Worth Repeating

S mall church communities must not be seen in isolation. They are not another church, but part of the one Church. Their major contribution is the new expression of Christian life. They offer the Church a new inner life. Small communities are not a new movement in the Church, nor are they simply neighborhood subgroups of the parish structure. They are the Church itself. They are a smaller expression of the universal Church. As such, the Church is developing new structures to allow this inner life to flourish. As communities of faith and mission, they give witness to a renewal of the Church’s inner life. Where this will lead depends on the Spirit.

Communion and Mission: A Guide for Bishops and Pastoral Leaders on Small Church Communities. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Robert D. Putnam became widely known in the 1990’s for his influential article, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” (Journal of Democracy, January 1995) in which he explored the significance of “social capital” – the social networks that are formed by church groups, bowling leagues and service and fraternal organizations. Putnam, professor of public policy at Harvard, suggested that social capital had recently suffered a dramatic decline. Americans, who were once prolific creators and joiners of voluntary organizations, were now detaching themselves from their civic involvements. They were bowling alone.

Putnam’s 2001 book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community offered further documentation of this trend, and also answered some critics who thought his assessment was too pessimistic. Last year, Putnam and Lewis Feldstein published a follow-up volume, Better Together: Restoring the American Community, which goes beyond mapping the decline of social capital to telling the story, via 12 case studies, of the ways social capital is being revived.
I recently met with Putnam at his home in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. We discussed his findings concerning social capital and the significance of those findings to religious congregations.

Social networks have amazing powers. People who are more connected with other people live longer and are healthier. In communities where people are connected, the schools work better, the crime rate is lower, the economic growth rate is higher. The power of social networks is a remarkable discovery of social science over the past decade or two.
About a decade ago, I began to wonder about the trends in social capital in America. Historically, Americans, compared to people in other places, have connected with one another a lot. As a result, we’ve had very high levels of social capital. But in the last 30 years of the 20th century, for some reason or set of reasons, we began to be much less connected with our friends and neighbors and communities and churches.

For most of the 20th century, year by year, Americans were joining more groups. PTA membership was rising. Scouts membership was rising. And membership in the Kiwanis Club and church attendance was rising. The number of folks voting was going up. Then, without warning, in the late ’60’s and early ’70’s, all those trends turned around. There’s been a drop of about 25 or 30 percent in electoral turnout. There’s been a drop of about 40 to 50 percent in membership in all sorts of organizations – the PTA, the Elks Club, the Kiwanis Club, the League of Women Voters and the NAACP. Church attendance is down too. There is some dispute about that, but I see clear evidence that there’s been a decline since the ’60’s of 20 or 25 percent in average church attendance. Obviously some individual congregations have seen growth in this period. But there has been a net decline.

The number of people who say that they belong to churches is down. And philanthropy is down. Giving, as a fraction of our income, rose for most of the 20th century and then began to decline in the last decades of the century. The peak of our generosity, as a fraction of our income nationwide, was in 1965. By almost every measure, Americans have become much less connected.

Does this finding refer only to formal group membership, or does it also describe what’s happening to more informal ways of connecting?

Even informal ways are affected. For example, there’s been a 60 percent decline in the number of picnics, and we spend less time having dinner with our families. Also, we don’t trust other people as much.

I don’t think the statistical evidence is surprising. What I think is surprising is how sharp and pervasive this decline has been.

Did this finding take you by surprise?

I didn’t begin with the idea that there was this huge decline in social capital. Even after the initial analysis showed a decline in membership in PTA and other groups, I knew that data didn’t prove that overall social capital had declined. Perhaps people had stopped joining the Elks Club but had started joining New Age poetry groups. And perhaps they had stopped joining groups altogether and instead were hanging out at bars more often or having friends over at the house more often or going on more picnics.

Perhaps people were connecting below the statistical radar?

Right. And for a long time I couldn’t think of how to examine that problem because I couldn’t think of where the national picnic registry was kept. How would you know whether people were going on more or fewer picnics? The breakthrough came when my colleagues and I discovered a couple of massive data archives that had previously been unknown to academics. In these surveys, people had been asked for 25 years questions such as: How many times last year did you go to church? How many times last year did you go on a picnic? How many times last year did you have friends over to your house? How many times last
year did you volunteer?
People were not being asked to remember what things were like 25 years ago. These archives allowed us to compare what people today said about how many picnics they went on to what people like them had said 25 years ago. And the astonishing fact was: everything was down. I remember very vividly sitting in my study and seeing this picture of decline come into focus. And I was shocked.

It wasn’t just the Elks Club that was down, but meetings in general were down. If one compares what people said to these questions in 1975 to what they said in 2000, there was a decline of 45 percent, 50 percent in many of those activities.

What caused the decline of social capital?

