Spiritual Development, Faith’s Publicness
and the Shalom of the City

Michael A. Cowan

Institute for Ministry
Loyola University New Orleans

In the great tradition of Augustine, I begin with a confession. What follows are the reflections of a recovering psychologist. I am recovering from the limitations of the profoundly psychological orientation to life that came with twenty years of professional training and practice as a psychotherapist. The recovery program that I am working is what I will describe later in this article as developing a public life. I recently celebrated my sixth anniversary of publicness. Perhaps you can appreciate my dilemma, because as a voluntary reader of a periodical called Praying, you probably have strong psychological interests yourself.

In our recent book entitled Conversation, Risk & Conversion: The Inner and Public Life of Small Christian Communities (Orbis Books, 1997), my colleague Bernard Lee and I argue that small Christian communities must balance concern for the development of their internal life with attention to their social obligations.  A small community with a strong inner life but no public presence is in actuality a support group, while one with notable public commitments but little development of its inner life is in truth a social action group. To claim rightly the title “community of faith” means to accept the challenge of developing and integrating a life with inner and public dimensions. The trap into which small Christian communities in the culture of the United States are most likely to fall is developing strong inner lives while neglecting their public side, that is, becoming spiritual support groups.

This is a great risk for one simple reason: There has never been a culture as psychologically-minded as ours, never a group of human beings as preoccupied as we with personality types, feelings, dreams, wants, needs, identity, family history, differentiation, meaning, values, relationships, support, empathy, authenticity, spiritual growth, human development, etc. The validity of this emphasis does not need to be defended. Modern psychology is right in insisting that all of the above are important, indeed critical, to lives well lived. And the limitations of this orientation are equally profound. Advertising and media in the dominant culture of individualism keep us under tremendous and constant pressure to become preoccupied with our own self-actualization, with the development of our own inner lives, with being all that we can be. In our culture Emerson’s classic dictum that “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind” has become dogma.  This position was artfully glorified a decade ago in a film called “Dead Poets Society,” which thrilled and reinforced the individualist in all of us, whether we knew it or not.

“But surely,” you might object, “Emerson is right. Is anything more sacred than one’s own integrity?” No, but as a disciple of the Christ, there is something as sacred to me as my integrity, and that is yours. Someone who lives as if what ultimately matters is some--any--aspect of his personal existence, is living out of too narrow a focus. He has lost sight of the biblical vision of personhood as communal or relational, and has become an individualist in the strong sense. A relational (or, I might say, biblical) self, by contrast, understands that her integrity, health, holiness, well being and peace are intimately bound up with the presence or absence of those characteristics in the lives of other persons and the earth itself. I cannot become or long remain a person of integrity unless I am in creative relationship with other persons of integrity, just as I cannot be a healthy person for long on a sick planet.

One of the strengths of our contemporary psychological-mindedness is the clear awareness that human development and relationships are inseparably bound up.  This perspective is perhaps most powerfully exemplified in the family systems theory of Murray Bowen.  We now understand that autonomous selfhood is a myth; the self is not independent of the web of relationships within which it continuously emerges. For example, bringing a daughter into the world and then caring for her forever after, is not an external task that I take on while remaining the same person that I already was. Our very selves are transformed when we enter into the powerful relational bond named parenthood. The same could be said about marriage, extended family, friendship and support groups. Participating in these intensely personal relationships provides the context for certain kinds of development that would not otherwise be possible. Someone who is not a parent or a spouse or an intimate friend, cannot develop psychologically and spiritually in the specific ways that we are challenged to do so by those very particular forms of relationship.

The bonds that I have just named have something in common. They are private. These are the relationships of everyday intimacy and interdependence within which personal identities emerge. In the culture of individualism, these bonds are highly, and rightly, prized because of their obvious importance for the self-actualization of those involved. I hope that I have already made plain my judgment there are forms of development available in these formative private relationships that cannot be attained elsewhere.

It is equally true, however--and this is my main point in this article--that there are critical forms of psychological and spiritual growth that cannot occur in the realm of private relationships. There are relationships outside the private sphere that also hold crucial developmental possibilities. I will call this arena of non-private relationships “public life.” It is most unfortunate that in the United States today, anyone who is not a media celebrity or involved in electoral politics or both is not regarded as a public person. There is, however, a more ancient and powerful way of understanding our publicness that makes plain its essential role in the development of our selfhood. I define public life as the arena within our society wherein decisions affecting the common good--decisions about job creation, employment, education, health care, housing, pollution, etc. are made. Public life is the place where citizens and people of faith exercise or fail to exercise our responsibilities for seeking the common good in such matters.

The Greeks coined a special word for public life. They called it “politics,” and defined it as the activity wherein citizens of the polis worked out among themselves ways and means of providing for the common good. The great tragedy of our time, from which many other problems flow, is that ordinary citizens have abandoned the sacred activity of politics to politicians, those with great wealth and influence, and experts. In his important and disturbing book on the state of democratic politics in the United States today, William Greider brilliantly catches what is really at stake in the vitality of our political life.

