Article July 23, 2012 Issue

Embracing communities worldwide

Kim Shippey, Senior Staff Editor

In a recent essay, Stephanie Paulsell of Harvard Divinity School spoke of human beings as “searching creatures, in need of community and care.” She observed, “Surely this is one of the greatest gifts of God to us: that through what we love and what we share, we reach one another in knowable and unknowable ways” (Christian Century, April 4, 2012).

A prolific author who has focused in recent years on the role of community life in healing local and world problems is Yale theology professor Miroslav Volf, whose own upbringing in war-torn Croatia shaped his approach to community in all its forms. He spoke recently in Boston about ways in which people can relate to others of differing views, creeds, or convictions (see Items of Interest, Sentinel, April 30, 2012).

Elsewhere, Volf has made it clear that exploring to what extent Christians and Muslims have similar conceptions of God and inhabit a common moral universe is essential if differences are to be negotiated, discussed, and adjudicated. And he wrote a whole book on the option of forgiveness “through a life lived in response to the God of grace and through a community that makes the practice of forgiveness meaningful” (Free of Charge, Zondervan).

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