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.
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?"
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.
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.
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