Schleiermacher's "True Religious Community"

I've got ecclesiology on the brain these days as I think about a project on the importance of the way we tend to otherness and difference as Christians, and how this is related to and significant for "emerging church" types.

My friend David Worley (at Illiff) reminded me recently of Schleiermacher's treatment of religious community in the Speeches.  Here is an excerpt from "On Religion, Speeches to its Cultured Despisers," (Speech Four, Crouter Edition pg 93-94):

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"Allow yourselves to be led once more to the sublime community of truly religious minds that, to be sure, is now scattered and almost invisible, but whose spirit nevertheless reigns everywhere, even where only a few are gathered in the name of the deity.  What is there here that should not fill you with admiration and respect, you friends and admirers of everything beautiful and good!

Together they are an academy of priests.  Religion, which is for them the highest, is treated by each of them as art and object of study, and in addition it grants each person his own lot out of its infinite richness.  As befits artists, each person joins the endeavor to complete himself in some particular aspect with the general sense for all that belongs in its holy realm.  A noble rivalry prevails, and the longing to produce something worthy of such an assembly permits each person to absorb faithfully and diligently everything that belongs to his particular realm.  It is preserved in a pure heart, arranged by a composed mind, adorned and perfected by heavenly art, and thus praise and knowledge of the infinite resound in every way and from every source inasmuch as every individual, with a joyful heart, produces the ripest fruits of his sense and vision, of his comprehension and feeling.

Together they are a choir of friends.  Each person knows that he is also a part and a creation of the universe, that its divine work and life reveals itself also in him.  He thus looks on himself as an object worthy of the intuition of others.  With holy reserve but with a ready openness he lays bare everything he perceives in himself of the relations of the universe, all of the elements of humanity that take shape in him in order that everyone may enter and observe.  Why should they also hide something from one another?  Everything human is holy, for everything is divine.

Together they are a band of brothers.  Or do you have a more intimate expression for the complete blending of their natures, not as regards their existence and volition, but as regards their sense and understanding?  The more each person approaches the universe, the more he communicates himself to others, and the more perfectly do they become one; none is conscious of himself alone, but each is simultaneously conscious of the other.  They are no longer merely people, but also humanity; going out beyond themselves, triumphing over themselves, they are on the way to true immortality and eternity.

If you have discovered something nobler in another realm of human life or in another school of wisdom, then impart it to me; I have given you mine."
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1. To what extent does your experience reflect such community?

2. To what extent is such a community desirable today?

Comments

[David Worley]

Regarding #1: It's interesting that this quote comes at the end of the fourth speech in "On Religion" after Schleiermacher has spent nearly 70% of the speech explaining why you shouldn't confuse true religious community with the church; but (and this is one of the many things I love about Schleiermacher) you cannot have true religious community without the church -- this is one of the reasons he is "A Prince of the Church" (ala Brian Gerrish's popular brief introduction to Schleiermacher).

To be completely transparent, and at risk of offending many in my life, I have been thinking about how absent "true" community is in the church; rare is the group of people I encounter who are radically loving, radically wise, and fully devoted to engaging the infinite One that is God. I feel an acute sense of being in ecclesiological exile, a state in which you deeply long for a home but none seems to exist. It is in this state that I came to "On Religion" this week, and found (surprise) that Schleiermacher in 1797-1799 (the era of the quote's inception) identified similar problems in his era. Why is it so hard to find true religious community? Why is there such a lack of robust love in the church?

Regarding #2: Very deeply! :)

[Silas Morgan]

Placing this in the context of the recent challenges befalling (my) Anglican world, this text would do us all well in articulating not only our differences but also those things that (should) call us together. To be priests, studying the divine science, the sacred teaching, it would do us all well to look at our ecclesiological task as artistic expressions of joyfully pure hearts, understanding the holy 'ordering' of the priesthood as our mandate to join others as 'friends' that open ourselves up, without fear, but 'sharing' in the baptismal death that becomes our Life in the Divine Being. Instead we hide behind our fear of being 'crushed' by those who we are grateful to call the 'schismatic', and yet with our voices blame the other for our fragmented Church. It should be our shared participation in the life of Christian discipleship that so 'orders' our holy life through the brotherhood of priests that provocative demands that we be friends.

While many might lay claim to desire what Schleiermacher provides for us here, I do wonder how desirable this for the latemodern church. It requires significantly more 'sharing' than we'd like and involves the risk of confession that I'd rather not take.

[David Wu]

If i were to look for a home church to settle down, the only thing I will be looking for is that this church manifests some measure of radical openess to God (this is the reason why I like the Purgation article)and radical openess to the other. For churches in general, we need to regain our onto-theology, and then need to work out its implications for ecclesiology.

[Drew]

I see something of an affinity here with Levinas' understanding of Otherness and here is is more or less an openness to the other that acts as a medium for infinite divine unity to flourish (not quite what Schleiermacher has in mind, but you can draw the connections out I would think). Earlier in the work (First speech) he goes on at length to discuss the whole and its relation to the parts.

So in terms of #1 I have not experienced such wholeness in the church. The closest I have come to that kind of experience is on occasion when playing music with other bandmates. This is probably the most akin to what Schleiermacher is describing here in terms of the aesthetic and cathartic force of unity in the face of one's others.

I do think that this kind of community is desirable, but the pragamatist in me demands to see what it looks like. I think, pursuing the band analogy, that only with a great deal of discipline and effort can one achieve such sublime unity. This can either be in terms of practicing with each other on a regular basis, which is necessary and also in terms of practicing rudimentary skills on one's own. Both must work together for a common purpose. Rarely, but it is great when it happens, do you get together with a few superb musicians at the same time with whom you have never played before and it all "clicks" as if you have been playing for years. But this can also come only after each has become good enough with their instrument and mastered it to a high enough degree that the music "flows" through them.

So to achieve it there must be some unity of purpose to make the same music, if you will, excellent. That means an effort to explore and seek perfection in one's gifts for the church while focusing on perfecting those gifts for the good of the community and for the love of the world simultaneously.

This is the closest sense of this sublime community that Schleiermacher is discussing here - especially given his frame of reference in his own artist community of the time.

[LeRon]

Hi All,

Thanks for these excellent reflections.

I too have felt in ecclesiological exile and wonder what keeps us from the kind of community that we desire... my guess is it has to do with fear, and perhaps, apathy.

This connects to some of the research I'm doing on compassion and neuroscience which shows a connection between fear stimulation in the brain and the inability to empathize.

I like the emphasis on the need for a more radical sharing and more careful tending to our onto-theology... indeed, if we could somehow do theology as church or do church as theology in a way that truly participated in God's self-giving love... well, the problem would be solved, wouldn't it!?

I'm pragmatic too (don't laugh), but I think the only way to see what it looks like is to do it... we can't know ahead of time exactly how it will look (or sound, as in jazz), we can't control it... which brings us back to fear and desire.

I think Schleiermacher offers conceptual resources for the task of facing these fears and desires, including his emphasis on relationality, methodologically and materially, and his beginning with the "mystical" experience of absolute dependence on God as the "ground" for relating ourselves to others in community.

[Sivin]

Advent Greetings from Malaysia ...

I noticed on your side bar that you will be in Malaysia in January.

Would you like to meet up? And even pop by the local seminary? Plus, other extra curricula activities. We'd love to host you!

[LeRon]

Hi Sivin,

I'm familiar with your blog too, and would love to meet if possible.

I'll be in Langkawi from 9-16 Jan, and Penang from 17-19 Jan, but I'm not sure how much extra time I will have.

Feel free to email me at leron.shults@uia.no and let's see what might work.

LeRon