Revitalizing communities
Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer, academic, and author (sometimes viewed as a modern-day Thoreau), recently wrote: “The collapse of families and communities—so far, more or less disguisable as ‘mobility’ or ‘growth’ or ‘progress’ or ‘liberation’—is in fact a social catastrophe” (Christian Century, April 3, 2013).
His main concern, among others, is that governments cannot effectively exercise familial authority, nor can they “enforce communal or personal standards of moral conduct.”
Such issues are also of deep concern to another Kentucky resident, Christine Pohl, who writes eloquently and helpfully about them in her book Living into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us (Eerdmans, 2012, paperback). She is professor of Christian social ethics at Ashbury Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.
Pohl suggests that every organization and every church (her main thrust) has encountered grumbling, envy, exclusion, deception, and even betrayal. These experiences make life together difficult, and prevent people from developing the skills, virtues, and practices they need to nurture sturdy and life-giving communities—gratitude, promise-keeping, truth-telling, and hospitality.
Those are the four areas Pohl explores, drawing on her own concrete congregational experiences, and interacting with biblical, historical, and moral traditions. She wastes no words: “The best testimony to the truth of the gospel is the quality of our life together.” She says that our lives are knit together not so much by intense feeling as by shared history, tasks, commitments, stories, and sacrifices.
Pohl points out that Jesus risked his reputation and the credibility of his mission on the way his followers lived and cared for one another (see John 17:20–23 ). “How we live together,” she insists, “is the most persuasive sermon we’ll ever get to preach.”
She suggests that the cultural emphasis on personal freedom and self-fulfillment has left many people lonely and emotionally fragile. Her answer? “Good communities and life-giving congregations emerge at the intersection of divine grace and steady human effort.” And although her book focuses strongly on pastors and leaders of communities, she is quick to emphasize all these concerns are just as likely to arise in families as they are in church congregations.
“How we live together,” Pohl insists, “is the most persuasive sermon we’ll ever get to preach.”
In her observations on gratitude, Pohl writes that this “involves knowing that we are held secure by a loving God, and that the God we worship is trustworthy, despite the nearly unbearable sorrow we might encounter along the way.” But she also makes it clear that “promise-making, promise-keeping, fidelity, and commitment are central to how we relate to God and how God relates to us.”
This dovetails well with Pohl’s remarks on the importance of truth and truthfulness. She points to the wisdom of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, who warned people that if they were dishonest and denied God, “Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness cannot enter” (Isaiah 59:14, New Revised Standard Version).
Pohl insists that “people who love truth build others up with it rather than using it to tear them down; much of our truth-telling should involve affirming what is right and good.” She adds: “Being truthful is not only about speaking hard things, but discerning the whole picture with gentleness, humility, and patience.” Or, as the writer of the book of Ephesians put it, “speaking the truth in love” (4:15 ).
I think that many of you who read Living into Community will be propelled from your armchairs or park benches to share its ideas with those nearest you, and start speaking and living its truths.