Community as Event

    What is a community of faith? This seemingly simplistic question is actually fraught with complexity and nuance. Furthermore what is it that I am looking for in a community of faith? These are very real questions for me and I feel compelled to externalize them in the interest of analysis. This line of questioning obviously assumes first and foremost that I am genuinely interested in deconstructing not only what a faith community is but also my own experience and expectations. I must also confess that in even beginning to address these questions I will be unable to begin to engage with the totality of the thing. 

    For many I believe a community of faith conjures up ideas of what I will call a creedal based community. Loosely speaking this model can be described as a group of individuals who connect on the basis of intellectually assenting to the same sets of propositional truths or doctrines. Now I don’t necessarily think there is anything inherently wrong with this approach thus far. I suspect we all do this to some degree or another. However I do believe it has some nasty tendencies. Speaking strictly from personal experience this model has demonstrated the proclivity to emulate the country club. This then becomes indistinguishable from the ethos of the mafia as they love only those with whom they identify. These groups become entrenched in an us versus them mentality. The room for questioning becomes increasingly diminished as time goes on. Admission and continued membership becomes to be entirely predicated upon unwavering outward allegiance to the party line. Much more can be said of this model but suffice to say it is not one I am interested in joining. 

    The next model is one in which the proverbial tent is made as big as possible to incorporate as many perspectives as attainable. Here much energy is spent frantically keeping the peace and not committing to anything. The level of commitment here is arguably much lower. Furthermore the level and nature of expectations from the member of this group is substantially different. In other words the tendency for this group is that this affiliation lacks any significant performative discourse in their daily lives precisely because they do not expect it to. Again this another model that I want no part in. 

    However, what if a community of faith viewed itself not so much as centered around the paradigm of intellectually assenting to the same or different sets of propositional truths; but rather as the place in which to expect to experience an event that radically transforms ones own intersubjectivity.? This model does not attempt to relegate our differences to insignificance. Instead it attempts to create a space in which one can temporarily suspend those differences. Within this space one must enter expecting to encounter the divine and to focus on how to react to this unnameable benevolent presence. This I think requires a high level of commitment to creatively deconstructing our own man made gods. With this approach it is essential to be constantly reminded that we never discuss the nature of the divine but rather only our understandings of the divine. This however is daunting for many because it fails to become a consumable product. This paradigm demands the banishment of our utilitarian ideals. It refuses to capitulate to the demands of reductionism into guides of self help. It invites one to radically embrace the complexity and ambiguity inherently present in our every day lives. This is a community that I desperately want to be a part of. This I think is one of those topics that requires further reflection. However for now I will stop and ask you to please push back and engage with what I have written thus far.

Comments

[Eric Nelson]

Not to be the wet blanket here, but what evidence (historical, sociological, or otherwise) do you have that these three models of fellowship are in fact distinct? If we take your distinctions for the moment and look at "credal" communities, most people (I would argue) have no idea what their fellowship "believes" when they become, and for the most part as long as they remain, a member. Just ask around among the common members of any fellowship. People may even disagree vehemently with the nominally credal underpinnings of the fellowship and cling to membership our of a loyalty to the community and a belief that the community can transcend its credal limitations. This is to say that, at ground level at least, experience precedes, and continues to trump, creed. The same really goes for the big tent model, it seems to me, except that the credal foundations are ecumenical rather than sectarian.

Usually, however, both of these kinds of organizations begin with, and maintain, groups of individuals who self-identify (or are recruited by other self-identifying individuals) as called to what they understand as a genuine and purified experience of the divine. Radical transformation, the rejection of "compromise" (defined in the group's terms) in favor of purity of experience, and deconstructed and allegorized texts are among the common elements. Now, I think that I would argue that it is this experience around which the edifice of any fellowship, even those with elaborate creeds and corporate structures, exists, but that's not the point right now. The point is that by the time you are using language like "expect to experience an event that radically transforms ones own intersubjectivity," "one must enter expecting to encounter...and to focus on," and "requires a high level of commitment" you're using the language that the inner sanctum of the other two models (which, I would argue, are in fact the same model) uses. So perhaps your third model isn't really any different. Perhaps what you're looking for isn't really a new model, but a way to enable the experience of the divine you're after without engaging other elements of social structure that you find debilitating, distracting, and detracting. For this, it seems to me that there are more profitable places to start thinking about how to do this than deconstruction, even if you want to utilize deconstruction at the heart of what keeps the focus of your fellowship in the right place.

[Thomas Just]

Thank you so much for your feedback! I agree that there are certainly far more models than I have described here. I also understand the nature of strict adherence varies from group to group. I am not sure if you are trying to argue that most congregations lack a robust theology with which I would probably be inclined to agree. However there is a difference between a community that centers itself around assenting to certain propositional truths and one that revolves around birthing an experience of the divine. For example there are those that are integral parts of a faith community and have been deeply affected and yet at the same time do not intellectually assent to the propositional truth of the ontological existence of God. There are also those that strongly believe in the ontological existence and have also been equally affected in the same space. I hope this makes sense! Thanks for the push back!

[Eric Nelson]

Sorry for the delay -- didn't mean to abandon you. Christmas Interruptus. I think what I'm getting at in the first instance is that there may not be fundamentally different models for human beings to form and maintain communities (any more than there are different models for horses to form herds, bees to form hives, and so on). What you may be looking for is a way to suspend, interrupt, excerpt, or subvert a social and communal process inherent in community formation and dynamics.

A lot of the kinds of things that you are talking about, (birthing and experience, for example) are found communally in the liminal and ludergic phases of rituals. These are generally, however, encapsulated *within* communities/congregations/fellowships instead of constituting them. There are some social/community organizations that do focus on this experiential aspect, but they tend to come together temporarily and then dissipate before too many of the other social and communal propositions (even the proposition that we are not going to be about propositional truths is a kind of propositional truth) can take over. You may be looking for a kind of "faith community" that works something like Burning Man or (and I'm not kidding here) the Eleusinian Mysteries. However, even here a social organization that holds to propositional truths, social hierarchies, and all the rest of the messy mechanisms exists or existed behind the scenes to make the experience possible from year to year.

But if such a group event could be formed, would that, in itself, really constitute, or create, a "congregation" or "fellowship" or "community of faith"? (I feel that there may be some kind of equivocation in these terms.) I don't know. If ritual theory is to be believed, the transformative power of liminal periods is contingent upon the non-elective moving from one relatively stable and defined state to another within the larger community. Without the social and communal (not individual) enforcement, the experience becomes individually exiting non-transformative, a "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" kinda thing.

This isn't to say that making the effort is not worthwhile, and cannot be done. I'm just saying that you may want to think about form before you think about content. I find your explorations very interesting.