Communities In and Out

Yesterday I referenced J. Gresham Machen's 1923 work, Christianity and Liberalism (on-line version here). Machen, a Presbyterian theologian and intellectual powerhouse of the early twentieth century fundamentalist movement in the US, compares and contrasts what he sees as orthodox, traditional (Protestant) Christianity and "modernism" or "liberalism" that (in his view) claims to be Christianity. This latter innovation, he argues, is not in fact Christianity at all in that it stands in opposition to beliefs that true Christians consider fundamental, e.g., the literal and error-free status of the Bible, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, Jesus' bodily resurrection.

Given these fundamental differences, he concludes, Christianity ought to separate itself from its modernist variation. Whereas it is, he admits, good for Christians to exist together in love, Christianity remains a "voluntary organization" which can and in fact must make distinctions between members and non-members. Voluntary organizations, he argues, cannot afford to be as tolerant of members' viewpoints as involuntary organizations (such as a State).

I want to explore a bit of that voluntary/involuntary distinction and its implications for the idea of tolerance. First, though, I need to deal with a background concept: community.

Much of my work in performance studies deals with community-based theatre, by which I mean not the local "community theatre" that puts on the annual musical but a form of performance in which members of a community--often but not always assisted by a trained artist--participate in the creation and production of a performance about themselves. Cornerstone Theater Company, based in Los Angeles, is one of the best-known of these theatres in the US. They might, for example, write and stage an adaptation of Prometheus Bound (by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus) that deals with laid-off steelworkers in Bethlehem, PA, or produce an original play about the residents of Fresno, CA. In both cases, members of the communities involved participate in the writing and performance processes.

I've participated in a few of these productions, and they were amazing experiences. At the same time, the act of producing a community brings up some hard truths that disrupt the warm-and-fuzzy associations that community enjoys. For one thing, you realize that, while community generally connotes inclusion and togetherness, no community is boundlessly inclusive. Indeed, a community that includes everyone imaginable without limit is really no community at all, but just plain everyone. A community is a community (and not just everyone) to the extent that it is not another community. All communities depend therefore not just on whom they include but whom the exclude (or at least from whom they are distinguished).

The inclusion/exclusion dynamic of community (dealt with thoroughly by Anthony Cohen in They Symbolic Construction of Community) becomes immediately apparent in community-based productions. A play about a neighborhood community, for instance, must establish from the outset who does and does not count as a member of that community.

And there things get tricky. Who, exactly, gets to decide who's in and who's out of a community? Ask people who identify as members of the community, and you'll quickly discover areas of disagreement:

MEMBER: The people on that side of the street aren't part of the neighborhood.
ANOTHER MEMBER: Yes, they are! They come to all the neighborhood functions.
MEMBER: No matter. That street is the barrier.
YET ANOTHER MEMBER: Besides, most of them have only been here for five years.
MEMBER: Now, wait a minute. I've only been here for four years, but I'm still a part of this neighborhood...

Nor is disagreement restricted merely to the question of who's in /who's out. Ask people to describe the central features of their community, the best/worst moments from the history of their community, the ideal future for their community, the most/least important parts of their community--any question, really, and you'll encounter similar areas of disagreement.

Cornerstone's typical response is to stage the disagreement, suggesting that debate about the boundaries of community functions as part of what that community is. Such is Cornerstone's privilege. As a temporary visitor to most of the communities it deals with, the company's concerns begin and end with writing and staging the show. The community has to live with themselves.

And, for the most part, these community-specific disagreements--while real--don't bring life to a grinding halt. For most people in most situations, community membership doesn't matter. Who cares, for instance, whether so-and-so thinks you're part of this or that particular community? The kinds of community Cornerstone deals with (geographic, occupational, ethnic, cultural) all have generally permeable boundaries. People may disagree about who belongs or not, but no one really has the power to force everyone else to live by his or her opinion.

Community matters a great deal, however, in situations where an authority--an individual, a body of officials, and/or a bureaucracy--has the power to define and enforce boundaries. Crossing a border into another country, for example, makes you hyper-aware of what citizenship means and how you have to perform it via displays of ID (and, to the extent that the border patrol agent will ask you questions, markers like accent, appearance, and native knowledge). People who live on the outskirts or just beyond cities and towns may have to be similarly hyper-aware of tax laws, postal/phone codes, fire/police/hospital jurisdictions, and the like. Regimes of apartheid enforce differential codes for people based on race or ethnicity.

Individual churches, along with the more connectional/hierarchical denominations, could be considered communities governed by authorities empowered to define and police insider/outsider status. The United Methodist Church, for instance, is currently dealing with an ongoing disagreement concerning which authority figure properly wields the power to allow or deny membership to an openly gay or lesbian person.

I generally teach my cultural studies classes that community debates over who's in and who's out (as well as the related issues of who decides and how) are the essence of politics (in this respect I follow French philosopher Jacques Ranciere). In this sense, communities of any sort are political in that they are at some point and to some degree concerned with matters of inclusion and exclusion.

Churches, too, are political entities. The questions, then: who properly ought to be included and excluded from church membership? Who gets to decide? How?

More tomorrow,

JF