Politics is not a game. It exists to answer the largest questions of the society--the   agreed-upon terms by which everyone can live peaceably with one another. At its best politics creates and sustains social relationships--the human conversation and engagement that draw people together and allow them to discover their mutuality.

Public life happens outside the private boundaries of family and friendship. It is the social space where citizens who cherish democracy and people of faith who hunger and thirst for justice must learn to register our claims effectively. It includes but is in no way limited to partisan, electoral politics. Voting is in actuality a minimal expression of authentic public life. The basic dilemma in the collective life of the U.S. today, namely the unraveling and discrediting of genuinely democratic governance, is a crisis of what I am calling public life.

People of faith have another word for building our public life. In biblical language to provide for the common good is to seek the shalom of a community. Shalom is the peace which emerges only when human beings are in right relationship with themselves, their neighbors, the earth and all its creatures and God. The prophet Jeremiah’s stunning letter to the remnant of his defeated and devastated community in Babylon includes the admonition to “seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its shalom you will find your shalom.” (Jer. 29:7) In the Jewish world view--the world view of Jesus, whom Christians call "the Christ"--right relationship means the proper balance of justice and mercy called for by the real social circumstances within which God’s people find ourselves now. What the right balance is at any given moment is a judgment call which God leaves to us. In making it, we must exercise both religious discernment and practical wisdom. The fundamental challenge to adult citizens and people of faith is to exercise relational power, to exert our influence on others and allow ourselves to be influenced by others, as we seek right relationship in the give-and-take compromises of democratic public life.

Public life is the place where citizens and people of faith who do not have access to great wealth and power must find our collective voices if we wish to affect the shape of our common life rather than simply being the passive recipients of the decisions of others. Full adulthood both psychologically and spiritually means being involved in choices about the political and economic direction of our society, for it is precisely in those decisions that we provide or fail to provide adequately for the common good.

For anyone still with me, I suspect that the question now is simple: “How would someone go about claiming their publicness?”

I will answer from my experience over the past six years as a member of the collective leadership of a broad-based community organization called The Jeremiah Group in my home city of New Orleans, for it is my belief that such organizations constitute the best example we now have of ordinary citizens and people of faith in the United States and elsewhere reclaiming democratic public life, seeking the shalom of their larger communities. Broad-based community organizations are anchored in communities of faith--local congregations of all sizes, economic classes, races, cultures and religions. Coming together in a form of solidarity that crosses ethnic, religious and class barriers, they learn to seek the well being of their communities in committed and effective ways. They create a new and sustainable base of power for change in which citizens and people of faith may involve themselves, and such involvement changes people profoundly by bringing them into serious public conversation, action and reflection with people of other races, denominations and religions.

Broad-based community organizations, like those associated with the Industrial Areas Foundation Network in which The Jeremiah Group has been blessed to participate, are in various stages of development all over the U.S. and are also emerging internationally. In the judgment of many observers of U.S. culture and society, including William Greider, whose work I cited above, these organizations are changing the fundamental ways in which the political and economic decision-making which constitutes our public life are conducted.  They have shown themselves to be powerful instruments for revitalizing local democracy, for seeking the shalom of their larger communities. Broad-based community organizations have a remarkable track record in affecting what happens in the public life of their communities, and doing so in concrete and creative ways. They have made the concerns of their member institutions known and affected public decisions in matters ranging from public education reform to affordable housing, from community policing to economic development and the creation of living-wage employment, from public health and sanitation to minimum wage levels.

Broad-based community organizations exist to give public expression to the sorrowful, angry voices of individuals suffering in our cities, suburbs and rural areas.  Those solitary voices are amplified when they combine with others in a chorus of lamentation and prophecy rising up from the devastated and demoralized public life of our communities. Through their faith and their relationships with one another, members of broad-based organizations have come to understand in their own experience what biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann means in insisting that only when grief moves from private pain to appropriate, disciplined, public expression does true empowerment of people of faith and citizens begin and the dream of a community of peace arise anew.

Influential analysts of U.S. culture have argued persuasively that contemporary psychology has become the Trojan horse of the dominant culture of individualism, and psychotherapists its priesthood.  If that is so, then we must all seek to recover from it. And to the extent that modern “spirituality” has become a thinly veiled form of psychological individualism couched in spiritual jargon, wherein the Myers Briggs enjoys canonical status, we will need a program of recovery from it as well. I would put the challenge facing those who live in a highly psychologized popular culture like our own in this way: For those concerned with the development of the whole person, psychology has its place, and psychology must be kept in its place. In the language of democracy what helps keep psychology in its place is working for the public good; in the language of biblical faith it is seeking God’s shalom for our communities. Standing for the common good not only changes communities, but also those who have entered the public arena in the company of former strangers become fellow citizens. It changes us in ways that all the psychotherapy, support groups, and personal growth seminars in the private world never will.