The previous post outlined Jon Alexander’s Subject and Consumer stories, but it’s with the Citizen Story that we can see what’s next.
Moving from dependent subjects to independent consumers, citizens are interdependent. Citizens build networks, share ideas, move information freely to empower the whole. Citizens create hives, collectives. The citizen story moves us from being passive subjects being told what to do, or isolated individuals thinking only of ourselves to being partnered collaborators, working for the good of the whole.
See if this chart helps…
Alexander uses Covid as an example of the ways these stories played out. It’s not a perfect narrative, but it works.
When Covid hit, it was framed as an attacker. We were told to stay home, that we would be safe and taken care of by our government. (Good to note that Jon Alexander is a citizen of the UK.) When weeks turned to months with no end in sight, the hope that our government could fix this began to wane. They weren’t prepared. They’d made poor choices and were not strong or reliable.
When the subject story couldn’t hold, the consumer story stepped in. Some people rebelled because we are entitled to make our own choices. We want to get back to normal, go back to work, keep masks off. Government needs to get out of the way because we can take care of ourselves. And, if you got sick, that’s your own fault. Government could play the subject-card pointing out that if you’d listened, you’d have been safe while consumers could highlight individual choice and consequence.
But, some of us responded to Covid using a citizen narrative. We wore masks with the idea that they didn’t help us, but kept others safe; we were looking out for the people around us. In NYC at 7:00pm, people opened windows and hit pots and pans together in support of frontline workers. Neighborhoods created networks, and people found ways to help each other. We shared toilet paper and flour and went grocery shopping for those who needed to stay indoors.
Citizens partner, collaborate, and cooperate with others for shared goals and the well-being of the whole.
Our churches are consumer based. The people exercise their individual rights, express opinions, expect things to change according to very specific needs or interests, and want an array of choices so they feel like they are being served well. In exchange, they will pledge a comfortable amount of money, a number that might change depending on how well the church responds to their demands/requests. They are fighting the subject model, sometimes quite energetically, where they fear the minister or board or other entity (the UUA?) is controlling them or limiting their freedom and independence.
Transformation comes from the Citizen Story. It comes from a new approach to the whole which is not something we join, but something we live into being through our relationships. Church isn’t a place, but a network of people committed to a vision of the world, engaged in the life-giving work of becoming Beloved Community. By putting Love at the Center of Everything, churches are the manifestation of collaborative living, the embodiment of joy through power-sharing, compassion, and collective imagination.
The old stories of subject and consumer are dying and the churches they created are dying too. But, there’s a new story being born, the story of the citizen church, in which the covenanted community creates webs of interconnected, interdependent relationships gentle enough to hold us when we’re grieving, and strong enough to transform the broken systems left in the wake of a dying empire.