The Fabric of Faithfulness

Is our Church Building more Nowhere? I’ve want to reflect on the book “Home from Nowhere” by James Howard Kuntsler, and the Movement for New Urbanism. On the face of things, this is a fairly typical “anti - sprawl screed” full of all the reasons why the uncontrolled low density development is killing our nation. Things like resource consumption, absense of community, loss of farmland, over dependence on the automobile, problems of consumer culture etc etc etc. But there are several different concepts that Kuntsler brings to bear that are very refreshing that I want to point out. Concept 1. Kuntsler brings a spiritual component to the argument, pointing out the decline of the family, spiritual malaise, disenfranchisement of children and the elderly, a crisis of culture in the urban poor - all factors that seems to be tearing our culture apart. These items should be familiar from conservative Christian voices. Kuntsler gives a different diagnosis of the malaise: stating that our development of distant and ugly spaces is killing our soul and endangering our civilization. He says:

Community, as it once existed in the form of places worth caring about, supported by local economies, has been extirpated by an insidious corporate colonialism that doesn’t care about the places from which it extracts it profits or the people subject to its operations. Without the underpinnings of genuine community and its institutions, family life has predictably disintegrated, because the family alone cannot bear all the burdens and perform all the functions of itself and the community. Spouses cannot fulfill each other’s every need and marriages implode under the presumption that they ought to be able to. Children cannot acquire social skills unless they circulate in a real community among a variety of honorably occupied adults, not necessarily their parents, and are subject to the teachings and restraints of all such adults. (Page 22)

Of course the sickness is one I hear about in spades from my evangelical subculture. James Dobson has made an empire out of it – but we never hear about this illness. We are quick to point out the spiritual aspects of our cultural malaise, but not the contributions of our physical landscape and greedy development methodology. If the church is truly going to bring answers to cultural and personal malaise – we need to take into consideration the physical and developmental aspects of our vision of culture. The church has often attempted to reproduce the communal values of traditional urbanism in its own programs and full life. What once was in the community now is only in the church. This isolated programming separates church folk from others in the community, because church becomes purveyor of all things communal for its own folk, rather than providing faithful Christians who can be involved in those communal activities throughout the broader community. Concept 2. Kuntsler provides an argument for traditional ways of development (like the towns of the 19th century) based on concrete metaphysical and aesthetic principles like Fibonacci’s ratio, and the importance of relationships and charm in anything physical. These metaphysical principles are expressed in the same “absolute” terms that Christians talk about the presence of God. The church usually doesn’t talk about aesthetic principles when it talks about retuning to traditional ways of thinking about culture. Focus on the Family might portray itself as returning to an 1890 ideal, but it doesn’t talk about the aesthetics and metaphysical principles that were assumed in 1890. Maybe this is because they were so assumed in the 1890 that no one realizes them as being missing. Again this is an absence in our discussions. Concept 3. Kuntsler ties our consumer culture back to the lack of care about our place. He states:

The devaluation of standards supports some collateral notions, for instance, that there are no social prerequisites to parenthood, that property ownership carries no obligation so the common good, and that the marketplace is the sole arbiter of what makes life worth living. Paradoxically, under this kind of democracy citizens spend inordinate amounts of time, money, and energy trying to provide that they are better than others by accumulating costly totem objects. There is an obvious relation, by the way, between our present unbalanced notions of property rights vis-à-vis the vestigial common good and our mania for accumulating status totems such as cars: it is the behavior of people who literally don’t know their place in the world.

Again, the church often simply accommodates the consumerization of culture, and of course doesn’t think about the civic background for this fact. Now of course, I think Kuntsler is also one sided in his presentation of problem and solution. A gospel view would ask whether American's demand for “bigger and better” is a result of consumer culture or because of misplaced identity as those identified by consumption rather than as Christ’s children. Our sinful nature of course drives us toward failure, personally, cultural, civically. Kuntsler expresses a vague spirituality, but the thinness of his expression weakens his argument. But the flip side of this critique is just as important. Christians who are active in explorations of culture and faith need to consider the civic and physical aspects of our civilization. If the church cannot speak to our culture's problem in development we will not be comprehensive in our solutions, and will again be leaving a a message of prophetic hope to others who do not share our deeper spiritual values. Again, we need to develop a genuine Christian urbanism. Is this voice finding home at CCDA? Does Harambe Houseing consider these when redeveloping the devastated urban core? Why does Habitat for Humanity develop such ugly low income housing? These questions and more need to be thought through in the development of a comprehensive christian response and appropriation of the new urbanism.