Does your church
take care of "their" community or "the" community?
I drive through a
neighborhood that has a little park with a playground. They have a prominent
sign warning that the park is for the residents' use only.
It's for
their community, not the community.
I was having
coffee with my Red Pill brother, Tony Lorenzen, and we talked about this in
terms of churches. About how "community" can mean such different
things. "Our community" has boundaries, it has gated access and the
teeth of guard dogs.
The
community is boundless.
Tony pointed out
that the history of Unitarian Universalism is one of "The Community,"
not "Our Community." This isn't just fuzzy theoretical musings. It's
why we got the buildings, the membership rolls, and the communion silver. (Even
if it took a while to collect the latter.)
In 1818, the
community of Dedham, Massachusetts called a liberal (what would soon to be
known as “Unitarian”) minister to their church. The people who were the members
of the Dedham Church wanted an orthodox minister so they said, “See ya,” and
left with the valuables. A judge decided that the church was for the benefit of
the community (parish), not just the church members, so the community had the
right to the assets of the church.
I know, I know. A
little detail in this is that the parish was paying a tax to support the
church. So is that what we come down to, now? Only those paying members of a
church should be served by it?
It's easy, today,
to feel the need for "our community," for a safe place to seek
sanctuary for a culture that often feels so foreign, with its emphasis on
consumerism, celebrity, and, depending on where you live, fundamentalism.
But it's not
enough for us to make a safe place for "our community." Our parish
goes beyond our walls and we're called to make that entire parish more loving,
more tolerant, more whole.
Those other folks
out there ... they are residents in the Beloved Community, too.
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