Mission, a Reason for Being in Community..
Doug Hamilton
Surveying: The Loss of Mission and Loss of Communal Critical Mass.
Eroding Core Values and Loss of Communal Critical Mass:
Abstract: Gathered by vision and mission in communal 'reason to be', communal cohesion can be bound with effective statement and leadership of mission and well organized governance processes. A clarity in mission that is well articulated evidently self-selects a community for itself.
A Conclusion: From the knowledge of cautionary tales in communal studies then a proactive gathering of communal cohesion within most any group, club, sect, movement, organization or institution should search for what core mission there is in association. Evidently a group’s community can go a long ways with clarity in mission.
- Doug Hamilton, Fairfield, Iowa
I. Lacking solidarity within a cohesive identity..
“But for want of keeping inward enough to the principle of Divine Light and Grace, they became weak and those who apprehended it their duty to teach had got too much out into words and speculative preaching and doctrine - which soon produced discord and a schism among them.”
-Elias Hicks, 1790.
The End of Community, a Template:
One session of papers at the 2018 annual conference of the Communal Studies Association was on ‘the end of community’ with three in depth papers given on three different communal groups. One of the groups was a 19th Century group something like the TM spiritual practice group currently in Fairfield, Iowa and the other two papers were of secular communal groups of the 19th Century.
The commonality in the three narratives was what came in time as diffusion of their core values as circumstances of mortality in the founding generation advanced, there later came arrivals of newer outsiders into their membership and fewer of generations born to the older founding generation would stay on in community. These defusions each were supplanting trends to what were founding generational values. Then came along a loss of perspective in core communal values in time as those values came to not be so well spoken to, championed, and then lived within each of the groups.
Evidently once core foundation values diminished in time within each group example as there came along a mundane to the workload along with personal resources and altruistic goodwill ebbing and drying for sustaining the built ‘community’. A cohesion in communitarian e’lan as a communal life force generally went down, becoming withdrawn people would leave, people would stop coming in. Each group then arrives at a point whence the assets of what had been built up to facilitate their core values become too much to sustain, and are then auctioned off. The sale.
Within the examples in these papers was the group of Zoar separatists in ashram-like community in Zoar Ohio that seems something of a template for how it can go peculiarly with spiritual practice groups like within meditation communities currently: Circumstances of Diminution of the effective cheering of core values, a period of administrative rigidity setting in, loss of people, loss of altruism towards the community, loss of donors, loss of critical mass, financial crisis, and finally an auction of assets attendant to the dispersal of community.
"When religion grows in age,
faith turns into dogma, and
experience is replaced by book-
knowledge, virtue by adherence
to rules, devotion by ritual,
meditation by metaphysical
speculation. The time is then
ripe for a rediscovery of truth
and a fresh attempt to give it
expression in life."
(Lama Govinda)
Loss of Communal Critical Mass
A Checklist, an index:
..something of a template
for how it goes with spiritual practice communal groups:
Diminution in a clarity and cheering of core values,
administrative rigidity setting in,
loss of people,
loss of altruism towards the community,
loss of donors,
loss of critical mass,
financial crisis,
and finally an auction of assets attendant to the dispersal of community.
.II. Surveying for Aspects of Communal Endurance.Communal Endurance, from Charles Nordhoff and John Humprey Noyes and others.
Transitioning Communities from Founders to Following Generations
Paragraphs from Charles Nordhoff and John Humprey Noyes quoted here further below become useful critique towards locating where cohesion gathered by vision and mission can be bound as communal 'reason to be' by effective statement of missions and well organized governance processes.
