what were crucial values and what was not. It is no wonder that in trying to forge a new image of what it meant to be China, Mao found it necessary to undercut Confucianism - not so some new social formulation could happen in the society. When the essential life articulation is being guarded as it should be within a religious institution, then it continues to shape the picture of life for the entire people.

Thus, religion's destinal role is to allow men in any age, culture or society to grasp the significance of human existence and to forge out society's structures. As an institution, religion is always concerned with plumbing the deeps present in the secular society and articulating them irrelevant images. Thus it is a public reality. It functions as part of the social fabric. Only when it becomes disassociated from the human reality does it turn in upon itself.

In our time, religious institutions are in such a crisis­­ not because they are naughty, or because people have stopped participating, but because of an objective happening in the world. Our world view has done a total flip in such a way that the mythology which was part of the public, secular, temporal existence of man continued in one direction while the world, in its self­understanding went in another. The public religious institution therefore, became the private, religious club. which assumed a different world view than the one in which man actually found himself living day after day. This created a radical void in symbolism, training and vocation which has allowed confusion in man's self story. This is our present predicament. This void is not exclusive to Western cultures or to Christian religious institutions; Buddhism, Shintoism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism are in exactly the same situation because of the dawning of the Einstinian postmodern world we live in.

Yet, this also means that ours is a creative moment and at the same time a dangerous cone. For It is a time when people are living virtually devoid of mythology. It is a time, when, perhaps, the tyranny of reduced life­images could simply take over. Perhaps that is why in a time like this, mystery religions are having a new day. People are again searching for a story of what it means to be vocated, what it means to be human. In this time of crisis and possibility a new articulation of spirit deeps is being sought. I like this quotation from Theodore Roszak:

I believe the religious renewal we seek happening about us means that we have arrived after long journeying at an historical vantage point from which we can at last see where the wasteland ends, and where a culture of human wholeness and fulfillment begins. We can now recognize that the fate of the soul is the fate of the social order.

Certainly it is not new to us that the world is in a time of crisis and renewal. Prophets of the future have been saying that to us for a long time. But there are some who suggest that the present crisis means the demise of religion. I do not think that is a viable possibility. Man has to have a way of articulating the story of what it means to live in his world. Therefore, if throwing away religious institutions is not the answer, one has to ask the question, "what is the underlying reality, or the underlying dynamic, to which every institutional form has been and is always pointing­­ either successfully or partially?"

III

We have worked with the question of the dynamics of the local church for some time. In part of our curriculum, we talk about the elements or dynamic components of any primal community using the language of primitive cultures. We talk about the ever­present dynamic of the shamans, or those who always discern the spirit deeps, the spirit edge of any community. They do this not only for the religious of the community, but for everyone. There are also those who hold the cultic in being, who hold the story, the dance, the liturgy, the drama, the life meanings. And there are also those who forge new directions In human settlement. I do not know what to call them anymore; they are the pioneers, hunter­warriors, builders. We have called those people who hold the dynamic of the spirit deeps the Cadre. I like to add the suffix "ing" to cadre, just to remind myself that I am not talking now about a social structure, but about dynamics. Congregationing holds the cultic aspect; and the forgers, or builders express what we call guilding.

The congregationing dynamic symbolizes or dramatizes the story of humanness, not for its own sake, hut for the sake of keeping a story of what it means to be human in history. I like to think that Greek Civilization collapsed when people stopped acting out those dramas which the local citizenry came to for the entire day with picnic baskets to hear stories about the gods and the human struggle. That is an Image of what I am talking about, whatever other historical factors may have caused the collapse. In so far as this dynamic is always present In community, it becomes solidified­not in a negative sense of the word­­ but it becomes solidified into a society's religious form, or it religious institutions. The dynamic itself, of course, is always much more than the institution, but it Is not other than the institution.

The congregationing dynamic also awakens self-consciousness. I like the picture of the Australian Aboriginals who are sitting around a log learning from an elder. This is the seminary dynamic; it is teaching the deepest wisdom about life and doing this very practically.

