In a word, yes.
The usage of faith community by liberals has led to suspicion of the term by conservatives (who make up the majority here), and given it unfortunate connotations. There is nothing inherently wrong with it, and indeed, as you point out, it has its good sides.
Laudatur Iesus Christus.
There are several things inherently wrong with the phrase “faith community.”
It is not grammatically coherent in English. It is two nouns stated as a couplet, with no indication of their relationship. It is a nonsense phrase open to several interpretations. It is proffered as a “translation” or short definition of the words “Church” or “Ecclesia.” However, it leaves out several aspects of those ideas that are crucial to the Faith.
This sort of bad grammar is a creeping menace in the language in the English speaking Church. It is a sort of fog corrosive to clear understandings and offering a false sense of agreement. It deceives people into a sense of agreement, because several quite opposing ideas can seem to be captured in the nebulous phrase. This problem is growing worse with each generation. The lack of precision in common expressions is breeding an inability to attain precision, even though mutual understanding and the possibility for love depend upon it.
The word “community” is an inversion of the word “parish.” The two terms are nearly opposite in meaning. A “community” is a settled thing, a group living together. The word “parish” has the opposite sense. It comes from the Greek words “para” and “oikos,” meaning “between or among the houses.” The sense meaning is of a group of transients, those who do not live in the houses with the settled folk, but those who are passing through and living in tents or temporary shelters. A parish is a group of fellow travelers, sojourners. (Some seem to confuse the Greek root of this word with a word made of “peri” and “oikos,” meaning “near the house” and having the meaning of neighboring in Greek. This is not the understanding of the word used by the Greek Fathers.)
Another problem with the word “community” is its shallowness. The Greek word “peroikos” is used in the Septuagint to describe Moses as “a stranger in a foreign land.” The word “parish” ties the Church Militant to the Patriarchs, to Israel in the desert, and to our heavenly homeland as the goal of our sojourn. The phrase “faith community” shaves off this long history and is open to the interpretation that we are happy to stay where we are.
Finally, the phrase is usually dishonest. The groups that use the phrase “faith community” do not usually share any unified “faith” and certainly not the Faith of the Apostles. They are rarely true communities; rather, they are engines of conformity without belief. They hold together, not by loving their members and working to come to shared understandings and beliefs, but by telling dissenters or those who are in pain to go elsewhere, where the “faith” is more to their taste. (This is sometimes done explicitly, by a letter from the Pastor. More often it is done by shunning or ignoring the comments and complaints, or by advising people to be quiet about their discontents.) This does not describe the Church of Christ.
On the other hand, these tensions, which those imperfect in love have always suffered, are much better understood in a group of travelers who are trying to reach the same goal, but all having a long way to go. The word “parish” captures this sense of a loose association, united in goal, but differing as to the best course to that goal. The word “parish” implicitly admits that close bonds of honesty, candor, and true love are rare in the Church Militant – as the Savior told us they would be.
We cannot work on these real problems of the failure of unity, if we do not acknowledge them. If we wish to work toward being a true community, we should not pretend we have reached our goal by awarding ourselves the name before we have finished the work.
Pax Christi nobiscum.
John Hiner