J. Gordon Melton in his (1991) introduction to The Post-Charismatic Fate of New Religious Movements observes that groups in community which endure longer through time tend towards having better organizations with able feedback loops for their followers. Introduction: When Prophets Die: The Succession Crisis in New Religions/J. Gordon Melton
Excerpting J. Gordon Melton:
“..The leader/founder of the average group to which reference is made when speaking of new religions is (or was) more than likely the leader/founder of a vast international organization that has developed an appropriate bureaucracy and organization that has in turn adapted to the numerous differing legal restraints in the many countries in which it has begun missions. In the process many hundreds, if not thousands, of people have found in the particular group enough spiritual depth to devote their lives to the spread of ideas and practices while many tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, have found enough spiritual depth to adhere to the movement.
..In simple terms, the average founder of a new religion, especially one that shows some success during the first generation, is obviously an important factor in the growth and development of his/her movement.
..However once the founder articulates the groups’ teachings and practices, they exist independently of him/her and can and do develop a life of their own. Once the follower experiences the truth of the religion, that experience also exists independently. Once a single spokesperson for the founder arises, the possibility of transmitting the truth of the religion independently of the founder has been posited.
..But what happens when the founder dies? Generally the same thing that happens in other types of organizations, that is, very simply, power passes to new leadership with more or less smoothness depending upon the extent and thoroughness of the preparation that has been made ahead of time.
..When a new religion dies, it usually has nothing to do with the demise of the founder; it is from lack of response of the public to the founder’s ideas or the incompetence of the founder in organizing the followers into a strong group. Most new religions will die in the first decade, if they are going to die.
..The more preparation is made for a smooth transition, the more likely an orderly succession is to occur.”
.John Humprey Noyes writes in 1869..
“Let us look again at these exceptional Associations that have not succumbed to the disorganizing power of general depravity. (..examples..) The one feature which distinguishes these Communities from the transitory sort, is their religion; which in every case is of the earnest kind which comes by recognized afflatus (a divine creative impulse or inspiration), and controls all external arrangements.
It seems then to be a fair induction from the facts before us that earnest religion does in some way modify human depravity so as to make continuous Association possible, and insure to it great material success. Or if it is doubted whether it does essentially change human nature, it certainly improves in some way the conditions of human nature in socialistic experiments. It is to be noted that Mr. Greeley and other experts in socialism claim that there is a class of “noble and lofty souls” who are prepared for close Association; but their attempts have constantly been frustrated by the throng of crotchety and selfish interlopers that jump on to their movement. Now it may be that the tests of earnest religion are just what are needed to keep a discrimination between the “noble and lofty souls” and the scamps whom the Socialists complain. On the whole it seems probable that earnest religion does favorably modify both human depravity and its conditions, preparing some for Association by making them better, and shutting off others that would defeat the attempts of the best. Earnest men of one religious faith are more likely to be respectful to organized authority and to one another, than men of no religion or men of many religions held in indifference and mutual counteraction. And this quality of respect, predisposing to peace and subordination, however base it may be in the estimation of “Individual Sovereigns,” and however worthless it may be in ordinary circumstances, is certainly the indispensable element of success in close Association.” Noyes, Chapter XLVII, Review and Results, American Socialisms, 1869.
Charles Nordhoff wrote in 1875..
"All the communes under consideration have as their bond of
union some form of religious belief. It is asserted by some writers
who theorize about communism that a commune can not exist long
without
some fanatical religious thought as its cementing force; while others
assert with equal positiveness that it is possible to maintain a
commune in which
the members shall have diverse and diverging beliefs in religious
matters.
It seems to me that both these theories are wrong; but that it is true
that a
commune to exist harmoniously, must be composed of persons who are of
one mind
upon some question which to them shall appear so important as to take
the place
of a religion, if it is not essentially religious; though it need not
be fanatically held."
-Charles Nordhoff (1875), The Communistic Societies of the United States
..
..
Example a long declining arc of group meditation attendance numbers as a metric in what is the Fairfield, Iowa meditating community seems evidently to indicate a moving along on this cohesion template index. A noteworthy contemporary successful example of navigating critical mass cohesion would be Yogananda’s SRF organization evidently passing now to a generation of managers who had never met the founder mystic. SRF being 50 years ahead of the TM movement in time. The ashram community of Kashi in Florida (see reference below) is another good example to watch in conscious generational transition.
