OUR CALL TO ACTION (Under the Banner of Christ, Part 3)

This post is part of a series talking about my new book, "Under the Banner of Christ with Benedict: Ancient Lessons in Christian Leadership for Times Like These"

(PART 3) OUR CALL TO ACTION

Real, tangible, lived community is the life-source of a people—and of individual persons. MacIntyre points out that, by our very nature as human beings, you are able to know what you should do only if you first know intimately what story, or stories, you are a part of. Likewise the philosopher Charles Taylor has showed that we draw our very identity as human beings from the community of relationships we inhabit. It is in sharing a Christian way of life in common with others that we draw meaning and purpose in the world, that we indeed have solid sense of self and self-worth. We need to rebuild Christian community in order to rediscover who we are and understand in a deep way what it means to be a Christian, to know God.

This understanding, however, is not something like book knowledge or abstract awareness, but is fundamentally a lived experience—something in which you become an active participant—and as such can only be lived in concrete, tangible communities: communities of Christian practice. Moreover, such communities must themselves be rooted deeply in the Christian tradition; communities detached from the deep roots of authentic tradition simply will not weather the storms in which we find ourselves today, for only deep roots are not reached by the frost, and only from reviving the glowing embers of an authentically liv- ing tradition can a fire be woken from the ashes.