Virtual Community

A significant part of the Christian story is about community: about its formation and reconciliation. During the last 250 years theology has often tended towards the individual, and has concentrated on a Robinson Crusoe type of figure in which the story is entirely about one person and their God. Yet to think of Christianity as a solitary business is to strip it of much of its meaning and force. Christianity is not primarily a religion about individuals, but about communities.

From the very beginning of the biblical narrative we are presented with the view that ‘it is not good for man to be alone’. Humans are made for community. Their identity is forged and found by being with other people. The story of sin that is told through the Old Testament after the expulsion from Eden is one in which human relationships become possessive and violent. To deal with this God creates community. He interacts with certain individuals in Genesis and Exodus to form a people for himself.

Jesus’ own ministry was one of community building. One of his first acts was to call disciples. The miracles are not simply about wonders, but rather they are stories that tell of people being restored back into their communities, and therefore of healing and reconciliation. Jesus’ last act before his death is a fellowship meal with his friends, and after the resurrection he appears to them to make them a new community as the church.

To be a Christian, from the very earliest of times, was about belonging to the community of faith. The early Christians suffered persecution for belonging to the church and participating in the eucharist. The Western church for over a thousand years formed society so that it adhered to Christian ideals regarding the moral and good. Until modernity (after 1750) thinking about Christianity as mainly an individual commitment to God would have made little or no sense.

And that is what makes the current situation so difficult for us… We are a community of faith, and yet we cannot physically meet. To be church means to be an assembly, and yet we cannot assemble in one place. This is why maintaining community is of paramount importance. As tempting as it may be to pull up the drawbridge from the rest of the world, Christians are called to be a community and to engage with the world.

I think that in some ways the word ‘virtual’, when we refer to electronic communications, is not helpful here. When we speak to someone over Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, Teams or other programmes, we are establishing and maintaining real relationships and real communities, and there is actually little that is virtual about that. We would all prefer to be back as we were but, until churches can re-open, building community is a profoundly Christian thing to be doing. And so especially during this time, I encourage you to use the technology that is available to maintain relationship, prevent isolation, and support the vulnerable.