The Kashi intergenerational template:
Engaging Processes: Listening Circles, Collaborative Workshops,Facilitated dialogue- “Satsang Dialog”, Trainings and Retreats, Intergenerational dialogue and oral histories.
Writing sometime after the 2016 CSA conference I paraphrased ideas from Jaya Reinhalter’s paper delivered at the conference as an example by transposition over into the context of a contemporary community (the meditating community of Fairfield, Iowa) that I have been part of for many decades..
Engaging Restorative Justice in Reclamation of Community
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/AM9bhYe1dXI
III Reviews:
.Doug Hamilton's life-cycle checklist for intentional communities is very helpful, and it certainly applies to the ones I have both lived through and followed from a distance. A still missing element is pressure from the "outside" in the form of external economic conditions and trends, reactive legal challenges, political opposition, and general social opprobrium. I also wonder about the effect of the leader's aging, and flagging of his/her energy, and in some cases the decline of founder's personal (and sometimes sexual) appeal (e.g., John Humphrey Noyes). These factors are hard to substantiate as causal but they do seem to turn up in the stories of some communities' decline.
DCS
_________________________
Deirdre C. Stam
I agree with Dierdre’s addition of “outside pressure” to Doug’s helpful list. Some communities, including some spiritual practice ones, never get the chance to go through a full life-cycle because of outside pressure from one source or another.
I would say that Doug’s list applies pretty well to the case I know best – Amana -- though I’ll offer a few caveats.
In addition to administrative rigidity in the form of the routinization of operations, Amana also experienced the emergence of a self-perpetuating power elite, whereby the sons or sons-in-law (mostly) of the elders and business managers were appointed to the same positions that their fathers or fathers-in-law once held. In a community that in many ways promoted equality, this became a source of tension.
In addition to loss of people, Amana experienced a growing level of malingering among continuing members. While this in the end may have a similar effect, the social dynamic of it is different.
Amana didn’t deal with donors, so that was not a factor in their case.
I suppose the flip side of “loss of altruism” is “growth of self-centeredness.” This applied in Amana both at the level of the individual and at the level of the family. For example, in the community’s early years, everyone ate their meals in communal dining rooms, where separate seating for men, women, and children was the rule. Over time, it became increasingly common for a family member to pick up food for the family at the communal kitchen and bring that food home to be eaten en famille. It was a good example of what could be called “familism” in contrast to “communalism.” Examples of individual self-centeredness are common.
It would be interesting to explore the concept of community life cycle further. The actual life span of communities varies tremendously, of course, but, as we know, some communities expire without appearing to go through an entire life cycle of the kind Doug writes about. (Obviously, this is also true of human beings.) Explanations for community longevity are numerous and varied.
Jon Andelson
Responding:
Thanks, these are really fine additional thoughts. It is not just any one thing but we are working a long differential equation of variables and coefficients of community. Added here are historical observations that entail some of these considerations, though mostly in context of spiritual practice communal groups as a category of communal. Doug
IV ConsolidationAcknowledging “Generational-Wisdom”..
Recognizing variance within group values by generational-wisdom within continuing developmental processes of communalism, Mark Holloway’s 1966 introduction to the Dover edition Strange Cults & Utopias of 19th Century America, History Of American Socialisms by John Humphrey Noyes first published in 1869. Holloway identifies that ‘generational wisdom’ may play as a role in community re-consolidations.
V. The role of generational leadershipThe founder,
“A fanatic might get this far, might indeed get further, ...in order to maintain the initial impetus. As well as the absolute conviction that they and they alone had chosen the right path, and the ability to persuade others that this was so, leaders of this kind needed exceptional organizing ability and foresight, balanced judgment, and a quality that can best be described as “intuitive astuteness”. Joseph Meacham, who organized the Shakers into communities, and Brigham Young, who commanded the Mormon hegira, must have been endowed with these qualities; and no doubt other examples of “second-generation” wisdom of this kind could be cited. It was a characteristic that was less common among initiators, and this is one reason why Noyes is such an exceptional and fascinating character.
