Faiths and the ‘Faith Community’

Abstract

Just as the idea of faith is debated so, too, is the concept of ‘community’ with which it is frequently conjoined. It has been said to construct ‘connotations which may be pleasing’ (Demaine and Entwistle, 1996, p. 35) and to imply some unifying characteristic of space, identity or interest (Mayo, 2000, pp. 39–48) which may, in the end, be misleading. Others have argued that the idea tends to refer to groups ‘which do not occupy positions of high status’ (Barnes, 1997, p. 33) and that the designation ‘community’ conceals in its cosiness the realities of poverty and disadvantage. Thus, though it has been suggested that ‘we are always dreaming of community’ (Phillips, 1993, p. 6), the notion is amongst ‘the most contested within sociological material’ (Allan, 1991, p. 2) and it has been argued that ‘it is doubtful whether the concept refers to a useful abstraction at all’ (Stacey 1969, p. 11). Certainly it has been identified as a ‘cosy idea; as much an ideological construct as a description …’ (Popple, 1995, p. 5) and Williams points out that ‘community is a warmly persuasive word’ (Williams, 1976, p. 65). Others have wondered why, despite decades of work by sociologists to ‘expose the myth of community’, the idea ‘refuses to lie down’ (Pahl, 1995, p. 13). Its appropriation over time across a variety of discourses and persistently in public policy is both a symptom and a cause of the contests in meaning associated with the term.