In our age of "the Mar-a-Lago look," we need authentic community more than ever

[The Great Open Dance]

We are made in the image of God, for authentic community. In previous essays, I have argued that the Trinity is three unique persons united through love into one divine community. Abba, Jesus, and Sophia are specific centers of consciousness, thought, and feeling; hence, each one is a subject— a self with a specific identity. An object is a thing without consciousness, thought, or feeling, while a subject is a person with consciousness, thought, and feeling.

The divine subjects differ from human subjects in their perfect love for, and openness to, one another. What they could hide, they always choose to share. Their subjectivity is transparent. Hence, they are not only subjective, they are intersubjective—perfectly open and lovingly transparent to one another. God is intersubjectivity itself. By way of consequence, individual uniqueness, and its contribution to the kaleidoscope of difference, is holy.

To be known, we must know one another. Recognizing our own uniqueness, and our unique value, we desire to be seen. We want the depth of our subjectivity to be known, even if we don’t know it ourselves. We want to be acknowledged as a self who possesses a soul. We want to be perceived as consequential, not because we’re rich or famous, but because we are of inherent worth. Such co-celebration is what should happen in religious communities. The endeavor is sacred, and even partial achievement grants us a foretaste of the kingdom.

As gathering places for the people of God, churches should be places of transparency and intersubjectivity. Such openness, in a culture of acceptance, is healing in itself. We can think of participants in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting who begin by stating their name and their addiction to alcohol, always in full confidence of welcome.

Many churches claim to be so welcoming, yet they subtly coerce members into that church’s image of what a Christian looks like, encircling them in candy-coated barbed wire. Other churches are truly welcoming, encouraging participants to fully embody the unique image that God created them to be. These churches encourage authenticity, which is confident self-revelation, an external life lived in accord with one’s internal self. Such churches truly practice Paul’s instruction, “Accept one another as Christ accepted us, for the glory of God” (Romans 15 ). (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, page 218)