Community is crucial because it helps private individuals represent themselves in the public space. Communities can be peer groups or hierarchical structures with a semblance of leadership (the Bible includes both types). The crucial point with each usage of the word 'community' is that we are shaped as individuals by how we each identify and by how we are identified. Surnames, for example, ensure children are located within a family group.
Communities, likewise, are influenced, for good or bad, by who belongs to them, who wants to join and who, if anyone, wants to leave. Israel split into Israel and Judah in the Old Testament Bible. Wales recently devolved from the United Kingdom, and women in our contemporary society frequently change surnames when they marry.
Within our political epoch, community is a watchword for democracy and it is also a beloved tenant of capitalism. Old Empires didn't always try to unify territories politically as nation states have been wont to do. Individual desires were inconsequential in the grand Imperial scheme. In our day, in our Global North, desire is fundamental to the functioning of groups and communities. We call it 'freedom of association' or, often when complaining, 'the right to assembly.' Desires to express our political will in a civic, public space, must be honoured, and this representation, that belonging to a group and convening gives us, has affected how we use the word.
Historical changes can have lasting effects on communities and how we decide who is in them and who is out. The Industrial Revolution relied on the movement of country communities to cities to supply workers for its factories in England. Women suddenly populated working classes (although were not always 'workers' in factories).
The Reformation created new communities of Christians all over the world, which deviated from Roman Catholic orthodoxy and enjoyed a renewed, reforming study of the Christian Bible. They interpreted holy scripture in novel ways. They did not rely on generations of scholars who had gone before. But it is problematic to classify the Evangelical religious into distinct communities. In contemporary Christianity, for example, the Global North is being re-evangelised by the Global South, there are new points of contact developing all the time that give rise to a fresh examination of identity.
We don't need to imagine how the internet has allowed us to represent ourselves remotely, birthing what we call 'virtual' reality, we can jump on a Skype call and try it out! Or we can boot up Second Life and attend a church service inside an avatar playground. I identify as part of a small group hosted in California. I join every week and the women I meet know the intricacies of my life. In spite of this I have never visited California. Nevertheless, California has affected my identity.
But representation is not equal. It is a universal fact throughout history that this community grouping over here is given better recognition than that one over there. We can see this in the online/offline debate about communion. Anglicans can't take communion online because the bread and wine has to be consecrated first, and this is not a feasible operation to perform on computer pixels. We may hear of a community that is starved of identity all together, continually contested or oppressed, as the first language Welsh community was until very recently in Wales.
We often find that community-building is a historical process. At Christmas I discussed existentialism with a bright young man I happen to know. I commented that existentialism is a theme that pops up frequently in literature, especially in post-war France or post-slavery America.
Existentialism is a philosophy that contends with the conditions of our lives and how we experience them. What is on the periphery of our existence defines our reality. In existentialism we become the heroes of our own story. Existentialism has even found its way into the UK's legal system, through debates on euthanasia and assisted dying. The heroes are those who suffer at the end of their lives, and the predicament is that others do not suffer, and that technology exists to relieve suffering permanently. A community has begun to form around those who wish to let loved ones terminate lives of THEIR loved ones without enduring criminal prosecution for unlawful killing. Talk about the power of the other! This is a community in which the identity of those who belong is formed by sharing an opinion on end of life care, and sometimes, though not always, sharing a life limitation that is a very severe chronic or acute terminal illness.
The conditions we exist against are as important as what we exist for and what our purpose is. This truism is not only Darwinian, and existential, but it is also Biblical.
The Israelites were chosen and on their periphery were the Gentiles. The Israelites were carried into exile and then the Israelites persevered as a people group against religious persecution and the destruction of their temple.
Jesus was chosen as messiah and existed against the historical, politicised construct of what a man who saved the Jews would look like, military, strong, and king-like, for example.
Why is this interesting to me? Well, it has been crucial to how I evaluate my life over the past decade, mid twenties to mid thirties. I'm now at the age where I have to decide if I'd like to perpetuate the human race personally and get pregnant in future, therefore what I exist against and what I exist for has become a loaded gun. It is time to be offensive, or defensive. Straddling communities can be a problem when you want to garner human resources and give everyone who belongs to you a feeling of safety.
Having a baby requires community integration beyond a surface level. First there is the partner, then the child itself, then the village I am told that it takes to raise the child, and we all know that before long women can start to feel extremely depressed and stuck. Children demand sacrifice and forever change the identities of their mothers. Something must die. My troublesome feelings, perhaps.
Dr Henry Cloud's newest book appears to be written in this vein: run away from stuck-ness, or at least count it that it may be a temporary situation, or serve a greater purpose in our lives. To clarify, in Cloud's latest methodology, stuck-ness exists in the context of community, outside of ourselves and between our relationships.
A good, wholesome relational connection exists, Dr Cloud informs us, in the context of three possible undesirable ones. The tagline of the book is that 'good relationships empower you and bad relationships weaken you.' Empower is a term first used by the World Bank, when that entity tried to help exploited communities create their own wealth to circulate and provide an income semi-autonomously. Empower is a word created to break the slavery of stuck-ness.
The premise behind Dr Cloud's book, 'The Power of the Other,' is that it is undeniable that others hold power over us, but we can chose how much through our choices. The book outlines relationships characterised by 4 sets of traits, in the first corner we experience loneliness & separation, in the second criticism & perhaps abuse, in the third, peer pressure & unrealistic expectations, and finally in the fourth corner, genuine connection & feedback based on actual performance, good or bad. This corner four connection, because it is loving and connected to our identity and mutuality in relationship, nurtures and encourages us to do better over time and to cope with what life has thrown at us.
I'm not convinced over whether I'm an introvert or an extrovert. I took a test and was split almost down the middle. But if my connections are of poor quality I would rather be alone than endure the pain alone. My mood drops pretty rapidly when I am alone, unless I have a distraction or am trying to accomplish a goal. But the pain I experience alone is far less than the pain I have experienced by being rejected, in critical or lonely relationships where I am torn down or isolated.
I enjoyed the following promo for Dr Henry Cloud's book, where the author Shauna Neiquest, daughter of mega pastor Bill Hybels, talks about her own extroversion and how she's learned to shepherd it for the benefit of her close circle whom she is connected to. I find it interesting that whoever we are, and whatever success we enjoy in life, no-one ever feels they've arrived safe, dry, and sure-footed where relationships and community are entangled together.
Watch Dr Cloud interview one of his friends, Shauna Niequist, here:
https://www.facebook.com/DrHenryCloud/videos/10154218033444571/?utm_content=bufferadae4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer