Category Archives: Intentional Communities

Priests incardinated within new ecclesial movements would not be subject to local ordinaries, that is, diocesan bishops. For the Vatican this would mean acknowledging something about how these movements have evolved from around the time of Vatican II. Originally, they were supposed to have helped renew the laity. But with the substantial reduction in the number of diocesan priests and the shrinking of religious orders worldwide over the last three decades, they instead now seem to be a source of new priests. While this could help alleviate the shortage of clergy in the short term, it might also introduce a new set of problems.

The issue is not ideological, as there is a great diversity among these fraternities: seminarians and priests from SantEgidio, for example, are more conciliar and ecumenical than those from Communion and Liberation or the Neo-Catechumenal Way. Rather, its structural: in order to replace or replenish diocesan seminaries and diocesan parishes that are short on clergy, the territorial Churchthe bishops, including the bishop of Romeare making allowances for priestly vocations coming from non-territorial organizations: the movements.

This raises four interesting considerations. The first is Church politics: the movements are not, in the eyes of Francis, the special elites for the new evangelization as they were under John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Francis has been clearly critical of any sectarian tendencies he detects. But even he realizes that these movements are producing new, desperately needed priests in a Catholic Church that still needs the clergy to function. In this sense, the move, if approved, would signal that the Church finds it much easier to change the relationship between the territorial and personal dimension in the Church than to ordain married men to the priesthood (viri probati) or ordain women deacons.

Then theres the ecclesiological consideration. Reversing the relationship between the territorial or geographical dimension of Church aggregations (parish, diocese) to the personal dimension (membership in a group not defined by geographical location) would overturn a system that dates from the early centuries of Christianity (dioceses were the successors of the provinces of the Roman Empire) and that was solidified in the second millennium, especially by the Council of Trent (1545-1563). It would also pose a challenge to the ecclesial concept of the local church that is in dialogue and tension with the universal the Church.

The third consideration is theological. The whole idea of enculturation of the Christian message is connected to the ecclesiology of the local church. It remains to be seen what kind of formation (and where) priests from new movements would receive, or whether they would be priests for the entire Church (including Franciss peripheries) or only for their movement. This issue was raised by John Paul II in the apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis (1992), the apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente (1994), and the apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata (1996). The relationship between some movements and the local churches has in many cases been less than collaborative; for example, local bishops have long complained to Rome about the modus operandi of the Neo-Catechumenal Way in their own dioceses and even on a national level.

Finally, theres a historical consideration. In 1513, prior to the council of Trent and the Reformation, the Venetian Camaldolese monks Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Querini presented to Pope Leo X Libellus ad Leonem X, the most important set of reform proposals in the immediate pre-Reformation period. Giustiniani and Querini proposed, among other things, a radical reduction in the number of religious orders (with just three typologies of rules for religious life: Augustinian, Benedictine, and mendicant) and a more centralized, reformist church under the leadership of the pope and the bishops. But what happened after Trent was exactly the opposite: a proliferation of new religious orders (Capuchines, Barnabites, Jesuits, etc.).

Something similar has unfolded since Vatican II, which envisioned a Catholic Church under the leadership of the bishops and the pope, and less autonomy for religious orders and personal, non-territorial Church structures. Instead, theres been a crisis in the episcopacy bishops now function more as CEOs than as pastors; they are called on to act collegially with the pope and synodally with their flock; and they face a fixed retirement age seventy-fiveand a shift in how it is expected to work alongside a successful papacy. This comes along with the spread of ecclesial groups and movements tied to intentional communities that claimand obtainautonomy from local ordinaries. It all would seem to be yet another example of how the living body of the Church undoes the best-intentioned and most well-thought-out reform projects of enlightened theologians.

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How Are New Ecclesial Movements Changing the Church? - Commonweal

Posted June 7, 2017

The following interview with Archbishop Charles Chaput, conducted by Australian writer Marilyn Rodrigues, appeared in slightly edited form on June 2 in The Catholic Weekly, newsweekly of the Archdiocese of Sydney.

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Archbishop Charles Chaput. (Photo by Sarah Webb)

Q. Your latest book is clearly written for the American Catholic people, but its relevance for us here in Australia is also very clear. Briefly, for those who are yet to read your book, in what ways do you understand us to be living in a post-Christian world?

A. Theres actually no such thing as post Christian as long as people anywhere believe in Jesus Christ and try to live accordingly. Jesus is the lord and meaning of history. And since he is, there can be no history after him. The Church has often found herself dying or extinguished in some places and thriving in others. Its no different today.

But we can do our best to ignore or diminish Jesus. So in that sense, much of the developed world, or at least its leadership class, makes itself post Christian by trying very hard to forget God.

Q. You paint a comprehensive picture of the historical philosophical, political, and social anti-Christian forces underpinning contemporary life. Much of your book is concerned with how we got to this point. Why is it not enough to simply get on with things why is it so important to understand the past?

A. The ability to remember and learn from the past sets humans uniquely apart. So a man with amnesia literally becomes a nobody. He loses his identity. Hes a blank slate for others to write on. Thats because his life story is shaped by the past, by his beliefs and experiences over time, and once forgotten, others can insert a new life story in its place.

The same applies to nations and communities. Thats why totalitarian systems and democracies, too, can be totalitarian always end up trying to erase or revise the past.

Q. You explain that Christian hope is the overcoming of despair, differentiating it from optimism which assumes things will always improve. In many ways we are witnessing a crisis of despair, maybe best manifested in Australia in unprecedented suicide rates. You clearly lay out the reality of, and good reason for, much despair and disquiet in our culture today. Would you say that the world we face today is crystallizing into precisely a most Christian moment of hope? What should this inspire? Where do you most see manifestations of hope today?

A. The Christian faith is growing rapidly in much of the world. But we rarely hear about it because it doesnt fit the standard secular narrative. So we over-focus on our own problems. Thats natural. But its also dangerous, because when we lose a sense of the larger picture, we can lose confidence in our own beliefs. The reality is this: Even in countries like the United States and Australia, God is raising up plenty of strong young clergy, religious and laypeople, and movements and communities committed to renewal. Theyre the future. They need to be encouraged. Thats where we need to focus. God will take care of the rest. Theres no reason to be bitter or afraid.

What believers are now experiencing in the developed world is equivalent to a cold shower. Its not fun, its not pleasant, but it does wake us up. It forces each of us into a choice. The indifferent may leave the Church, and thats a sadness. But those who stay with the Church will be more alert and intentional. Thats a good thing. Honesty and clarity are always good things. Confusion and ambiguity are never of God.

Q. In Australia, among other things we are seeing companies exerting pressure on the federal government to enact same-sex marriage laws. New South Wales has been facing a push for extreme abortion laws, and euthanasia is on the table in Victoria. Where do you see examples of Christians engaging well in political life? What are they doing successfully?

A. I cant speak to Australias situation, obviously. But in the United States, companies like Apple and Salesforce.com have been very aggressive in pushing same-sex marriage and similar issues, often in the face of strong popular resistance. They have no interest in the will of the people unless the economic and public relations cost of their actions is too high. So Christians need to get involved in the kind of political organizing and economic boycotts that inflict an appropriate penalty. That has to start at the local and regional level. Lots of people are already doing it. Even when good people lose a battle in the public square, they achieve something good. They witness to the truth, they clarify whats at stake in an issue, and they extract a cost from those who would do evil.

None of this should lead us to believe that politics is the most important part of a Christian life. Its not, by a long shot. And none of this absolves us from the Christian duty to act with good sense about strategy and tactics, or with the respect, justice, charity and prudence we owe to others including those with whom we disagree. But avoiding a fight on matters of real importance is never excusable.

Q. Increasingly, Christian values around marriage and family, reverence for life from conception until natural death, and are being understood to be archaic and nave at best, and inhibitory of human freedom and equality at worst. A Catholic mentality means different things by freedom and equality. What is happening here at the level of language of meaning? Is it more important than ever now for Christians to say what we mean and mean what we say?

A. Those who control the language of a debate largely control the outcome. Words shape thought. An expression like marriage equality is deeply misleading and arguably dishonest. But its also very effective. It bypasses serious thought and goes straight to the emotions that surround the word equality. So its vital for Catholics to know and understand what their faith teaches, to speak the truth, and to challenge the words of a public debate when they mask lies and ambiguities.

Q. You express some sympathy for, but dont advocate for, the Benedict option the idea that people wanting to preserve Christian culture might need to withdraw into alternative communities. You would rather see Catholics as healthy cells within society. Why is this this the better option, and why do you think the idea of the Benedict option is so appealing to many people?

A. Rod Dreher the author of the recent book The Benedict Option is a man I know and admire, and Im quite sure he doesnt mean the Benedict Option as a call to withdraw to a religious bomb shelter. He does mean, and I think hes right, that we Christians need to find better ways to build intentional communities of faith and separate ourselves mentally from the bad things in our culture. But this isnt a new message. And Benedict probably isnt the best model for our age. Augustine is.

Augustine never ran or hid from adversity. He was a bishop for and with his people, people who had to continue their everyday lives even as the Roman world around them fell apart. Augustine knew that the City of God and the City of Man overlap and interpenetrate. He wanted Christians to realize that their real home, their real loyalty, is heaven, but we get there by passing through the City of Man. So we need to seed this world with as much good as we can while were here.

Like anything else, the Benedict Option is unhelpful when its over-marketed and poorly understood. People are always attracted to escape hatches in trying times. But there arent any escape hatches. The world follows us. The world is in us, so we need to deal with it. Jesus accepted the cross, and if we claim to be his disciples, why would we try to avoid it? And even if we could hide from the world, we shouldnt, because we have the mandate to heal and convert it.

Q. What can young parents do, who are worried about their children being exposed to toxic elements of culture at younger ages, from which its becoming increasingly impossible to shield them at younger ages?

A. Turn off the electronics. Unplug the devices. Read to them. Pray with them. Play with them. Teach them the value of silence. Develop their critical skills in examining the daily life around them. These things sound simple, and in a sense they are. But try to do them for a couple of weeks and youll see that theyre actually quite radical. Most of all, love each other as a couple and show it, because the love, tenderness and fidelity between parents has a profoundly formative effect on children. Theyre watching their parents every waking minute of every day.

Q. You write that the fundamental crisis of our time, and the special crisis of todays Christians, is a crisis of faith. Could you offer some thoughts about the continuing disunity among Christians, and within the Catholic community (as manifested by the disagreements over Pope Francis ministry and Amoris Laetitia) on how this relates to the crisis of faith?

A. Any current disunity we have in the Catholic Church and we can easily overstate it comes down to how much we want to accommodate the world; how much were willing to bend; how much we want to gloss the hard edges of the Gospel message and Church teaching. I was a Capuchin Franciscan before I was a bishop, so Francis of Assisi has always had a big influence on my thinking. Francis had no use at all for glosses, so I think we need to be more radically faithful to the uncomfortable parts of our faith and teaching, not less.

Numbers arent essential for the Church. Fidelity is. Charity is. A commitment to truth is. And thats because the Church doesnt finally belong to us, but to Jesus Christ. Its his Church, not ours.

As for our relations with other Christians: The disdain often shown toward religion today has the ironic effect of drawing many believing Christians together across lines that once divided them. I have more friends who are pastors, scholars and persons I deeply admire in other, non-Catholic Christian communities than I ever thought possible 45 years ago as a young priest. Denominational labels are often less important than whether a person really believes in Jesus Christ, the Word of God and the core of the Christian faith. Our differences are important. They cant be minimized. But the common faith we share in Jesus Christ is equally important.

Q. You recommend an effort to live the beatitudes, in their radicalness, for people who live in the world of mortgages, tough jobs, and complaining children all Christians in their daily lives. Theyre meant for plumbers and doctors, teachers and salesmen, mothers and fathers. It reminded me of GK Chestertons comment, that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and not tried. Can you give an example, perhaps from your own family or friends, where you have seen someone (not a priest or religious) has really tried to live this way? What impact has that made on you?

A. Dorothy Day had a huge impact on my life. And there are many other invisible people like her in the Catholic Worker movement, the Neo-Catechumenal Way, the [Protestant] Bruderhof communities, Communion and Liberation, and a dozen other renewal movements and communities. And there are thousands of similar examples of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in local parishes.

No one lives the Beatitudes perfectly. We all fail. Its in our deliberate, persistent efforts in trying to live them that God remakes us, and through us, provides a witness of holiness to others which is the only way a culture really changes for the better.

Continued here:

Archbishop: In 'post-Christian world' fidelity, charity, truth stand out - CatholicPhilly.com

Power Street Theatre Company (PSTC) was founded out of rage.

Gabriela Sanchezstarted the theatre company the only one in Philly run by all women of color, she said in 2012 while studying theater and communications at Temple University. It was there where she felt the frustration of knowing that it wasnt for a lack of she skill she wasnt getting more opportunities on stage. Rather, it was because her stories as a Latinx woman werent being represented and as weve heard before, representation is everything.

Sanchez realized if she was feeling this way, there must be others around her who also felt the same way, and soon enough, she met and collaborated with Erlina Ortiz, a classmate at Temple, to start PSTC, where Ortiz is now the resident playwright.

Five years later, the theatre company is going strong with its main focus of providing accessible theater and arts to the North Philly communities, through which Sanchez said theyve engaged more than 3,000 audience members through seven productions and six contract performances.

That focus on serving the North Philly area, where Sanchez has deep familial ties to having been born and raised in Philly, is an intentional effort in promoting diversity and inclusion, which are values Sanchez said are still just buzzwords in the theater industry.

Im very intentional about the work that I produce, the relationships that I build and knowing that it takes time, Sanchez said. My work is very rooted in the communities that I care about, that I serve, that I come from.

PSTCs most recent production series, Theatre en Las Parcelas, is currently underway through a partnership with the Norris Square Neighborhood Project, where she is the education director for the organization that aims to make social change by engaging youth in education, leadership and the arts. The second show of the series, Out of Orbit, will feature Sanchez and two other women tackling the topic of privilege, among other things, through the lens of space and the universe.

The free performance will take on June 10 at the Las Parcelas garden, where the last event, an open mic garden party, will also take place on Aug. 12.

Working in tandem with community and social change organizations is nothing new for PSTC, like when it partnered with Women Organized Against Rape and Warrior Writers to produce She Wore Those Shoes, a production that looked at sexual assault in the military.

The art-for-social-change effort is also something Sanchez herself has personally been involved in with since she was 15 years old, when her first full-time job for six years was being part of the City of Philadelphias Conflict Resolution Theatre, part of a series of Strength-Based (Trauma-Informed) Leadership Programs hosted throughout the city.

I saw a need in my city, I saw a need in communities that were disenfranchised and young people that didnt have access to the arts, she said.

Location and pricing of tickets are bothaccessibility factors PSTC has givenattention to, whichSanchez says shes proud of. All youth under the age of 18 get free access to any shows, college students and senior citizens get half-off their tickets and community residents just pay $5. All in all, inclusivity is key to keep theatre alive, Sanchez said.

Theres this stigma that people of color dont like theater, but the reality is that thats not true were storytellers, its ingrained in who we are, she said. We just dont have the platform or the resources or the accessibility to access theatre because its an expensive and secluded art form in some ways.

Even as a student, Sanchez felt that her studies would often not teach her how to sustain the art, thus prompting her to learn how to run a theatre company through experience, whether it be writing grants or fostering those relationships with community organizations. She hopes to grow PSTC into a full-time company within the next two years, and in that effort, teach and grow other women and people of color in the theater world.

Sanchez credits the success of PSTC so far to her team Ortiz; Asaki Kuruma, Diana Rodriguez and Lexi White who have often volunteered much of the administrative labor, and its through listening to other communities PSTC may have not yet reached out to where they hope to find more stories.

Creating art and social change arent on one person, Sanchez said. I believe its about dialogue, about reflection, about asking questions and having conversations. In order for all of us to get on the same page, we have to start listening to each others stories.

Albert Hong is Generocity's contributing reporter. He started hanging around the Technically Media office as a summer intern for Technical.ly and eventually made his way to freelancing for both news sites. While technology and video games are two of his main interests, he's grown to love Philadelphia as a city and is always excited to hear someone else's story.

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How Power Street Theatre Company is taking on representation in the arts - Generocity

From homemade sauces to local artwork, North Asheville residents now haveanother place to shop on Saturday mornings: Anew community market debuted June 3 outside Gan Shan Station on Charlotte Street.

The market was created to give localbrick-and-mortar businesses an alternativeplace to sell their goods, says Jade Pombrio, director of the new project. Currently, most areatailgate markets are producer-only, meaning that you can only sell things that you produce, saysMolly Nicholie, program director at ASAP Connections.

Weve been wanting for a while for a venue to be able to sell all of our hot sauces and rib glaze, Pombrio says. So it kind of started as someone else wanting to sell stuff realizing that, Oh, we do have a good space. We really wanted to make this a community restaurant and make it a place with lots of community engagement, and a market seems like a natural symptom of that.

In addition to Gan Shans products, the market will feature fresh bread and pastries from The Rhu, handmade sausage and ethical meats from Intentional Swine, flowers from Paper Crane Farms and a food pantry with items from Lees Asian Market. Pombrio also plansto have a rotating weekly schedule of featured artists from the community.

The Gan Shan Market joins the North Asheville Tailgate Market as a Saturday morning shopping destination for North Asheville residents. Competition amongmarkets can be challenging, Nicholie says, as markets tend to attract similar vendors and customer bases. However, Pombrio thinks the Gan Shan market will appeal toresidents in the immediate Charlotte Street neighborhood and shoppers who are looking for items they cant get at other markets.

Coffee, pastries, breads, sauces this is going to be more pantry items because theres already so much produce, there are already so many farmers here, Pombrio says.

Gan Shan Station isnt the only business to embrace the idea of community farmers markets. Breweries have also jumped at the chance to offer their establishments as potential locations, with the intent of strengthening ties within the immediate community and bringing in a new set of customers.

Several months ago, Highland Brewing Co. reached out to offer its Meadowspace to the Oakley Farmers Market. Themarket declined the offer at the time, but when itsprevious Fairview Road sitebacked out just days before the 2017 season opened, the Oakley Farmers Market relocated toHighland on May 4.

While the market has been operating at Highland for only a few weeks,Oakley Farmers Market directorLexi Binns-Cravensays shehas received positive feedback from both vendors and visitors.

Our new location is a lot more child-friendly, where [vendors] can just bring their children, Binns-Craven says. People bring their dogs to the Meadow, and weve had a lot more families come. They bring their children, the kids are playing around as the parents shop, and its just a much more child-friendly atmosphere.

The current popularity of farmers markets is causing people to try and align their mindsets and shopping needs with local vendors, Nicholie says. Over the years, there have been amazing partnerships between businesses and farmers markets, she says. One thing I dont think the public realizes is how farmers markets serve as an incubator for businesses many cant necessarily afford a brick-and-mortar building but can sell their product at a farmers market.

Highland Brewing Co. President Leah Ashburn says the community-focused market fits well with the brewerys community-oriented mindset and that partnerships between businesses and local grassroots effortsare important for growth.

Asheville, in general, has so many wonderful resources for people that grow or bake or make things, and farmers markets are such a nice way for residents to connect directly to those growers, Ashburn says. Theres a similarity to directly connecting with brewers they are both crafting a product, and there are individual people behind that. And those individual people that make beer and craft beer are going to be shopping and buying baked goods and produce at local farmers markets, and that just feels good.

New Belgium Brewing Co. also extended an offer to house the West Asheville Tailgate Market, says market director Quinn Asteak. Although the market decided not to change locations, Asteak appreciates the offer.

While we all think it would be great to have a market at New Belgium for so many reasons they are a beautiful space and a great organization and theres a lot of great appeal we wont be leaving Grace Baptist Church, Asteak says. When the conversations started, everyones ears perked up. Theres a lot of benefits to it; its definitely a thing where it would help both businesses for markets to exist at their locations.

Despite the fact that New Belgium will not host the West Asheville Tailgate Market, the brewery remains a great place for local community involvement, says Suzanne Hackett, communications specialist at New Belgium.

What weve heard from the community is that they love to meet here and see our neighbors here, which feels really good to us, Hackett says. Supporting farmers, for us, is more than just interacting with communities; its essential to our business. Without sustainable agriculture, we dont exist, so its very important to us.

The Gan Shan Farmers Market happens 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturdaysthrough midfall. The Oakley Farmers Market operates 3:30-6:30 p.m.Thursdays through the end of September at The Meadow at Highland Brewing Co.

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Local ties: New tailgate market locations highlight business and community connections - Mountain Xpress

Miami Herald

Violence, poverty and politics inextricably linked Miami Herald Gun violence has become a silent epidemic among select Miami-Dade communities, leading to hundreds of intentional injuries every year. We call it silent because most of the burden is borne by just a handful of communities ones that have been ...

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Violence, poverty and politics inextricably linked - Miami Herald

After years of troubling news, Tahirah H. Clark, 44, a mother of 5 children, and an attorney received some of the good variety on February 16, 2017. The man who had threatened to take his assault rifle, with 500 rounds of ammunition, light-armor piercing, and a machete to burn down the kitchen, the mosque and school, in her community in 2015, Robert Doggart, was found guilty on all charges. His sentencingis taking place now, with two counts being dismissed against him.

The court determines there was not enough evidence for the jury to have found beyond a reasonable doubt [Doggart] made threats on those dates for the purpose of effecting a change or achieving a goal through intimidation, Collier wrote in an opinion, released today.

Holy Islamberg and several other villages around the country are formed by a group of African-American Muslims from New York City, The Muslims of America (TMOA), who are followers of Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani. Upon his guidance, they left the fitnah (trials) of cities and started living together in rural communities dedicating their lives to their faith. Membership is not open due to security reasons, especially after the Doggart case.

We will be cruel to them, Doggart said of the people of Islamberg in a call to the FBI, And we will burn down their buildings And if it gets down to the machete, we will cut them to shreds.

Clark represents the community as the victim in the trial.

Doggart is an ordained Christian minister, has a PhD and had once run for Congress in his home state of Tennessee. According to the criminal complaint, Doggart had been associated with private militia groups in the US. He was convinced that the group were planning an attack on American soil. TMOA was targeted by right wing blogs since 9/11, as a terrorist training ground.

Like this?

Its kind of perplexing to us, said local Police Chief Craig Dumont on New Yorks AM 970. All this recent media attention in regard to potential terrorist training camps and things that are going on there. We dont see it. We just dont find any of that to be valid at this time. There are no active threats that we are aware of at this time.

According to the criminal complaint, Doggart said in a Facebook post that the village must be utterly destroyed in order to get the attention of the American people.

Clark recalls the horror that the community felt when they received the call from the FBI, that they were targets of a planned terror attack. They galvanized to advocate for themselves. In a statement, Muhammad Matthew Gardner, the public relations director for TMOA said, Doggart is an example of the results of unchecked and rampant Islamophobia which has spread lies for years about our peaceful community. This man plotted mercilessly to kill us, kill our children and blow up our mosque and our school.

They took a symbolic picture of the children in the community holding a banner asking, Why do you want to kill us, Robert Doggart?

They canceled the summer program that takes place every year, where youth compete in cooking competitions and women hold fashion shows.

And they prayed. They gathered in the masajid in every TMOA village and made special duas to thank Allah that the attack did not take place.

Then they filed a civil lawsuit with Attorney Tahirah Amatul-Wadud and Clark as counsels. The suit was stayed; but now that the verdict is in, Tahiratain (the two Tahirahs) are readying to for trial. The civil complaint charges Doggart with violation of 18 U.S. Code 248, the FACE Act, which prohibits anyone, who by force or threat of force, or by physical obstruction intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.

If we truly want our country to be safe, we must work to change this double standard by changing the law.

Doggart escaped terrorism charges because federal laws focus almost entirely on foreign terrorists. This was a big blow to the community. He meets the qualifications of domestic terrorism, said attorneys Amatul-Wadud and Clark. It is time to look closely at the law that allowed Robert Doggart to escape terrorism charges. There is a double standard that allows right-wing extremists to commit acts of terror, while avoiding prosecution in the same way as a Muslim who commits equal or lesser offenses, reads a statement by the community. If we truly want our country to be safe, we must work to change this double standard by changing the law.

Attorneys Amatul-Wadud and Clark plan to lobby Congress so that there are not two sets of rules when prosecuting extremists who terrorize American citizens.

In May last year, the village was told that hundreds of bikers from The American Bikers United Against Jihads Ride for National Security would ride through their rural roads.

Five bikers came.

300 neighbors showed up with flags and sign that read, Stop harassing our Muslim neighbors.

Clarks was one of the first families who settled in Islamberg in the early 80s, near Hancock, NY. She was homeschooled amongst the creeks, the hills and the rugged roads. She attended Binghamton University and Albany Law School, 25 miles from the hamlet of Islamberg. In 1993 she married one of the fellow members of Muslims of America, as is the custom of their community and they live around the corner from the village. The villages maintain connections and the community has grown as many people get married to members from Virginia, Georgia, or Tennessee. Others take their shahadah and chose to become part of the community.

Islamberg is the best place on Earth to raise my children, she says. Its lovely. She describes an area that is clean, safe, and the community can practice their religion and live their life the way they want. It is an intentional community striving to live together. You dont have to worry about [the children] being exposed to the [corruption] of the city, she says. She spent her early childhood in Brooklyn and tells tales of smelling marijuana and other jarring incidents.

Each unincorporated village is run by trustees- each location has a group of local individuals who run the place administratively. We do have town councils, elected by people in the community; they deal with basic things such as keeping the masjid clean, the bills are paid, and the roads are plowed. like a homeowners association, she explains. The group is often attacked for ruling according to an alternative rule of law. Clark calls this an Islamophobic creeping shariah tactic. You must have some form of order, she adds.

Clark calls the February verdict a blessing from Allah, as they were not expecting him to be convicted a white man in a predominately white county. May the sentencing be just as fair.

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The Case of The Terrorist Robert Doggart and Holy Islamberg - MuslimMatters

JUNE 3, 2017

IN THE INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY of Twin Oaks, Virginia, co is not merely a prefix for words like coeducation and cooperative. The hundred or so people who live in Twin Oaks, which has operated as an egalitarian commune since 1967, also use co as a pronoun. Co is both gender inclusive used in situations applying to men and women and people who identify as neither as well as gender neutral. As one member wrote, Gender-neutral pronouns can help minimize [] gender assumptions and help others get to know people for other characteristics.

In a community like Twin Oaks, where both work and rewards are shared equally by all, even subtly gendered stereotypes could prove corrosive to a strictly neutral division of labor. Co, then, is more than an artifact of speech. It is an elementary principle, as expressed in Twin Oakss creed: From everyone according to cos abilities, to everyone according to cos needs.

As Nancy Weiss Malkiel argues in Keep the Damned Women Out: The Struggle for Coeducation, the promise embodied in the co of coeducation was considerably more superficial for the elite universities that suddenly began admitting both men and women in the late 1960s and 1970s. Women who enrolled in previously all-male universities found that they were lucky to be given full-length mirrors and better lighting in their restrooms. Concessions to womens preferences or needs in most other areas of life from dining to the curriculum were always begrudging and often elicited both disbelief and indignation. Men could treat almost any adjustment as an injustice, as women found out when a Yale faculty member harangued the new co-eds that they were responsible for the abolition of that most sacred male prerogative: to be able to stroll naked in the gym!

When a reader picks up a book like Malkiels, they expect numerous such anecdotes, instances of entitlement that both disgust and titillate the reader. That is, in a sense, one of the genre conventions of the Ivy League history, although to be strictly accurate, Keep the Damned Women Out is not about coeducation in the Ivies: about 40 percent of its 609 pages (not counting index and notes) are about non-Ivy colleges, and Malkiel only discusses the experiences of four Ivies Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth in any depth. (The other schools covered are Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley in the United States and, across the pond, Oxford and Cambridge.) But so strong is the Ivy undertow that most reviewers have treated the book as a de facto Ivy history, and I will follow suit.

That is just as well, for Malkiel has much to contribute to the ample and sometimes distinguished tradition of books that peel back the Ivy Curtain and reveal the pettiness of privilege. But Keep the Damned Women Out is very different in tone from the jaded memoir-cum-exposs of figures like Walter Kirn, Ross Douthat, William F. Buckley, Dinesh DSouza, or William Deresiewicz. It is more comparable to Jerome Karabels The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton or Craig Steven Wilders Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of Americas Universities, books that have nobly excavated histories of exclusion and exploitation in the nations elite colleges.

Like Karabels or Wilders books, Keep the Damned Women Out tells how gatekeepers addressed the question of who belonged in the Ivy League and who did not. But where those books focused primarily on the efforts of college officials to build up the ramparts of inequality, Malkiel gives us the story of the people who tried to break them down. Her book is, she writes, a case study in leadership as a fundamental element in institutional change. Malkiel, who was formerly a dean of the college at Princeton, bucks long popular and scholarly traditions of casting administrators in the role of reactive and reactionary stand-patters, always trying to slow down progress and outflank dissenters. There is no Dean Wormer from Animal House to be found here.

Malkiel builds her case for these administrators solidly in the endless paper trail of memos and minutes; she demonstrates considerable skill by interpreting much of the coded language and hidden pressures that lay beneath meetings of trustees, admissions staffs, or alumni donors. Malkiels method is exhaustive, tracking almost every movement of the principal administrative players as they debated, listened, cajoled, polled, and planned the issue of whether to go co-ed.

This approach yields an abundance of quotes and anecdotes like the one about Yales gym, but Malkiel is not out to shock the reader. Rather, she presents this evidence of male intransigence and masculine entitlement as proof of the agility of these schools leadership. For almost all these anecdotes are about people outside the administration: the opposition was almost wholly located among alumni, with pockets of students and faculty also acting obnoxiously. The threat of alumni revolts conducted above all through the withholding of donations is a persistent beat felt throughout the book. The question, then, which the book seeks to answer is how these presidents Robert Goheen of Princeton, Nathan Pusey of Harvard, Kingman Brewster of Yale, and John Kemeny of Dartmouth won the acquiescence if not the approval of their schools alumni.

Posed that way, the books ambitions seem rather special or at least specific, but in crediting the efforts of these figures, Malkiel hopes to make a subtler but also more far-reaching point. This is not a story of women banding together to demand opportunity, to press for access, to win rights and privileges previously reserved for men, she writes. Coeducation resulted not from organized efforts by women activists but from strategic decisions taken by powerful men.

Malkiel is not credulous about the motivations of these powerful men. She notes time and again that it was self-interest and pride that drove them first to consider and then implement coeducation. Certain that they were starting to lose some of the best (male) applicants to elite schools like Stanford that already were co-ed, Pusey, Brewster, and Goheen in particular felt obligated to move quickly to maintain their institutions national preeminence by removing that liability. They would add women to their campuses rather as a president today might add a climbing wall, or larger dorm rooms: it would look better in the brochures.

Malkiel doesnt put the matter quite that brutally, but the implication is certainly there. And in that implication, her assertion about the responsibility of powerful men for the coming of coeducation seems to me to take on another meaning. For while as Maggie Doherty has pointed out in The Chronicle of Higher Education Malkiel tends to scant the power of student activism to get administrations to change their ways, her insistence on crediting the men who ran the Ivies with making coeducation happen leaves the responsibility for the shortcomings of coeducation at these universities firmly in the laps of those same powerful men.

Here is where Malkiel demonstrates the tragic and frustrating superficiality of the struggle for coeducation as it was waged and won by powerful men. Malkiel argues forcefully that the all-male schools of the Ivy League were frequently cavalier about undertaking the responsibilities entailed by educating both men and women. All too often, they asked what kind of effect the women might have on their male students, but to women the answer was always an avant la lettre, lean in!

