A Reflection from the Rev. David Hoster
St. James’ is a diverse, inclusive, multi-cultural community. Those are four potent words (two hyphenated) leading to another word often taken for granted. To most of us, in ordinary times, community is a casual word describing people with a shared affinity. A club. A congregation. A neighborhood association.
In extraordinary times community means much more—something that ignites our core values as much as any other term in St. James’ self-description.
Community means that we are responsible to one another and for one another. Community accepts that none of us can make it alone. Community expresses our need for one another. Community means that each of us sacrifices for the good of us all.
So, while we might isolate because of a pandemic for self-protection, if we believe in community, we isolate equally for the sake of others. I am responsible for the checkout clerk at the grocery store, for other members of my worshipping community, for strangers in public from whom I maintain a six-foot distance. I am not just protecting myself from them but working for their lives and livelihood.
They are my community to whom I am responsible.
Last weekend we witnessed demonstrations in many state capitols, including our own, by people who take the position that their personal liberty trumps the inevitable spread of Covid-19. For these folks, individual liberty takes precedence over community. They reflect a rising tide expressed by one of my neighbors in Georgetown who wrote, last week, “If you want to isolate that’s your business, but get out of the way of those of us who want to get back out there.”
Such sentiments are profoundly anti-communitarian. They echo Maggie Thatcher who famously said, “There is no such thing as ‘society’ [or, ‘community’]. There are only individuals.” Indeed, there exists a strange kind of faith in our country that if we all act in our own best self-interest it will somehow add up to the best overall good for everybody.
In our current environment, where Covid-19 exposes the falsity of so many clichés, the exercise of unlimited personal liberty, which exposes so many vulnerable people to disease and death, contributes very little to our common good. Embrace of personal liberty’s opposite—community—gives us everything we need.
When I embrace community, I must also care greatly about people whose jobs are endangered or lost, who feel helpless in the face of threat to their personal liberty and are desperate to get back in control of their lives. Some of these folks are protesting in front of state capitols right now. In a pandemic I am profoundly connected to these people, whom I might not have chosen to associate with under ordinary circumstances. Some libertarians are my “others,” but they, too, are my community.
Covid-19 will come at us in waves. After several of these waves, we may find our differences washed away, forced to embrace our need for one another. Covid-19 gave us a luxury Pearl Harbor did not—the luxury to avoid, for a time, the patriotism of national community.
When that time comes, we will be best served by give and take, with needs asserted and sacrifices made, burdens shared, cooperation shouldered. Working together we can hope to rebuild, out of our sad divisions, “one nation, under God,” a goal well understood and actively sought today by a community of radical inclusion forged on the anvil of Old and New Jim Crow and a Rainbow Coalition.
For, indeed, our national covenant in 1789 did not channel Maggie Thatcher in the name of, “I, the Undersigned 350 Million Individuals,” but, rather, “We the people.” We the people constitute a national community. We pledge allegiance as a nation “indivisible.” E Pluribus Unum translates “one community from a plurality of individuals.” Covid-19 forces us toward this national community of cooperation and sacrifice—however diverse and “other” we the people who compose America might look to one another.
Perhaps, in such a time, we might even be able to take another step toward that hoped for day when the Constitution really does embrace all our people.
The Rev. David Hoster