There is no single cause. One of the culprits is television. Television watching is lethal for social connectiveness. Another part of the problem is the rise of two-career families. As women moved into the paid labor force, they have had less time for doing the things that build social capital. Men have not picked up the slack. And there’s been a real loss in the time that people have for family and community obligations.

I want to make it clear that women are not to blame in all this. The fault is with all of us who have not adjusted to that overdue change in gender equality.

Another part of the problem is urban sprawl. Every ten minutes more additional commuting time cuts all forms of social connection by 10 percent . So 10 percent more commuting time means 10 percent less churchgoing, 10 percent fewer PTA meetings and so forth.

Finally, there may have been a kind of a cultural change in the 1960’s that caused people to value self-interests and self-concerns and to be less connected with their communities.

Is this kind of social change unprecedented?

No. It’s important to remember that a similar change, also shaped by social, economic and technological developments, occurred in the late 19th century. Industrialization, urbanization and immigration caused people to move from the village to the city. They left behind one set of family and community institutions – like quilting bees and barn raisings – for the city. America, at the turn of the century, suffered from all of the symptoms of a social-capital deficit. The gap between rich and poor was rising. In fact, the only two times in American history when the gap between rich and poor grew were at the turn of the last century and in the past 30 years.

However, at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th, within about ten or 20 years, new institutions were created. Most of the major civic institutions in American communities today – like the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the Urban League, the Knights of Columbus, Rotary, Kiwanis, the Lions Club – were created in this period.

So the question is: Can we invent new institutions, or reinvent old ones, that will increase people’s connectedness in our own time, as was done a century ago?

Do you see indications that we are in a period of social recapitalization?

There are encouraging signs. I’ve spent much of the past three or four years going around the U.S. and, to some extent, abroad, to see what some of the new ways are. It is not yet clear what will be the 21st-century equivalent of starting the Boy Scouts. Not that it will necessarily be an organization next time. Maybe it will involve the Internet. I am hopeful – there are more and more signs of inventiveness and innovation showing up across the American landscape. In Better Together, we highlight some of the best illustrations of the kind of social inventiveness that is renewing social capital across America. I don’t think there’s anything more urgent for Americans who care about their communities then to try to reweave the fabric of communities.

Part II of this article will appear in the next newsletter.

Copyright 2004 Christian Century. Reprinted by permission from the February 10, 2004 issue of the Christian Century. Subscriptions: $49/yr. from P.O. Box 378, Mt. Morris, IL 61054
800-208-4097.

The cartoon on page 1 is reprinted by arrangement with cartoonbank.com

I’d like to say thank you for all your efforts in putting this booklet together. This material has been very helpful and a spiritual guide for me…I find it very easy to follow. In our…group, we are able to share on the focus questions which allows us to reflect on the readings in our personal lives. I appreciate the comments, the gathering and opening prayers. I look forward to my weekly [group] and that is due in part to the guidance of your booklets. God bless.
     Susan C.

This week we studied newness. It helped me to start opening the door with my son once again in the hope that someday he and I can reunite and be able to be some kind of family. I wrote him a letter about where I am, how I am and who I am. The response to my letter is up to my son. The doors will always be open to my children….All things are possible if I continue to ask the one true God who I believe in with all my heart, mind and soul….Blessed be Almighty God forever.
     Maria E.

I would like to thank you for providing the Quest readings. It’s been real helpful for me when I go to bible study. It helps me understand the bible a lot more….We all have great conversations after we read. The book has been real helpful to me in learning more about God and scripture. When I used to read the bible, I just read and didn’t understand what I was reading until I came across the Quest reflection booklet and the sisters at my bible study.
     Luz J.

Although…our teacher has everything to do with the success of our bible study, …the outline she has created is based on your Quest, the reflection booklet for small Christian communities. I like it immensely. It leaves room for us all to participate…. If you thought you weren’t going to participate…, this booklet has a way of finding you and leading you in. The layout and structure work well….Thank you to all who are involved.
     Jeannie S.

I am writing to let you know how the Quest reflection booklet has been a big help to me. It has touched me in so many different ways. Reading the weekly Mass readings helps me to get in touch with the spiritual aspect of my recovery. I truly believe that without an understanding of God, I wouldn’t have been able to succeed. When we read and then we share in group, I’m able to understand the message. I would like to say thank you for allowing me a better understanding.
     Ginny T.

Here in one place – twenty-six pithy morsels that treat of the world-wide experience of small Christian community. It is something of a Whitman Sampler of small church communities. They are concise and focused essays, with one piece as different as another. “Betcha can’t read just one.”

This recently published collection of essays on small Christian communities around the world was edited by Joseph Healey, M.M. and Jeanne Hinton. Healey has served in East Africa for more than thirty years and has played a major animating role in small Christian communities in Tanzania and Kenya. Hinton has been deeply involved in the New Way of Being Church movement in England and has been a leader in the European Collective, an effort to link up small Christian communities on that continent. Both have traveled widely and taken a particular interest in networking small Christian communities internationally. This book is one fruit of those efforts.