Our approach has not been, Do women need Princeton? but rather, Does the Princeton of the future need women? wrote the author of Princetons influential report on the feasibility of coeducation, Gardner Patterson. What the Patterson Report tried to answer, Malkiel highlights, is whether the presence of women would heighten the value of the educational experience of the students, where students quite obviously meant male students. Women were not equals; they were, at best, honorary men, as one student reminisced, and that honor could easily be rescinded. Women felt at all times that they were there on sufferance, and that they had to prove not just that they belonged but that they were doing something extra to compensate for taking the spot of a hypothetically deserving man. Malkiels sober awareness of the frequent failures of administrations to give equal weight to the pedagogical, emotional, and social needs of the newly admitted women extends to the ways that a lack of administrative resolve of leadership as a fundamental element in institutional change has abetted the persistence of quiet and not-so-quiet biases against women students in the formerly all-male institutions, from traditions of disproportionately rewarding men with the highest honors to the tenacious stereotypes keeping the number of women enrolled in STEM courses low.

But if Malkiel ends the book by considering the short- and long-term effects of coeducation such as it was on women and holds men accountable for not doing more to make the new arrangement work for its women students, the reader receives only tantalizing glimpses of how this experiment affected its female subjects. There are barely any exchanges social or intellectual between women. And while Malkiel does quote from a number of later reminiscences by these pioneer women, they mostly point to but do not really redress the lack of a substantial account of coeducation as a history of women, rather than as a history of institutions and transformative leadership.

To her credit, Malkiel clearly recognizes this paucity of womens dialogues and reflections about coeducation within her book. She delicately allows her sources to address it rather than didactically disavowing responsibility for it the conventional beyond the scope of my study disclaimer. But a passage like the following aches for further exploration, for a sort of historical reversal of its haunting solitude:

Women find no natural mechanisms for becoming close to one another. Perhaps the most important womens complaint is that they spend so much time sorting out their activities with men that they lose a sense of their own directions; and further, when they do begin to move toward their own goals in some independent way, men feel abandoned and threatened.

The Ivy Leagues first women, it turns out, were in need of more than full-length mirrors. Plus a change.

The desire to find out more about the women who first attended these schools leaves the reader feeling both somber and hopeful that another study as ample and ambitious as Malkiels will delve into the records of student organizations and perhaps student records (if they are open for research). But Malkiel makes other choices that left this reader wishing she had either spelled out her assumptions more clearly or taken note of the questions she did not wish to pursue. Three issues stood out to me as needing much more solid answers than the ones Malkiel gives. The first concerns the presumption that the Ivy League is the pacesetter of academic change. Elite institutions, Malkiel writes, are not more important than other institutions, but what happens at elite institutions has an outsized influence on other institutions [] [They] set a tone and provide a model that profoundly influences other[s].

Such a statement in the context of coeducation is curious, to say the least. Certainly, it is notable that so many universities elite and not moved in the late 1960s and early to mid-1970s to erase various forms of sex segregation in practices ranging from admission to housing assignments. Furthermore, Malkiel demonstrates clearly that research undertaken by the Ivies, particularly by Princeton, aided administrators at other universities who were trying to decrease forms of sex segregation. But when the history of mixed-gender higher education in the United States dates back to before the Civil War, does it make sense to call the Ivies leaders or laggards?

Moreover, while Malkiel addresses the broader social context that surrounded the debates over coeducation in a chapter named Setting the Stage: The Turbulent 1960s, her account is truncated. The unfinished assimilation of Jews and Catholics on these WASP campuses is apparent from allusions scattered through the book, and while Malkiel does not draw the threads into any kind of conclusion, an attentive reader will note how often (male) student leaders agitating for coeducation had typically Jewish names. The Yale Hillel, which was still fairly new in 1968, helped to welcome women during a sort of trial run for coeducation in that year by offering a bagel and lox breakfast.

Race was never disconnected from coeducation in the minds of many alumni who opposed changes to the student body, and Malkiel could have done more to connect the two in her account. You cant very well get rid of those already admitted, wrote one Yale alumnus in 1970, but for Gods sake dont admit any more blacks or coeds. While alumni saw these two forms of desegregation as two parts of one whole, Malkiel doesnt inquire if that view was shared by anyone else. It would be especially interesting to know, for instance, if some of those pioneer women who broke the gender barrier at Yale or Dartmouth took for their own historical model not Mrs. Daniel Boone entering the Cumberland Gap but James Meredith enrolling at the University of Mississippi. Malkiels choice to treat coeducation as a discrete development in higher education concentrated among elite schools at the end of the 1960s is particularly frustrating at this point: as soon as we see coeducation as, instead, part of a broader and longer movement toward desegregation starting with the racial integration of the military in 1948, new vistas open and the Ivy League once again looks like a latecomer, not an innovator.

While Harvard might quiver in irritation at thinking that it was, in some way, responding to changes originating in the Deep South or the outer boroughs, it is more accurate to see the Ivies decision to go co-ed as nearing the end of desegregation than as leading a new venture in diversity. That is not to say that the question of why so many elite institutions were simultaneously wrestling with the issue of coeducation and why so many decided in favor isnt important on its own. But the narrative is shaped differently if we imagine Brewster, Goheen, and others belatedly giving in to a broad consensus that coeducation was normal rather than forging a new ideal that coeducation was the future.

The second issue that needed more consideration was the place of queerness on these campuses both before and after coeducation. While Malkiel makes an effort to acknowledge the impact of the Civil Rights movement on student consciousness, there is no real presence in the book for the percolating gay rights movement of that historical moment, or, indeed, for queer life at all. With so many lines redrawn and roles destabilized, the latent queerness of the process of gender desegregation would seem to be at least a necessary subtext. Many people would have identified with the sentiments of either of the two cartoons Malkiel includes in the book. CONFUSED of course, Im confused! a father shouts in the first. I have a son at Vassar and a daughter at Yale! In the second cartoon, we find two women chatting (or flirting?) at a cocktail party: Princeton, did you say? How interesting. Im a Yale man myself.

The situations entailed by the novelty of coeducation were quite obviously ripe for such gender confusion. But one also wonders if some of the anger and resentment at the intrusion of co-eds into what Dartmouth men called the masculine heaven of Hanover was due to the changes it forced upon the casual homoeroticism of the locker room and fraternity. Even the small number of women who were admitted to these previously all-male institutions necessitated the rewriting of formal rules governing interactions between men. They must certainly have rewritten less formal ones as well.

From time to time, Malkiel provides evidence that administrators did see coeducation as an opportunity to redraft the sexual codes of their campus, although she appears reluctant to parse what mostly appears to be coded language. Much of the administrators concerns, however, seem to have been not about homoerotic play but rather about sexual assault and date rape. The debauchery of the weekends when Ivy League men brought girls back to their campuses was legendary: one thinks of Dorothy Parkers quip about the Yale prom that if all the girls attending it were laid end to end, I wouldnt be a bit surprised. But other artifacts of this culture of weekend revelry luxuriated in the element of coercion which accompanied these dates: Dartmouths in town again / Run, girls, run went one well-known drinking song.