Noyes was truly original. In him the simple vision, the strength of character and the evangelical fire of the fanatical initiator were blended with the balanced judgment and practical managerial capacity of the successful consolidator. This was an unusual combination of characteristics…”
-Mark Holloway
“New religions as first-generation religions,
..During the first-generation, the founder, whose new ideas led to the formation of the group, places a definitive stamp upon it. The first members are self-selected because of their initial confidence in the leader and/or their agreement with the leader’s program. The first-generation is also a time of experimentation and rapid change. The leader must discover the right elements to combine in a workable program, generate solutions to unexpected obstacles, choose and train capable leaders, and elaborate upon the initial ideas or vision that motivated the founding of the group in order to create a more complete theology. The group formally or informally gives feedback in the form of approval or disapproval of the leader’s actions.
Over time, the choices open to the leader are narrowed. Structures (and expectations) develop. As the movement grows, and especially as branches are established, the leader has to work through intermediaries, and the lines of authority and communication become more impersonal. The leader’s real ability to change structures, should s/he desire such adjustments, meets greater and greater resistance. Though the leader may retain some important pieces of control, the real task of managing the organization and administering the organization’s affairs increasingly passes to the second and third echelon leadership. The analogy between religious and secular corporations, however much it offends religious sensibilities, is both appropriate to and informative of religious group dynamics.” -J. Gordon Melton
Likewise:
“The first generation has an idea and lives for that idea. The second
generation perpetuates that idea for the sake of their fathers, but
their hearts are not in it. The third generation openly rebels
against the task of mere perpetuation of the institutions founded by
their grandfathers-it is always the same with people.”
-F. William Miller, Main Amana pharmacist, 1933
- excerpt from:
The Amana People
The History of a Religious Community
by Peter Hoehnle
VI. The Leadership of Charisma in Communal Mission..
“Prophetic charisma occurs in more complex societies and adheres to the prophet who proclaims a divine mission or radical political doctrine. This form of charisma leads to revolution and social change. Weber regarded the prophet as the prototype for other kinds of charismatic leaders (Schweitzer 1984, 32).
.
In using charisma to explain social change and heroic leaders, Weber did not intend merely to invent a dry academic term. Rather, he saw charisma as representing the incarnate life force itself, "the thrust of the sap in the tree and the blood in the veins," an elemental or daemonic power (Dow 1978).
It is creative and revolutionary, for "in its pure form charisma . . . may be said to exist only in the process of originating" (Weber 1964, 364). At the other end of the continuum, routinized charisma describes what happens when a leader’s charisma is thinly dispersed throughout the followers who act in the leader’s name, typically after he has died. It may survive many generations and underlie a stable social order, but it is conservative and is not a force for social change (Miyahara 1983, 370).
Chapter 2, Charisma.
Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities (1997) by Len Oakeshttp://sustainedaction.org/Explorations/prophetic_charisma_psychological_explanation%20part1.htmV. “..neglecting a close and entire attention to first principles”
-and these not keeping closely and inviolably to first principles, ..it soon went to decay -
The Cyclings of Decay in Communitarian “Common Stock” (Hicks, 1826):
“We find it recorded that while the primitive disciples kept strictly to the rule and guide that Jesus directed them to, to wit, the Spirit of Truth -that is as he represented it, an Inward Teacher that would teach them all common things and lead and guide them in to all truth. They had all things in common and cast all into a common stock, but this state of things continued with them but a short time. For as soon as their numbers increased by outside additions from Jews and Gentiles and also no doubt from natural generation -and these not keeping closely and inviolably to first principles, on which their confederacy was founded and which alone could possibly preserve them in harmony and concord- as soon as the founders of the institution were taken from them, and the care and ordering of the commonwealth fell into other hands, it soon went to decay -by reason of the leaders neglecting a close and entire attention to first principles as their only rule and turning away from the Inward Teacher to outward instructors, and substituted letter instead of the Spirit of Truth, which Jesus directed his disciples to, as their only sure rule and guide. This opened a door for the apostasy to enter.
