City as Congregation: Moving Beyond a Community of Proximity Towards a Community of Practice

It is an incredibly interesting and challenging time to be a public sector employee. Threats to the value of labor, the exploitation of efficiency to cause material harm to vulnerable people, and the purpose of cruelty and self-interest over the public good are on full display here in New York City, nationally through self-professed leaders in Washington, D.C., and internationally in the rally halls and places where historically people have gathered to make decisions, to be represented, and to be called to rise to become neighbors as much as countrymen or alliances against a common enemy. 

In his book, the Philadelphia Negro, W.E.B. DuBois identified a unique phenomenon, Black congregations were functioning as full-on civic spaces with parallels between elected officials, core community services, and key aspects of social development being handled by the church--in large part because local government was not accessible nor representative of these communities. What has emerged in the over 100 years since this publication has been a rise of the religiously non-affiliated and a shift in the role of the Black church, declines in attendance, and gentrification of neighborhoods, as more and more representation in elected government has risen.

This dynamic has shifted in many ways. What might be possible if we began to view the city as a congregation? How might we contend with the rightful critiques of who might get left out or exploited by such a practice and let faith communities inform a new means to make government more responsive, accountable, and collaborative? How might we neighbor better? How might spiritual imagination be useful in the service of community development to impact the material needs of vulnerable people (i.e., housing, healthcare, sense of belonging)? 

This research paper is grounded in practice as a socially engaged Black, Buddhist convert, raised in a Catholic and Lutheran tradition, working as a city planner in Brooklyn, New York City. By taking Brooklyn as a case study, this paper leans on Black, Buddhist, and Christian prophetic traditions to offer a view of lived religion through vocation. As a personal account, this research outlines my relationship to ideas of community, grace, and glory that are collaborative with practices of interdependence, emptiness, and compassion. It is out of these traditions that I bring a deep love and reverence for Martin Luther King, Jr., Thich Nhat Hanh, and the ideas of the Beloved Community. This warmth must not be academically motivated. It is of little use if we do not also develop meaningful methods to transform this wisdom into embodied, karmic action to become better neighbors and congregates. 

This paper ultimately analyses neighboring as:

1. a critical path for spiritual development,
2. a vocational path/ministry, and
3. a form of pastoral care and spiritual imagination.

This work is a first attempt at articulating an updated framework in support of a socially engaged application to public service and civic engagement. As an account of lived religion, it offers practical, liturgical, and theological aspects of the sangha as experienced through the lens of place to help us move beyond proximity and into practice. Ultimately, this paper is a call to karmic action to take responsibility for cultivating the qualities of neighborliness, providing a spiritual foundation to the work of community development needed to persist through challenges, and strategies for addressing the material needs of the most vulnerable. 

The paper offers a mix of practice, sacred text, social ethics, theopoetics, practical theology, and interreligious engagement to underscore its main points. As translated to a presentation, the paper would be expanded to include mixed media to reinforce key aspects and provide local context.