In my last post, I described the boundary protected community and showed how in neighbourhoods and in the churches these tend to sustain the power of elites, both internal to these communities and external to them.
One way of challenging this is to consciously view community as open to the whole of humanity. Such a community would seek to overcome boundaries and offer a welcome to all people irrespective of their origins or beliefs. The problem is that this understanding, whilst theoretically acknowledging marginalised people, still tends not to hear them.
Churches do not exist in isolation from their neighbourhoods. Many have tried to isolate themselves, perhaps by drawing boundaries between the saved and those who are outside the community of the saved. But in fact context is everything. This is the point of my suggestion that we need to understand ecumenism in terms of transformational reception.
Wesley's idea of sanctification was in his view central to Christian life. The love within the community is expressed outside of it. So, when we engage with multicultural society today, and see the injustices that persist in our society, we can take a parallel view to Wesley in his response to the new industrial poor. The breakdown of neighbourhoods into self-contained factions, is as much the churches' failure as anyone else's. Indeed, it difficult to see anything in the relationships between churches, as good as they are, that might provide inspiration to wider society in its approach to diversity.
To what extent are the entrenched divisions between churches, derived from the repeated failure of churches to recognise strangers as fully human? When newly arrived black Christians were rejected by white Christians in the 1950s, this was based on a long tradition of prejudice. Is this entirely unconnected with the divisions within the churches? The maintenance of distinct traditions, however benevolent, will always encourage discrimination over a range of issues, not just nuances of belief.
If the churches are the means by which Christ makes himself visible to the world. Then it follows that prejudiced Christians cannot reveal Christ to the world.
Kim's view, see page 30, is that the sort of community that sees the whole of humanity as part of the community 'does hold potential for addressing our issues, but fails to actualise that potential'.
In our neighbourhoods many of the problems where communities are recognised and bolstered by local and national government, are motivated by this view. The problem is one of democratic freedom. I have always argued with the community organisations I work with that they should have a membership list. It is not good enough to say everyone living in this neighbourhood is a member. People should be able to choose whether or not they are a member. Otherwise, the views of everyone will be co-opted by community leaders.
The same is true for Christians. Whilst it is right to say that Jesus died and was raised for the whole of humanity, it would be wrong to co-opt everyone into the Body of Christ. There has to be an element of consent.
Inevitably, where people are co-opted into community groups or religious groups, it is the voiceless who will be marginalised. This direct challenge to boundary protected communities at least opens up a sense of an alternative but ultimately does not open up questions about control. Somehow, we need a third dimension.
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