The importance of community over belief
Most of my prayers are said in the first person plural. The worship services I attend are usually in a congregation. My religious life is largely, though by no means exclusively, communal.
Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations in the United Kingdom, makes a strong case for community as the core of religious life. In a lecture he gave last summer to the Chautauqua Institution in New York he quoted Robert C. Putnam, the American political scientist: “Social capital does exist in America. But where will you find it? In churches, in synagogues, in temples, in houses of worship.” What’s true of America is equally true of other countries, including Canada.
Rabbi Sacks understands Putnam to say that “religion is the great source of community in the contemporary world.” It matters less what you believe and more, much more, that you belong. Over the years I’ve ministered to many women and men who told me that they didn’t believe much but had a great need to belong to a community of worshippers.
Lord Sacks tells us why: “Religion as a consecration of the bonds that connect us, religion as the redemption of our solitude, religion as loyalty and love, religion as altruism and compassion, religion as covenant and commitment, religion that consecrates marriage, that sustains community and helps reweave the torn fabric of society.”
None of us can aspire to be like the Biblical Moses who climbed Mount Sinai to find God. But each of us can be part of the people who stood at the foot of the mountain awaiting God to descend to be among them. That’s how we all can be touched by the divine.
Though each religious tradition knows of individuals who seek solitude in order to be with God, the norm in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is to find a community in the hope that God will be there for us. Charlatan leaders may seek to pervert their communities into exclusive clubs, the members of which are subjected to rigorous and eccentric practices, but mercifully the overwhelming majority of religious communities welcome new members and are open to the world.
Jonathan Sacks spells out what this means: “If you are a regular goer to church, synagogue or other place of worship, you are more likely to help a stranger in need, give a meal to the hungry, shelter someone who’s homeless, find somebody a job, give to charity (whether the cause is religious or secular), get involved in voluntary work.”
Looking back at some four decades of service in congregations in Britain and in Canada, I recall many projects in which we were involved with churches and secular groups in order to make life more bearable for those in need. Of particular significance was the involve- ment of the congregation I served, Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, in the “Out of the Cold” project that provided food and shelter from the winter cold for some of the city’s homeless women and men.
Similarly I found common ground with colleagues in the Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition (ISARC) that aptly describes itself as representing “the solidarity of the diverse faith communities in Ontario engaged in advocacy efforts for the elimination of poverty” in this province.
When representatives of different religions come together to articulate their respective theological positions, the atmosphere is at best esoteric and the result is often more division than understanding. But when they meet to help people in need, they almost invariably develop respect for the others’ faith. Though theology deepens one’s own faith, community transforms it into holy work.
Dow Marmur is rabbi emeritus of Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple. His column appears every four weeks.
It matters less what you believe and more, much more, that you belong