Signaling corporate style is the third dimension of the congregational dynamic, forging out for society its practical styles of life. When the Christian Church was public in North America, insofar as it was part and parcel of the fabric of society, Sunday was the unquestioned, undisputed day of rest. There was also no question a~ out an appropriate style for men and women, or style of human care and ethical response. Whether or not one participated self-consciously in that congregationing, it formed your basic images of what the style of existence needed to be. Such is the role of the congregationing dynamic. Perhaps the entire dynamic is about facilitating vocational engagement. This is not to say some particular vocation, nor any superficial implications of the term, but vocation in the sense of facilitating man's depth engagement in the history­making process.

Cadreing is about releasing spirit deeps. It involves those who seek the necessary means by which man expresses the profoundness of his human journey. Part of this is shaping the futuric vision, or discerning trends, the great surges of history, and the contradiction present in society. It has to do with seeing the direction society needs to move and beginning to create images for that direction. There is also the function of training in the practical means, or being the ones ­­like others throughout history­­ who create the methods for understanding, for action and for spirit sustenance necessary for any society. Further there is the dynamic of developing representational servanthood. I suspect if we trace man's history through that screen, every nation or tribe would include those who developed a radical embodiment of total care and expenditure as a key to the sustaining or forging of a new direction for community.

In guilding, I include initiating social demonstrations. Guilders are those who forge out the necessary directions by standing before the mystery of life and in their particular situation, see what is necessary, and create a sign of hope concretely for men to see. They are those involved in engaging human resources. How do you motivate, how do you recontext, educate and give new images of engagement to humankind? They are involved In formulating structural care. It is this dynamic which seeks to determine the organization

al forms and sustaining networks that allow all to have access to the benefits of the society and release their passion and participation for the sake of the whole. Sustaining total expenditure describes the whole dynamic; expenditure toward the future of any community. When a community fails to see itself expended toward the concrete future, then it begins to disintegrate; it begins to fail. It fan's to be able to engage its people.

1v

Obviously, for our times, religious Institutions are in need of renewal or reforging. I do not like the word renewal; it sounds like an attempt to do the same old thing bigger and better. That Is not what I mean. t prefer the word reforging. The key to tints reforging will be a new mythology, a new morality and a new deity.

Mew mythology cannot be suddenly thought up. It does not entail sitting around dreaming up neat stories; the new mythology will emerge from the stuff of the post­Einsteinian world. Religious institutions do not create an "interesting" mythology for the times. Instead, they give new direction and voice to the mythology already present in the society. Religious institutions formulate the myth of the times into rituals, rites, stories, celebrations, dramas and songs. They relate them to the existential happenings of the age and ground them in concerts and rational frameworks. Certainly an aspect of responsible reconstruction of religious Institutions Ts the clarification of the insights present in both the long-standing mythology and the rational frame. When people see their gifts and limitations they experience a permission to move through them into a re­articulation for the future.

The suburbs are a microcosm of some of the crises of our times. They strike me as places with no sense of origin and no awareness of a destiny. By "no origin", I mean they have no story to tell about their roots. By "no destiny", I mean they have little vision of where they are going or what role they play in the creating of history and society. They contain a void in the articulated significance of what it means to be a corporate body or an individual in history today.

New morality arises from the fact that we live in one globe, one world. Man sees indicatively his responsibility for every other person, or that life is utterly interdependent. How does this effect what It means to care responsibly in our times? We are moving away from private, communal or family images of what morality is, to a set of images that take the entire globe into account. The new morality is requiring methods by which man can act out kits engagement in the world. Every social vehicle has with it understood methodologies, the common sense of how you act and be, of what to value and what to abhor. When a social vehicle collapses, so do the methods which spelled out significant and responsible action.

Such mythologies are necessary for significant engagement. The question is what are the necessary methods by which one can be human­­act humanly­in the twentieth century? How does one think in a relative, global context­with the knowledge expansion and self-consciousness of our time? It is almost as if once you have moved into the new world, everything you thought was "think" before, is now "unthink." The creation of the new morality has to do with methods delivered to people that illuminate ways in which they can be engaged.

