(This is an intentionally provocative thesis. It motivates me, a Protestant writer.)
Protestant faith communities tend to be fragile, and the ideas they produce are fragile.
The communities are fragile because they organize themselves on the basis of shared moral purposes. To curate the shared moral purposes, these communities each develop an elite group of vision-casters, activists, elders, leaders or charismatic figures. This community will suffer from coordination problems.
- If the central group members want to express the broad views of the community, they must necessarily summarize, boil down, and simplify their messages.
- On the other hand, if the central group members want moral purposes with specific content, then community members are stuck in an ‘agree, shut up, or leave’ situation.
- The central group’s work is next to impossible, because a small central group will typically have a limited ‘hearing’ range within the larger body — and it may not know its limits.
- Without trying to, the central group frees community members from the responsibility of moral discernment. The community will choose over-dependence on the central group, rather than rigorous reflection and mutual accountability.
The outcome of this process is authoritarianism. Protestants are the last people you’d suspect of authoritarianism, but it’s true.
Ironically, this authoritarianism is guaranteed to thwart itself. In fact, all people are moral agents. A community that bases itself on its moral purposes will have a wide responsibility to justify these purposes to. Honest agreement becomes more difficult with more people involved. In the end, authoritarian communities become impotent.
Moral discernment is the responsibility of individuals — maybe of small households.
Communities of faith ought to have moral purposes. Indeed, they should have a broad diversity of moral purposes, in proportion to the diversity of their members. Only, these moral purposes do not define long-lasting communities. Instead, the moral purposes of long-lasting communities emerge from their common life.
I am calling for retreat from community-first discernment to individual-first, or perhaps household-first, discernment.
Individual moral discernment may be morally preferable to community leadership. I think it is. But even if it were not, community discernment without individual discernment is fragile. Communities that leave moral discernment to specialized groups are lucky if they fall apart peacefully. If they can grow past their central leadership, they are blessed.
What do you think…?
I am developing self-critique of this thesis at http://faithcarpentry.wordpress.com. You can find me there. -EG
Originally published at http://faithcarpentry.wordpress.com on October 31, 2020.