Given the different standards he would have had regarding consensual sex, it is difficult to know for sure what Yales Kingman Brewster had in mind when he made the following comment:

The social and moral value of having two thousand college girls of outstanding intellectual and personal qualifications resident in New Haven is apparent [] The crash week-end, the degrading form of social activity known as the Mixer, have been [] a most unhealthy and unnatural part of the four Yale undergraduate years. Such an environment is not conducive to the development of a considerate, mature, and normal relationship among the sexes.

Less ambiguous, however, was the fact that one of the changes made to the physical plant to adjust to the arrival of women undergraduates was to augment campus lighting and install locks on doors.

But it was the crass opposition to coeducation at Princeton that reveals how much sex was on peoples minds when it came to coeducation. One Princeton alumnus wrote (in a letter that actually appeared in the Princeton Alumni Weekly), a good old-fashioned whorehouse would be considerably more efficient and much, much cheaper. Such a remark, while crude, was representative of one objection to coeducation: having sex or scheming to have it would consume the whole attention of Princeton men once they had access to women at all hours. The Patterson report addressed this belief head on. It was not true, the report read, that men would use the women undergraduates for their social and sexual convenience. Instead, the only reason Princeton men seemed so priapic was because of the unnaturalness of the weekend hunt for dates. The presence of women would stabilize rather than inflame their libidos.

Men at both Princeton and Yale believed that the presence of women would civilize men. When Princeton repeated Yales experiment with hosting women for one week as a trial run for coeducation, The Daily Princetonian wrote that For one week Princeton was a more humane place to go to school [] The whole campus seemed more natural. Men on their own or with limited access to women were animals; with women, they were humane.

Making humans more humane is not the particular responsibility of anyone, or of any gender, because it is or should be the mission of everyone, of all gender identities. It has often, however, been a role taken on energetically if not always consistently by higher education: the humanities, after all, is generally one of the divisions of a university for a reason.

And that is where we might return to the example of Twin Oaks, Virginia, and its experiments in equality in language and in everyday life, in making humaneness or mere humanity the responsibility of everyco.

Twin Oaks is known as an intentional community because it is a place where people voluntarily come together to live according to a shared set of principles. But we might equally acknowledge that universities are intentional communities as much as communes are. Universities are, from one point of view, the most successful utopian projects ever created, even if they do not feel like utopias much of the time. Much as has been the case for other utopian communities from Brook Farm to the Soviet Union, the failures which we find difficult to explain are often chalked up to human nature thats just the way people are: acquisitive, lustful, cruel, or fearful.

Keep the Damned Women Out is clear in laying the blame for coeducations limited progress toward true equality at the doors of the men who never fully committed to remaking their institutions into schools and homes for women as well as men. But in some ways, it accepts that failure as a product of the nature of these schools and perhaps even a product of the nature of men. It could hardly have been otherwise, Malkiel seems to say, you can see what they were working with.

And perhaps that is true; perhaps it is even fair. But the purpose of critique is not just to weigh what was plausible but to project back into the past the seeds of a better present, to imagine what would have been necessary then to make a better now. To do that, we cannot lean on clichs about human nature or about the characters of particular institutions: the limits our subjects believed in for their own actions cannot be our limits for the imagination of what could have been.

Coeducation at the Ivies, Malkiel demonstrates, was not a utopian project but a pragmatic acquiescence to necessity and self-interest. Yet that does not mean that further work in the name of coeducation must be pragmatic, that the co in coeducation must mean only with a few (more) women or with a few trans* or genderqueer persons now added. Bare inclusion not equality was the paltry goal of the administrators whose story Malkiel tells. It need not be ours as well.

Andrew Seal received his PhD from Yale University in 2017. He is a regular blogger at the Society forUS Intellectual Historyand his work has appeared in TheChronicle of Higher Education,n+1, Dissent, andIn These Times.

See the rest here:

The Groves of Academe: On Keep the Damned Women Out - lareviewofbooks

The Rochester Folk Art Guild attains a milestone accomplishment this year, as the group celebrates 50 years as a vibrant and creative crafts community.

The first seven members put down roots on East Hill, Middlesex in 1967. Since that time, hundreds of people have spent time at East Hill Farm, helping the Guild grow and develop into an exceptional school for crafts, and one of the most successful and long-lasting intentional communities in the country.

The Guilds fine pottery, woodworking, weaving, and other handcrafts have found their way around the world into museums, galleries, and private collections, even appearing on the table at the White House on different occasions.

The half-century marks a special point in the Guilds history, and the members are extending a warm welcome to all in the local communities to come share in a day of celebration, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 10.

There will be tours of the studios and East Hill Gallery, chamber music by Ensemble Resonance, and free, light refreshments for all.

Ensemble Resonance is flute, bassoon, and piano, and the three will play Mozart, Nino Rota, and Taylor-Coleridge at 12:30 and 2:30 p.m.

We are thankful to have great supporters, as well as wonderful neighbors in Middlesex and the surrounding Finger Lakes communities, says Guild spokesperson David Barnet.

Continued here:

Open house will celebrate Folk Art Guild's 50 years - Penn Yan Chronicle-Express (blog)

Far too often key policies and decisions are made without considering input from the communities that are directly affected. Key decision-makers and subject-matter experts often assume that they know whats best for a community and that they can make equitable decisions for them.

However, if policies are to be truly equitable, the affected communities need to have their voices heard at the forefront of the policymaking process. Not only does the community voice need to be heard, but government entities need to be intentional in how communities are engaged so that all community voices are represented. There must be intentional action taken to include those disenfranchised and underrepresent communities that do not have high representation in traditional public forums, which are typically used to influence policy decisions.

By listening to the needs of the affected communities first, policies can be more inclusive and effective at dealing with real problems rather than wasting public funds on unnecessary programs or policies that dont address the real barriers communities face.

Katia Garcia, Shoreline

More here:

Lawmakers: listen before you legislate - Seattle Times

Blogs | Jun. 1, 2017

Christians must be countercultural but our countercultural stance must be balanced by two principles a lot of Benedict Option enthusiasts arent big on.

Oh please.

Not another option.

Not another half-thought-out Benedict Option alternative to add to the heap, along with theFrancis Option, theDominic Option, theAugustine Option, theGregorian Option, the David option and even theCatholic option.