Grouped by geographical regions, the 26 essays offer concentrated glimpses at various dimensions of the small community experience on the respective continents. Leading off with Latin America, five essays offer a sense of the state of the union after more than thirty years of intensive work to develop basic ecclesial communities. They witness to a profound commitment to a way of being church that begins from the base, from the poor. There is a deeply reflective, even self-critical sense to these reflections. There is the sense that there is something of a pause in their development and yet a firm investment in continuing to build the church from the base. Essays in this section feature developments in Bolivia, SCC twinning between El Salvador and Chile, house churches in Cuba and an overview of a recent continental gathering in Mexico.

Notable contrast is then encountered in the North American essays that come next. Emerging in a developed world context, North American small Christian communities are by and large located in a middle class context and are most frequently connected to a highly developed parish structure. A major diocesan initiative is reported in the essay on the work of the Diocese of San Bernardino to develop “small faith communities” in their parishes. This reviewer offers a report on a recently developed institute under the auspices of the North American Forum on the Catechumenate to bring small church communities and the adult initiation process into close collaboration. Other essays feature an intentional Eucharistic community and a review of priority issues for small church community development that emerged at the 2002 national joint convocation in San Antonio.

Essays in the European section witness to the fact that, on that continent, small communities tend to develop in more parallel fashion vis a vis parish. These essays have a distinctly ecumenical flavor as well. At the same time, there is the report of the recent parish-based, diocesan-wide effort to lay a foundation for small church communities in the Diocese of Westminster. “At Your Word, Lord” is the name of the process they are using. It is an adaptation of the Renew program, familiar here in the United States. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, wrote the forward for this new book. Murphy-O’Connor sees these basic parish communities to be “at the heart of the program for parish renewal”. He writes: “There are many aspects to this process, but at its core is the formation of Small Christian Communities, enabling parishioners to reflect in a personal way on the Word of God, on their faith, and on their call to holiness and discipleship of Jesus in their daily life. This will not come about easily; it demands commitment and courage.”

We learn from the chapters coming from Africa that, as recently as 2002, the bishops of AMECEA (Association of Member Episcopal Conferences of East Africa) have re-expressed their own already long-standing priority on the development of small Christian communities in their respective dioceses. AMECEA now numbers 112 dioceses. The essay on the Archdiocese of Dar es Salaam reviews classic SCC concerns: the need for closeness and smallness, for involving men and youth, social involvement and mission and the need for on-going formation. We also learn that there are more than 2,300 SCCs in the 48 parishes of the archdiocese. Another essay speaks of the very developed SCC diocesan training team in the Diocese of Kiyinda-Mityana and its spillover impact in other Ugandan dioceses. Yet another chapter portrays the deep neighborhood impact of SCCs in the Kenyan diocese of Kisumu.

Developments in the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand are featured in the section on Asia and Oceania. The developing/developed world contrast in approaches noted above, in the differing treatments from Latin and North America, reappear here to some extent. Major programs are underway in the Philippines and Indonesia. These reports feature an emphasis on training and the development of substantial resource materials. In the developed world down under, there is yet another report featuring efforts to bring small church communities into relationship with the adult catechumenate. In two other essays, we learn first about a “home church cluster” approach and then about the prophetic imperative that needs to inform the small Christian community experience.

The final section of the book offers pieces that promote reflection on the international dimensions of small Christian communities. Communication and collaboration are the themes evoked here. Twinning between SCCs across the globe, travels to learn the experience of others around the world, the missionary work of the Sant’ Egidio community and a call to collaborate globally via the Internet, make up the pieces in this culminating section of the book.

Finally, there is a simple, helpful appendix offering suggestions on how small church communities might use the book. The sampler’s bottom layer, as it were, is 23 pages of resources and annotated bibliography. It is a veritable guide to everything you want to know about small church communities and where to find it.

Healey and Hinton did what they set out to do: collect sharply focused snapshots in time of the richness, the commonality and the diversity of small Christian community experience across the globe. The 26 essays could be complemented by hundreds more, and would need to be, if a comprehensive picture of the worldwide experience of small Christian community were to be captured. Such a comprehensive collection, for instance, would have to include the Neighborhood Church Communities effort spearheaded by the Archdiocese of Adelaide in Australia. This present collection, however, offers a marvelous guide to the developing small Christian community phenomenon that Ian Fraser, of the Iona Community in Scotland, has called the result of “the spontaneous combustion of the Holy Spirit all over the world.”

Additional information about this new book may be found at the Orbis web site: www.maryknollmall.org/description.cfm?ISBN=1-57075-618-X
The site includes the full text of the chapter on Promoting SCCs through the Internet and the complete listing of Resources and Annotated Bibliography. Fr. Healey reports that he has arranged with Orbis for the internet contact information and the resources and bibliography to be periodically updated. The first update is scheduled for November 15, 2005.