The primary purpose of a community organisation is to create a community - to create out of a victimised, marginalised, destructive conglomerate of people a community whose quality of life is such that people find fulfilment and joy in living there. It is to enable the people to build their society around their common articulated, intentionally pursued values. If such a community is not created, then all that we have accomplished through community organising is the replacement of one oppressor by another in the tyranny of the now powerful poor. The power of the oppressor must be replaced by a quality of corporate life that is of such superiority to either the formerly oppressed or their oppressors that it brings purpose, direction, joy, and fulfillment to all who experience it. That is the true objective of community organisation. (From: Building a People of Power , page 243)
Linthicum, with others, picked up Allinski's organising and made Citizens' Organising the powerful movement it is today in the United States. It is worth putting Linthicum's approach alongside Lovell's (see yesterday's post). What they have in common is the commitment to allowing others the space to make their own community or their own ministry.
We see, in the tendency for the oppressed to turn oppressor, the need to understand this flaw in all human relationships. Traditionally, Christians call this sin. The struggle to maintain community, in the inner city as much as in religious communities, is a call to live life on the knife edge. This is why John Wesley said, there is no holiness apart from social holiness.
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