Now, along with the Ben-Op, were going to talk about a Justin option? A Just-Op, as in Just Stop? (There, I said it first.)

Believe me, I get it.

Ive read a number of critiques of Rod Dreher and the Benedict Option, and Ive read a number of defenses. I appreciate the moral seriousness with which Dreher has approached and tried to address the problems facing serious Christians in the world today.

I find the whole Ben-Op debate fascinating, and in the end I have no particular brief either for or against the Ben-Op in itself partly because, for all Ive read about it, the concept is still somewhat fuzzy to me. (This may, indeed, be part of the point: that we are in a new situation and dont yet know exactly what to do.)

Insofar as I may have a critique, or at least a contrasting or supplementary point, its not so much aimed at anything in particular Ben-Op advocates or enthusiasts say aswhat I dont see them saying, at least not a lot.

I admit up front my reading has not been exhaustive, and I could be missing a great deal. But the relative silence that concerns me is clearly a feature of a lot of conservative dialogue among what could be called the Ben-Op constituencyat least, and today seems like the perfect day to address this.

Thats because today is the memorial of Saint Justin Martyr, best known for his First Apology (or Apologia), addressed to the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, and his Second Apology, addressed to the Roman senate.

Among Justins briefs for the authorities of his day is the contentionthat Christians are not enemies of the state or the civil authorities. On the contrary, he maintains that good Christians are good citizens though Justin frankly admits that not all Christians are good Christians, and urges authorities to punish wrongdoers but not to blame Christians as a group.

Justin advocates a vision of Christianity as a fundamentally rational philosophy that puts Christians in accord with all reasonable men; in fact, to the extent that men have spoken or acted in accordance with reason, that is, the Logos, that is incarnate in Jesus Christ, they can be considered Christian in a way, even if they lived before Christ.

I think its instructive to consider Justins approach in light of what many Christians today seem to experience as a dilemma between Benedict Option and culture war.

I think I agree with Dreher on two points: First, culture war is no longer (if it ever was) a viable or helpful approach for Christians living in the world today. Insofar as Christians, particularly Christian conservatives, have defined our mode of engagement in terms of culture war, weve lost.

Second, Im in favor of intentional communities that foster a consciously countercultural ethos and a critique of the mainstream culture.(My parish is one, or rather there are intentional communitiesat our parish.)

Yet insofar as the Ben-Op is understood to entail, or at least correlates with, a strategic retreat or withdrawal from engagement with mainstream culture, I have concerns about where it leads.

I understand that Dreher has been at pains to deny that the withdrawal he has in mind means a head for the hills physical withdrawal. Well and good.

From what Ive read of Dreher and othe Ben-Op, though, I think I can speak of what might be called a Ben-Op mindset characterized by a) a lot of engagement with the likeminded, among whom b) mainstream culture is invoked primarily in a polemical mode, in terms of whats wrong with those outside the fold and the world they want.

To be sure, we need engagement with the likeminded. And, since our faith is countercultural, we must be clear both what we believe and where we think the culture has gone wrong.

But we must also be doing two other things that I dont see a lot of from Ben-Op advocates, and certainly from many among the Ben-Op constituency.

First, like Justin Martyr, we must be directly engaged not only with each other but with the mainstream culture. We need to talk a lot to people with outlooks very different from ours.

Whats more, our engagement must not be dominated by counterculturalpolemics and negativity. We must be countercultural, but we must balance our countercultural stance with positive engagement.

We must be able to step out of our comfort zones and recognize when and where those outside the fold (even people we may consider ideological opponents, and who may return the favor) have been touched by the light that lightens every man and arrived at valid insights and reasonable views. (I dont imagine Dreher would deny this, but with notable exceptions I dont see him doing a lot of it myself, and certainly there are a lot of Ben-Op enthusiasts who dont seem interested in doing it at all.)

Second, inseparably connected from the first, we need to do something else that has become far more pressing today than it was in Justins time: We must acknowledge frankly, both among ourselves and to the world, the extent to which individual Christians and even Christian leaders, organizations and communities have been part of whats wrong with the world instead of the solution to it.

Justin admitted to the emperor that there were bad Christians but he lived just a few decades from the age of apostles, at a time when Christians were powerless, often despised, and occasionally persecuted. Times have changed.

A lot of water has gone under the Milvian Bridge since Constantine legitimized Christianity in A.D. 313 and Theodosius made it the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380. Christians have much to be proud of in our 2,000-year history, but also much to be grieved over and to make amends for. Justin could afford to suppose that the odium fidei of his time was inspired by demons. We no longer have that luxury, alas.

Its true that Christian history has often been painted overly black by the Churchs critics and by critics of Western culture generally, particularly in academia. Its also true that Christians, particularly Christian conservatives, tend to err in the opposite direction.

We must recognize that sometimes the problem isnt them, or not just them.Sometimes the problem is us. Not just those Christians over there bad Christians but our own communities (yes, even our intentional Ben-Op communities!) andpotentially even our own hearts.

We must balance our countercultural stance with ongoing self-critical frankness. (Once again, Dreher wouldnt deny this, and on some topics he is more than willing to critique the failings of Christian communities and leadersnotably, and rightly, on the Catholic clerical sex-abuse scandal. But I dont see him emphasizing the need for this self-critical spirit in the Ben-Op communities he advocates. And, again, many Ben-Op enthusiasts are completely uninterested in anything of this sort.)

If we cant do these two things if we cant balance our countercultural stance with positive engagement and self-critical frankness then what we call our countercultural stance will devolve into mere tribalism.

We must transcend tribalism to make the case to our culture, as Justin did in his, that good Christians are good citizens, and a world that makes room for Christians will be a better world than one that crushes us underfoot.

Frankly, even this involves what has become in some ways an uphill battle. There are some who will never accept us. It may be tempting to focus on our most implacable opponents, shrug our shoulders, and say, No sense even trying.

But this would be a disastrous mistake. Progress is possible. If we cannot reach all, we can still reach many beginning, perhaps, with our own children.

In the long run, I suspect, our children will be less likely to keep the faith we wish to impart to them if they grow up with a one-sidedly countercultural, negative view of the world outside the fold and an insufficiently self-critical view of ourselves.

Reality itself will educate them as they learn that the people we taught them to think of as ideological enemies could be more reasonable than we allowed. And they will certainly discover the flaws in ourselves, and in the intentional communities in which we raised them, that we didnt want to acknowledge or think about.

Saint Justin Martyr, ora pro nobis.

Go here to see the original:

A Justin Option? Justin Martyr and the Ben-Op - National Catholic Register (blog)