Bauman suggests that postmodernity, which is the “age of contingency fur sich,” is also the age of community. Yet, the communities that are possible within postmodern culture are inherently unstable; they are “clouds of communities”: “Such communities will never be anything like Tonnies’s cosy and unreflective (cosy because unreflective) homes of unanimity. Tonnies-style communities fall apart the moment they know of themselves as communities. They vanish (if they have not evaporated before) once we say ‘how nice it is to be in a community.’ From that moment on, community is not a site of secure settlement; it is all hard work and uphill struggle, a constantly receding horizon of the never ending road; anything but natural and cosy.”
A community that is pure gift, a community gathered and secured by the Spirit and not by the (sociologically) heretical actions of the members - that is a different story.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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