Hence, I am led to believe that the state of the people in the present day is not in any general way become so fully acquainted with this inward and alone sure teacher as to place sufficient trust and confidence therein, so as to be preserved together in harmony and concord for any length of time - seeing there will be a continual succession of manager and member in the Society, and of course, governors and governed.
But did we all as individuals take the Spirit of Truth, or Light Within, as our only rule and guide in all things, we should all be willing and thereby enabled to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.”
Letter to Thomas Alsop May 14, 1826 -Dear Friend Letters & Essays of Elias Hicks edited by Paul Buckley
{ Incidentally, ..this book of the letters of Elias Hicks edited by Paul Buckley is really interesting reading. Through letters it tells the story first hand of a violent (shocking) usurping by coup d'etat of the spiritual practice of the old Society of Friends (Quakers) by evangelical (orthodox) Christians. -Doug. }
VII. Diluting mission and the loss of communal cohesion..
The Holy Experiment, Pennsylvania, a further example of the diluting communal mission-statement and the loss of communal cohesion..
quoting..
The Quaker Ethic:“..By living simply, by resolutely surrendering that which was not essential, the Friends could keep themselves free -free to speak their minds, free from the wiles of greed, free to devote themselves primarily to spiritual pursuits and social service rather than limitless material gains.
Fox emphasized the liberating aspects of the Quaker simple life when he advised the Friends: “Neither be cumbered nor surfeited with the Riches of the World, nor bound, nor strained with them, and be married to the Lord.” He realized that energetic and frugal Quakers would naturally increase their wealth, but he cautioned that after “Riches do increase, take heed to setting your Hearts upon them, lest they become a Curse and Plaque to you.” His warning illustrated the perplexing challenge embodied in both the Puritan and Quaker ethics -how to live and work in a complex, tempting material world without coming to love it. Yet the early Friends were even more confident than their Calvinist counterparts in their ability to manage such conflicting tensions. Openly perfectionist in outlook, they believed that those who responded to the “Inner Light” could begin to control their base passions and serve God’s will.
Penn: “Riches serve wise men, he maintained, “but command a fool.” Too often the insatiable appetite for more wealth blinded people to the higher goals of life, leading them to believe that “cumber, not retirement (retirement = archaic word for meditation), and gain, not content, were the duty and comfort of a Christian.” Those who blindly pursued riches were prisoners to their work and traitors to their faith: “Do we not see how early they rise; how late they go to bed; how full of the Change, the shop, the warehouse, the customhouse; of bills, bonds, charter-parties, etc., they are?” Serving and worshiping God he declared must always remain the primary business of life.
Rapid migration of German and Scots-Irish settlers into and through the Delaware Valley eventually transformed the ruling Quaker majority into a defensive and fragmented minority, and the political,social,and religious consensus of the original settlement disintegrated. By 1750 Friends made up only a Quarter of the colony’s population. Undoubtedly, much of the decline in Quaker spirituality also resulted from the lust for wealth and luxurious living that motivated more and more of the Friends themselves. Unimpeded by religious persecution and political oppression and having first access to the most fertile lands and promising trades, many early Quaker colonists quickly found the door to wealth wide open, and they rushed across the threshold.
The changing mores and composition of the colony continued to erode its simple social ethic. An old Quaker saying pinpointed the problem: “A carriage and pair does not long continue to drive to a meetinghouse.”
One visitor to Pennsylvania observed in 1724: “According to appearances plainness is vanishing pretty much.”
