wfn.org | Church Is Best Equipped to Rebuild Communities

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

11-February-1997 
97078 
 
         Church Is Best Equipped to Rebuild Communities,  
        Sociologist Bellah Tells Redevelopment Conference 
 
                      by Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
SAN ANTONIO, Texas--In an age when communities of all kinds are crumbling 
and individualism is the prevailing ideology, only the church "can offer a 
community that was here before any of us were born, that will be here after 
all of us die and that binds us to one another because it binds us to 
Christ," famed author and sociologist Robert Bellah told some 280 
Presbyterians gathered here Jan. 23-26. 
 
     The gathering, "Rebirthing Congregational Ministry in a Time of 
Transitions," was sponsored by the Church Redevelopment Initiative Team of 
the General Assembly Council and included pastors, laypersons and governing 
body staff persons involved in redevelopment ministries. 
 
     In the first of his two keynote addresses to the gathering, Bellah -- 
an Episcopal layperson, professor of sociology at the University of 
California at Berkeley and co-author of the groundbreaking "Habits of the 
Heart" -- painted a gloomy picture of a world characterized by "capitalism 
without restraint -- without a moral framework -- that is both the most 
creative and most destructive force in the world." 
 
     The disintegration of institutions and societies in the face of the 
rise of technology and the globalization of the economic order has created 
an America in which "all the primary relationships in our society, those 
between employers and employees, between lawyers and clients, between 
doctors and patients, between universities and students are being stripped 
of any moral understanding other than that of market exchange," he said.   
 
     "I have even heard one bishop in my Episcopal Church who calls himself 
the CEO of the diocese, with the implication that the clergy are employees 
and the laity are the customers," Bellah mourned.  "A more complete denial 
of the body of Christ would be hard to imagine, and we know that consumer 
Christianity is not confined to the Episcopal Church," he added. 
 
     With income inequality at its highest point in history, Bellah said, 
current American socioeconomic life can be characterized as consisting of 
three classes: an "overclass" living in the safety of elite suburbs, an 
"underclass quarantined in surroundings that are unspeakably bleak and 
often violent," and a new "anxious class" trapped in "the frenzy of effort 
it takes to preserve their standing." 
 
     The responses of all three classes -- for different reasons -- are a 
tendency toward individualism at the expense of community.  The "overclass" 
retreats; the "underclass" is excluded and alienated; the "anxious class" 
withdraws out of what it perceives as necessary self-preservation. 
 
     As an example of  "American private affluence and public squalor," 
Bellah recalled a story told by political pundit James Fallows about 
walking down a street in Manhattan and finding every public telephone out 
of order while people whizzed by in their BMWs and their Mercedeses while 
talking on their cellular phones. 
 
     Modern technology and globalization of the economy have rendered 
employment obsolete, Bellah asserted.  "The economy, it seems, doesn't need 
many jobs -- at least, not well-paying jobs, though that is where the 
wealth is," he said.  "The society badly needs jobs, but at every level 
this need is not being met because it would not be profitable to supply 
[jobs]." 
 
     Our churches, therefore, are filled with people who have "doubt about 
the soundness of our society and anxiety about its future."   
 
     And yet the core belief of Americans -- more so than in any other 
society in the world, Bellah said -- is "that economic success or 
misfortune is the individual's responsibility, and his or hers alone." 
 
     But the biblical tradition, which Bellah called "a second language" 
familiar to most Americans, "teaches concern for the intrinsic value of 
individuals because of their relationship to the transcendent" and that 
"the individual is realized only in and through community."  The "American 
experiment," Bellah said, "is a project of common moral purpose, one which 
places responsibility on citizens for the welfare of their fellows and for 
the common good." 
 
     This sense of community, which Bellah called "a cultural theme that 
calls us to wider and wider circles of loyalty, ultimately embracing the 
universal community of all beings," is what Jesus was talking about in the 
parable of the good Samaritan, he said.  "Any community short of the 
universal community is not the beloved community." 
 
     And yet, Bellah continued, current socioeconomic forces threaten 
community precisely when it is needed the most.  "We are facing trends, 
particularly downsizing and downgrading the workforce, that threaten our 
basic sense of solidarity with others, solidarity with those near to us, 
but also solidarity with those who live far from us, those who are 
economically in situations very different from our own, those of other 
nations," he said.  "Yet this solidarity, this sense of connection, shared 
fate, mutual responsibility, community is more critical now than ever." 
 
     American religious groups "have the strongest hold on their members 
and almost alone have the capacity to reach individuals in every class," 
Bellah said.  And the church's role in restoring true community is an act 
of conversion, he added.  "Today conversion certainly entails a turning 
away from a hard individualism toward a deeper understanding and practice 
of community." 
 
     Moreover, he concluded, "If the churches do not take up the issue of 
our deepening social divisions -- in the world, not only in America -- who 
will?" 
 
     What does the church have to offer?  "Care of souls," Bellah answered. 
"We can offer an understanding of ourselves not as isolated atoms in danger 
of dropping into a personal abyss, but as souls created by God and destined 
for community with God, with other human beings and with everything that 
is." 
 
     Care of souls, he continued, only occurs "when we proclaim an 
orthodox, full-blooded Christianity and when we show forth in our lives 
that we profess by our faith."  Such profession, Bellah said, "cannot be 
reduced to a set of cognitive propositions or simple moral imperatives." 
The popular slogan "Jesus Is the Answer" is true, he said, "but even more 
deeply Jesus is the question, the one who calls into question every aspect 
of our personal and interpersonal lives and who shows the inadequacy of 
every answer that claims divine sanction for human claims." 
 
     Christian faith, Bellah insisted, "comes alive when it is lived in 
community -- above all, when it is lived in worship, in the word and 
sacrament, which heal us and transform us and which reaffirm our membership 
in one body."  People don't just come to church for answers, he said, they 
come to church for warmth and acceptance.   
 
     And the fragility of people's relationships with their churches 
shouldn't be surprising, he continued.  "The problem areas of religion are 
endemic to the culture as a whole," Bellah said.  In families, marriages, 
workplaces -- "in every case the very viability of a coherent form of life 
is endangered by uncertainty and insecurity, which pressure individuals to 
put a priority on individual self-interest at the expense of long-term 
loyalties." 
 
     And so, Bellah said, "church renewal, to make any sense, must be 
undertaken with an awareness of the enormous need for a renewal of 
solidarity at every level, and not just in our own society, but in the 
world." 
 
     But the church must meet people where they are, he insisted, and 
people are coming to church "with injured and needy selves.  They must be 
shown that they are souls in need of salvation and what they ought to find 
in church is God."  Bellah, quoting theologian Marcus Borg in his new book 
"The God We Never Knew," said, "Congregations that are full of God are full 
of people." 
 
     The model of God that "speaks to us most directly today," he said, "is 
the model of God as spirit, the model of God in the fourth gospel."  In 
John's gospel, Bellah explained, "the central understanding of the 
divine-human relation is relationship itself, belonging, membership: We are 
all members of one body." 
 
     In John's gospel, Bellah continued, "eternal life is not something in 
the future, but something here and now in Jesus Christ."  That immanence of 
God with us means that "we participate in salvation through Jesus Christ. 
In the model of God as spirit, the Christian life is centrally about 
participating in God's salvation" -- of the individual and of all creation. 
 
     "In short," Bellah concluded, "a joyous, God-filled congregation is 
not just a hospital for the injured, but a place which sends us out to do 
the work God has given us to do" -- work of salvation, transformation, 
redemption and, ultimately, community rebuilding. 

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