We also have the new Piety to consider. Piety has something to do with the necessary discipline and rubrics by which the individual and the community can maintain steadfastness in living; it is the means by which they can plumb the deeps of their own Interiors, individually and corporately, and can be sustained in their resolve to be engaged in life as they stand before its absurdity and wonder. Somehow the new Deity has to be a means of seeing through to the meaning of the mundane we are in­­which is the only "in" there is to be in. It also must provide a means of experiencing the human journey. The old forms of piety worked, if you will, in another world view. They do not work in our present one.

You may have observed that local religious institutions are often reluctant about renewal. This always irritated me until I realized that the local religious institution is called upon to be a guardian. This is a great historical role to play and it demands of us that we have clarity and comprehensiveness in moving into the future. It calls into question quick moves, and surface responses. It pushes us to deep reflection in making change.

And yet, the local religious institution wants to be what It is called to be in its very foundational dynamics. The seeds are in its midst. The people who care and yearn to be engaged in the future are there. We need to find the means for its reforging. I suppose sometime down the road this will result in a new social form. Such a form is emerging; not because we are doing anything, in the first instance, but because God is doing something in His world. I have no conception of the new form, and in some ways, I am not yet much interested in that question. But I am Interested in the means by which we prepare for the reshaping of these present religious forms, structures, and dynamics as they move toward what they are called to be in the creation of primal community.

V.

What is called for is a revolutionary or transestablishment force within primal community at the point of our work with local religious institutions. The task is not that of reforming. Most plans for local religious institutions I know anything about are reform projects. That is, finding ways to get things back to the way they used to he in the old social vehicle and world view. This stance expresses a radical "no" to the future. Another option is revolt. To say, "We don't need religious institutions anymore," is to revolt. Remember when during some of our courses a few years ago people would indicate that the best first step in renewing the church was to burn the buildings down? That isn't heard much anymore, interestingly enough. Revolt is a way of saying a "no" to the past. The revolutionary or transestablishment is one who sees the depth insight of the origins of any religious articulation, in any structural articulation, and says "yes" to both its greatness and its perversions. He takes hold of both and moves into the future.

The local religious institution has got to be dealt with if you are going to deal with primal community. Either you must work for its renewal or kill it. Those are the only two choices I see. I think Mao took the route of killing it­­ not killing the dynamic of the church, mind you, but the religious institution. In fact, in Hong Kong, you can buy parts of the buildings and symbols which were dismantled and moved across the border during the Cultural Revolution. It was Mao's way of dealing with the fact that the religious institution sustains the old social vehicle in being.

Our understanding is that you work through the local religious institution and move it, always sensitive to its own interior struggles in moving forward. It is our work to enable people within the church to embody the dynamic of the local church in community.

All this calls for catalytic tactics and indirection. For the past four years in local churches across the country we have been Involved in illuminating the depth meaning behind everything that is being done so that what is being done can be transformed in a twentieth century world. We have done this so that the meaning of the mythology, the meaning of the training, the meaning of social action can be radically metamorphosized into something which moves ahead. Releasing methodologies that illuminate the thinking and action necessary for the post­modern era into the life of the local churches serves to point toward the new mythology, and thereby release the means by which local churchmen who already care for community can act out that care significantly.

This entire process is both local and global. The concern for local, religious institutional renewal is not for the sake of its own community, but for the sake of the role of all religious institutions across the globe. Unless that happens, there is no reason to bother with the religious institution in my community. However, those institutions are the only place where I can concretely act out my concern for the totality of that social form and its role in primal community.

I think this is the right time. Not only is it the right time within Christian institutions, but within Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, etc. The conversations we have had with various religious groups, over the past two years indicates that each has a fantastic awareness of its role as guardian of the human element. Each, too, has to go through a metamorphosis. The Church in local communities is the key. It Is interesting that years ago Augustine said, "The church is the congregation of the human race." The church dynamic is a microcosm of social direction and human depth. It is essential to primal community.

Regardless of what your particular religion is, or what particular form of piety you practice, or whether or not you participate self-consciously in any form of worship, if you love, if we dare to care for primal community, we have no choice but to dare to love the local church in order to recover our roots as a society, and move through them into the future. This gives us the freedom to do the necessary, revolutionary deed and gives us the possibility of creating the future.

Social Methods School 12­17­74

Revised 3­5 ­75