Like their Puritan counterparts, many of the original Quaker settlers failed to transmit to their children their own religious zeal and social ethic. Samuel Fothergill, a leading English Quaker spokesman who during the mid1750’s tried to revive the declining spiritual discipline in Pennsylvania, emphasized this point in analyzing the colony’s malaise:
“Their fathers came into the country, and bought large tracts of land for a trifle, their sons found large estates come into their possession, and a profession of religion which was partly national, which descended like a patrimony from their fathers, and cost as little. They settled in ease and affluence, and whilst they made the barren wilderness as a fruitful field, suffered the plantation of God to be as a field uncultivated, and a desert.”
In 1752, John Churchman, a Chester County Friend, chastised his rich Quaker brethren, emphasizing that “those who were delighted in the pursuit of worldly treasures, and lived in the pleasures and pollutions of the world.. Were of the church of antichrist.” Anthony Benezet was even more severe in his criticism of the worldliness that had infected the Friends. He especially cringed when affluent Quakers tried to rationalize their relentless pursuit of wealth and prestige as being consonant with God’s will. “The desire of amassing wealth and of gaining the esteem of the world,” he warned, “will no more unite with ye pure genuine spirit of ye Gospel than iron will unite with clay.” Violation of the Quaker principle of plain, pious living was to him a spiritual felony, not a misdemeanor: “I cannot look upon the love of the world and giving way to desire for riches, as many do, as a pardonable frailty, but rather esteem it a departure from the divine life, which must either gradually kill all religion in the Soul, or be itself killed, by it.”
Growing up in a tolerant and bounteous Pennsylvania gave many of the younger Quakers a much different outlook from their parents, who had suffered religious persecution and economic hardship in England. The younger generation’s attachment to the Society of Friends was often the result of inherited convention rather than personal conviction, and their lack of self-discipline betrayed their superficial commitment.”
(Then, A Stimulus to Re-Clarifying Communal Mission):
“Hence, where the Puritans had tended to sacrifice their spiritual beliefs in order to maintain their political and social power, the zealous Quakers decided that they must sacrifice political authority in order to save their religious principles.
Yet the end of Quaker political control may have been a blessing in disguise, for it provided a further stimulus to reform among many Friends, forcing them to renew their original emphasis on person-to-person relationships rather than political structures. They came to realize that, instead of transforming the world, they had been transformed by a too close accommodation to it. Many concerned Friends there after began an energetic effort to revive the piety and plainness of their sect. ..In 1757 Anthony Benezet noted the growing transformation in the religious life of Pennsylvania: “I may with pleasure say, that there continues to be a great shaking amongst our dry bones, the Hearts of many amongst us, especially the youth, are touched with love and zeal for God.” -David E. Shi, The Simple Life
Hinds, American communities
by Hinds, William Alfred, 1833-1910
INDUCTIONS
“That while no special religious system or special interpretation of the Scriptures is essential to success in Communism, agreement is indispensable, and thus far that has most surely come through the religious life;
That the growth and prosperity of a Community require a strong communistic spirit at its center at all stages of its career, and in proportion as that is weak- ened or displaced by individualism it tends toward decadence and death;
That an ideal Community is an enlarged home, or aggregation of happy, intelUgent, virtuous house- holds, with enlarged dwellings, domains and work- shops, multiplied labor-saving..”
VIII. Finally, by surveying of history, a Conclusion:
From the knowledge of cautionary tales in communal studies then a proactive gathering of, keeping, or attending to communal cohesion within most any group, club, sect, movement, organization or institution should at-the-least make a Google search for ‘writing a mission statement’ to look at and evaluate towards what core mission there is in one’s own association. Evidently a community can go along for a long ways with clarity in mission.
-Doug Hamilton, Fairfield, Iowa
“..As long as we can hold the light we must.”
the final few lines of Ulysses....
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
As long as we can hold the light we must.
/
/
Practicum in Governance, An Olive Branchhttps://www.an-olive-branch.org/
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