Forgotten Ways, Ch. 7
Communitas, Not Community
It’s time for the last chapter of Alan Hirsch’s The Forgotten Ways Handbook. We’ll be talking about it on Sunday at 10:45 a.m. – note the time change, not 9 a.m.
For our purposes here, we can define communitas as the type of community that develops in the context of danger, an ordeal, or an overwhelming task. It happens when, faced with such a challenge, the participants ‘find each other’ in a new and deeper way. The social bonds are strengthened and restructured. Friends become comrades. …
Liminality applies to that situation where people find themselves in an in-between, marginal state in relation to the surrounding society, a place that could involved significant danger and disorientation, but not necessarily …
Communitas in this view happens in situations where individuals are driven to find one another through a common experience of ordeal, humbling, transition, and marginalization. It involves intense feelings of social togetherness and belonging brought about by having to rely on one another in order to survive. …
So the related ideas of liminality and communitas describe the dynamics of the Christian community inspired to overcome their instincts to ‘huddle and cuddle’ and instead form themselves around a common mission that calls them to a dangerous journey.” Forgotten Ways Handbook, 169-171
