Community: A Theory of Revolution

~by Kevin Gilbert Mauer~

Christianity, G. K. Chesterton said, is a worldview that calls for an eternal revolution. He outlined the principles that make up the basis of Christian revolution in this way:

First, that some faith in our life is required even to improve it; second, that some dissatisfaction with things as they are is necessary even in order to be satisfied; third, that to have this necessary content and necessary discontent it is not sufficient to have the obvious equilibrium of the Stoic.

We must love life enough to think life is worth improving, hate injustice enough to know that life needs improvement, and care enough to see to it that life is improved. This is the eternal revolution, from the dawn of the Church: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

All of us are called to live out this revolution—the Gospel—in our own lives. We are also called to communion. It is no wonder, then, that the overwhelming witness of Church history attests to the importance of living out the Gospel by living in community. Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, often repeated the line that there is no revolution without a theory of revolution. Let us then take community as a theory of revolution for the 21st century, one that follows the unbroken trajectory of the eternal revolution that has been made manifest throughout Church history.

Community is a reflection of the true love personified in God himself: a family of three persons living in loving communion for all of eternity. Community is also a microcosm of the Church, the Body of Christ, whose hands rely on the feet and whose eyes rely on the ears (1 Corinthians 12:12-26). When we rely on one another in community, sharing gifts and partaking in each other’s joys and burdens—then we become more fully aware of how to do this as a Church.

The early Christians knew well the importance of community. The Apostles themselves were leaders of a communal arrangement in which all shared with one another according to their need (Acts 2:42-47) and held everything in common (4:32-37). A renewed zeal for this communal ethic has emerged many times throughout Church history, usually in response to a new crisis or opportunity.

In a society reeling from the collapse of the Roman Empire, St. Benedict of Nursia laid the groundwork for all future monasticism by writing his Rule. 500 years later, in response to growing corruption and materialism within Benedictine monasteries, St. Bernard of Clairvaux led the Cistercian movement for monastic renewal. Reacting to both corruption in the Church and the spread of heresy in the 13th century, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic completely re-envisioned monastic community with their insistence on living amid the world and directly interacting with it, leading transient lifestyles marked by preaching and almsgiving, without knowledge or worry of how the Lord would provide for their material needs. In the 16th century St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits, responding to the Protestant Reformation and the Age of Discovery, created communities that were regimented, learned, and active. The legacies of these and countless other movements like them live on in the Church today. And like so many other times in her history, the Church is ripe for a New Monasticism.

The 20th century has given us many beautiful examples of Christian community, including the Catholic Worker Movement (mentioned above), Mondragon Corporation, L’Arche Community, Taizé, The Simple Way, and the persistence of Amish communities and those of similar Protestant sects. These communities are pockets of simplicity, authentic culture, and localism in a century marked by industrialization, homogenization, and globalization. They have often picked up the pieces from the conflicts and injustices arising from the century’s many competing political ideologies and special interests.

There is a paradox in the modern world. We have become interdependent on such a large scale that we have forgotten our traditional reliance on tangible community and come to believe the delusion that we are personally autonomous. The reality is that we no less rely on others to meet our needs (and have a responsibility to meet the needs of others) than we have in the past, even though they are remote from us and out of our view. In this way interdependence remains real but is no longer appreciated and felt. A true sense of interdependence is recaptured at the local level, in our families and our communities.

In addition to this rise in individualism and alienation, there are many other concerns in the modern world that give us some clue as to the kind of new monasticism the Church needs today, including environmental concerns. The Church’s social teaching highlights the necessity of creating communities that confront the ecological dilemmas of our time:

Serious ecological problems call for an effective change of mentality leading to the adoption of new lifestyles, “in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of the common good are the factors that determine consumer choices, savings and investments”. These lifestyles should be inspired by sobriety, temperance, and self-discipline at both the individual and social levels. There is a need to break with the logic of mere consumption and promote forms of agricultural and industrial production that respect the order of creation and satisfy the basic human needs of all. These attitudes, sustained by a renewed awareness of the interdependence of all the inhabitants of the earth, will contribute to eliminating the numerous causes of ecological disasters as well as guaranteeing the ability to respond quickly when such disasters strike peoples and territories.

As we build a theory of revolution based on community, it must always be remembered that our aim is not to love an idea, but to love one another. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran theologian and leader of the German resistance movement,wrote, “He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community.”

Jean Vanier, the Catholic philosopher who founded L’Arche Community, adds this insight in From Brokenness to Community,

A community is not an abstract ideal. We are not striving for perfect community. Community is not an ideal; it is people. It is you and I. In community we are called to love people just as they are with their wounds and their gifts, not as we would want them to be. Community means giving them space, helping them to grow. It means also receiving from them so that we too can grow. It is giving each other freedom; it is giving each other trust; it is confirming but also challenging each other. We give dignity to each other by the way we listen to each other, in a spirit of trust and of dying to oneself so that the other may live, grow and give.

Community therefore begins and ends with people. It grows out of and serves personal relationships. We see the beginnings of such community, born of relationships, in our own city and diocese. Our friends John and Sarah Ramthun have founded 6:8, a community that strives for simplicity and making service personal. And some of us here at St. Paul’s will be laying the groundwork next year for an intentional housing community. These small steps are only the beginning.

Community is our theory of revolution, but what gives value and substance to this theory, and to any theory, are real relationships among real people. The revolution occurs when a group of people commits to giving themselves up in love for one another.