“Religion Creates Community”

Last updated on: July 27, 2019 at 10:49 am by Dan Peterson

“Religion Creates Community” 2019-07-27T10:49:11-06:00 Dan Peterson

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A view of Lake Louise from near the famous hotel that stands at one end of the lake.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

This an extremely interesting article and I think that it makes a vitally important point:

“Religion Creates Community”

“[R]eligious adherents of all sorts are . . . far more connected and generous than their non-religious counterparts.”

***

On the same topic — or, anyway, on a closely related one:

“Are Evangelicals More Empathetic? Analysis on recent survey results may provide Christians with some encouragement—and reproof.”

***

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a blog entry about the pleasure of living in a neighborhood in which we know our neighbors and often do things together. I mentioned, for example, that several of us have a regular practice of going out for a bite to eat and catching a play at one or the other of the two Utah Hale theaters. I commented that the almost-entirely Latter-day Saint Utah neighborhood in which we now live is much different from the California neighborhoods in which I grew up and in which my parents spent their last years, and I credited our shared membership in the local ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as contributing enormously to the tighter community bonds that I sense. (In fact, I expressed gratitude for my ward and my community.) In those California neighborhoods, I said, we were friendly with our neighbors, but we rarely if ever went on vacations with them, attended plays together, went to Dodger games together, or anything of that sort. We waved over the fence or while simultaneously mowing our lawns, but that was about it.

Not, I thought, a very controversial blog entry. But, of course, in the tiny sector of the Internet where all that I do and say is micro-analyzed for by-now redundant evidence of my stunning depravity, I was accused of saying that nonmembers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can’t be good neighbors or have close neighborhoods. It was suggested that my parents and my brother and I must have been social outcasts and terrible people to live with. Can you imagine, one person exclaimed, how horrible it would be to have Dan Peterson for a neighbor? I probably make it a practice, suggested one, to pass nonmembers of the Church and even members of other wards by with cold and indifferent contempt. And so on and so forth.

Genuinely mad stuff.

Chateau Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Well, my wife and I are up here in Canada with two other couples from our ward. One of the two men with us is our former bishop. (The other, like me, served as bishop of a young single adults ward.) These are some of the folks with whom we attend local plays. We’ve traveled with them before, including trips (with other neighbors, as well) to Europe and the Middle East. We’ll almost certainly travel with them again. We’re already planning such trips.

This seems another illustration of what is, in my experience, an exceptionally close neighborhood.

But I don’t say that only Latter-day Saints can have such a community. What is needed, though, is something more than mere geographical contiguity. Shared membership in a bowling league might help along those lines. Joint involvement in a square dancing club or the Scouts might help. But religious involvement seems especially good at fostering community and interpersonal relationships. Deep involvement in the Hillsdale Baptist Church or the Temple Beth Israel counts. But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a very good provider of community. That’s the simple truth, and that’s pretty much all that I was saying.

Posted from Canmore, Alberta, Canada

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