Re: [PEN-L] churches or communities

[paul phillips]

I think I see what Carrol is getting at.  It was not the church that created the community, but the shared values and collective action in organizing the church etc. that created the community.  This, however, points to one of the difficulties in modern urban society.  There are few such collective institutions that create community.       This is not entirely true, of course.  We just retired to a small town in British Columbia where we very rapidly made friends and enjoyed a community by joining a  couple of choirs.  Music and the arts also have the ability to create shared values -- i.e. a community. Paul P Carrol Cox wrote: paul phillips wrote: I think I disagree quite profoundly with Carrol on this. The centre of most communities in the 'frontier' west of Canada was the local church and school. The center is not the community. What _formed_ the community was the shared action of forming the physical community on the 'frontier.' The historical accident of the Roman Empire was responsible for the "center" to be a xtian church rather than some other such institution. Your post complements rather than contradicts mine. Carrol

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