Message from the Editor

Community is one of those words that strikes a chord in all of us and we all have some opinion about the current state of the community in which we live, whether it be local, national, or even international. Ralph Keyes begins the conference with "Scholars such as Amitai Etzioni, Michael Sandel, and Francis Fukuyama have sounded the alarm for years about the decline of civil society." And, as Ralph points out, it hardly matters if it is objectively the case because so many feel it to be true.

In this conference, Keyes makes us think about community in a way most of us probably never have. For example, early in the conference we have to give consideration to the value of community to society as a whole (a somewhat ambiguous term itself). Are we to consider as communities the KKK, Jim Jones’s congregation or other cults that have proven pathological?

We seem to be ambivalent about community. As Keyes remarks, “We want the familiarity of local commerce, and the better prices of mega-stores outside town.”

It is difficult to identify a more important factor in our lives than community because a strong community can influence all the indices of despair—crime, mental and physical illness, addiction, divorce, school failure, etc. And it can create bonding, cooperation and affection.

Community is a warm and personal, albeit complex, issue, and this conference keeps us tuned into the fact that community is in many ways a matter of the heart – rather than policy. I especially enjoyed the conference for its warmth and I enthusiastically recommend it.

Kip Winsett
Editor

The conference is available in it's entirety as a downloadable MS Word document.

Just Cick here to transfer it to your own system.