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The Church: Can It Sustain Community
| Article
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18337 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1990 |
4,326 Words |
| Author
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Robert Wuthnow
Robert Wuthnow is professor of sociology at Princeton
University. The author of numerous articles and books on
religion and cultural issues, his recent publications include
The Restructuring of American Religion (Princeton, 1988) and
the Struggle for America's Soul: Evangelicals, Liberals, and
Secularism (Eerdmans, 1989). |
Miriam Waters says the church is her life. It instructs her, nurtures her, helps her to be more caring. She feels comfortable there. The people share her values. When they need help, she helps them. When she needs help, they help her.
The church Miriam Waters belongs to is not in some sleepy little town where elderly ladies gather on Thursday afternoons to make quilts. It is located in an affluent suburb of Knoxville, Tennessee. The people who go there are busy professionals. Miriam's husband is a middle-level executive in a large electronics firm. She herself is the director of a prospering day-care center.
For centuries, the Christian church has been the mainstay of community life in Western society. In the Middle Ages, people lived within walking distance of the church, woke to its bells, took their animals to it to be blessed, and followed its calendar. After the Reformation, people formed their own churches and hired pastors who lived as they did. In our own history, the church was first an integral part of the colony, then of the town, and later of the neighborhood.
But now our society seems to be at a loss for community. Critics say that we have become a nation of individualists, obsessed with our jobs, our bank accounts, our feelings - our selves. We live in anonymous places, jealously protecting our personal privacy, and whatever hopes we entertain of finding a warm, supportive community are threatened by our incessant moving about and the pressures that impinge upon our time.
The question that faces us, then, is whether the church can still be a vital source of community or whether it, too, is beginning to succumb to the impersonal forces that fragment our society. Students of American religion have begun to debate this question with increasing interest but as yet remain divided. Some see continuity with the past and even a rebirth of interest in the communal value of religion; others envision a declining role for the church. The evidence that can be pieced together from surveys and from talking with people like Miriam Waters provides many indications of the vitality of American religion as a facilitator of community but also points toward some worrisome signs for the future.
The Varieties of Community
The church's role in sustaining community can be understood in several different respects. Within the
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