Communities of Coherence and Grace
I propose that a lasting harmony of interests requires that our society provides both inclusion and privilege on the part of all members of our society. Inclusion means that all members of society are invited to the table. Privilege means that all members of our society are afforded the opportunity be heard, understood and appreciated by everyone else sitting at the table. For inclusion and privilege to be engaged, a social structure and culture must be established that is based in a secular sense of coherence—and that ultimately requires a spiritual sense of grace. This is a very tall order—but there are means to bring about these favorable conditions that have been identified by several notable observers of the American community.
One of the observers is Robert Bellah, who together with several colleagues (Bellah,, et al. , 1985) , revisited the analysis of American communities offered more than a century ago by Alexis de Tocqueville. Bellah and his associates base their analysis, in part, on a review of American communities that have veered far from the image of coherent American communities offered by de Tocqueville. Bellah believes that such communities cannot endure and the story to be told about these communities must contain other elements. As Bellah notes (1985, pp. 281-282):
“. . . that is not the whole story. It could not be the whole story, for the culture of separation. if it ever became completely dominant, would collapse of its own incoherence. Or, even more likely, well before that happened, an authoritarian state would emerge to provide the coherence the culture no longer could. If we are not entirely a mass of interchangeable fragments within an aggregate. if we are in part qualitatively distinct members of a whole, it is because there are still operating among us, with whatever difficulties, traditions that tell us about the nature of the world, about the nature of society, and about who we are as people. Primarily biblical and republican, these traditions are . . . important . . . and significant to some degree for almost all [members of a society]. Somehow families, churches, a variety of cultural associations, and, even if only in the interstices, schools and universities, do manage to communicate a form of life, a paideia, in the sense of growing up in a morally and intellectually intelligible world.”
At a fundamental level, Bellah and his colleagues seem to be suggesting that the “glue” holding a community together and providing it with guidance is found in a wide diversity of institutions that exist within a community. This theme of diversity aligns with Anonymous’ harmony of interests that must exist among all elements of a society. I suggest that the glue of coherence also seems to be found in what Eliade (1959) identified many years ago as both the sacred and profane domains of life. The profane is to be found in the secular institutions of a community (Anonymous’ economically based harmony of interests), while the sacred is to be found in its spiritual institutions (what might be labels a sacred harmony of interests). In alignment with Bellah, I propose that coherence and a sustained harmony of interests requires attention to both the secular and sacred visions held by members of a community.
